Reduction ad absurdam

A really strange comment from Premier Dunderdale, quoted by Steve Bartlett in Saturday's Telegram:

Dunderdale doesn’t agree with those who suggest government spending is out of control. In last year’s budget, she notes, new spending was around two per cent.

“We’re going to try to reduce it even further,” she says.

In order to reduce something further, don't you have to be reducing it in the first place?

This chart — with data taken straight out of the provincial government's own budgetary estimates (estimates for fiscal year 2011-12, revised estimates for all past years) show just how successful her government has been at "reducing" program expenditures. These figures exclude Consolidated Fund Services (i.e., payments on the debt and unfunded pension liabilities):


Other than FY 2006-07, the year-over-year increase in provincial program expenditures under the "Conservative" government has never been less than 6%.