Former Liberal MP Lucienne Robillard, president of the permanent commission to review government programs, recently published the first volume of her report. As expected, it seriously questions many government programs taken for granted. And as expected, the forces of status quo are already trying to contradict the report.

The conclusions in this report have no room for equivocations: there is presently little (if any) analysis of the pertinence/efficiency of government programs, there is little regular review of the programs’ initial objectives or parameters and the programs have become overly complex over the years because so many rules were piled on top of each other.

As a result, more and more money is poured down a bottomless hole. It’s especially obvious for municipalities. Robillard says that their expenditures have increased an average of 5.6% since 2007 – the nominal provincial GDP increased only by an average of 3.5%.

To stop this unsustainable increase, Robillard proposes to seriously question the $1.3 billion in unconditional transfers municipalities receive. If their spending increases were held to 1.3%, as the provincial government intends, the province would immediately save $900 million a year. Any municipal shortfall in funding could be covered by gains in productivity and a freeze on hiring.

Another bottomless pit is the farm sector. Robillard shows that farmers receive more state help than the OECD average: 27.8% of their revenues vs. 20.5%. And yet, farmers are far from poverty. Their average revenues increased faster than in other provinces such as Ontario and Alberta, and the value of their land has multiplied 25-fold since the 1970s. They also fail much less often than in other industrial sectors – 5.4 per 10,000 businesses versus 32 per 10,000.

Despite their success, farmers receive over half a billion dollars in transfers from the Financière agricole. It runs programs such as revenue stabilization, which hasn’t had a single surplus since the turn of the century (although the deficits are decreasing) and has deviated from its original objectives, according to a report published by Michel St-Pierre in 2009.

To correct this deviation, Robillard recommends abolishing the revenue stabilization programs and thus save $300 million. It should instead become a real insurance system, in which insured farmers assume all the risks.

Unsurprisingly, the main farmers union warned that farms will disappear as a result, since “agriculture is a risky business.” So is any kind of business, and yet no other sector is as shielded from the markets as agriculture. Abolishing revenue stabilization is a fair measure for all workers.

Only time will tell whether Robillard’s recommendations will be adopted. While treasury board president Martin Coiteux seems to agree with the spirit of the report, unions are already promising disturbances. Let’s see if the Liberals will chicken out as they did 2003.