IMF dictated cutbacks in Martin’s ‘95 budget

Documents obtained by a coalition of NGOs through access to information laws indicate that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) exerted strong influence on Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin to slash social spending in his 1995 budget.

In a letter to Martin late in 1994, the IMF urged him to cut health care and education transfers to the provinces, as well as UI benefits and funding for social housing.

Martin heeded all these "suggestions," announcing spending cuts of more than $29 billion over the next three years in exactly those areas specified by the I M F.

The contents of the IMF letter and other related documents were published in the Economic Justice Report of the Ecumenical Coalition for Social Justice.

The Canadian Committee to Combat Crimes Against Humanity has accused Martin of "collusion with the IMF to annihilate social programs in Canada." Its president, Bruce Katz, says the result was to impose severe and unnecessary hardship on the most vulnerable groups--- the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the unemployed—and his organization accordingly considers Martin’s 1995 budget to have been a crime against humanity.