I'm looking at the annual financial report that was put out recently, pages 17 to 20. Among transfers to persons, elderly benefits go up 5.8% from last year; children's benefits are up 2%. Transfers to provinces for health and other social programs are up by 5.4% over last year—that's 6% for health and 3% for the Canada social transfer. I find it very odd that we use terms such as “austerity”.
In the mid 1990s, the government cut very substantially the transfers to provinces, so I can see defining that as austerity. When people use “austerity” to describe a situation when transfers to persons and transfers to provinces are both increasing, I find it very confusing to determine why those terms are used to describe increasing public expenditure. It seems to me to be the exact opposite of the definition.