If the Conservatives really want to be the party of fiscal restraint, they should start by cutting their partisan spending.

Treasury Board President Stockwell Day’s announcement that he would cut 245 positions on a variety of government boards and commissions is a good example of how this government prefers gimmicks over substance.

The Conservative government created a deficit even before the economic downturn and it has ballooned to a massive $54 billion for this past year. Their first announcement on taming that deficit after the budget amounted to a paltry $1.2-million in savings. But even this is a charade – the positions they eliminated were 90 per cent vacant to begin with, which means they are claiming to save money that wasn’t even being spent.

But there is even more deception going on here. These are the same boards and commissions that the Conservative government has stacked with their own partisan cronies since November of 2008. A total of 79 of these Conservative appointees donated $79,366.82 to the Conservative Party of Canada, the federal Progressive Conservative Party before that, and the Canadian Alliance.

By filling these boards with their like-minded friends, while not filling existing vacancies, the Conservatives are giving themselves more control of these arms-length bodies and limiting dissent – hardly the stuff of accountability that the Conservatives have so often preached.

But this is just Minister Day’s first volley – more cuts are coming, and how this is done is key. Based on this government’s track record in running the country’s finances, we are concerned that they will simply put the entire brunt of their deficit on the backs of the civil service.

This should be worrying to Canadians, since vital services would suffer, as would those who rely on them.

If the government really wants to show Canadians that they mean business, they should start in-house and lead by example. Conservative spending on partisan advertising, management consultants, and their own advisors has skyrocketed.

The same government that preaches restraint is led by a prime minister who has boosted the budget of his own department – the Privy Council’s Office – by a whopping 22 per cent, or over $13 million. That’s more than 10 times what Minister Day says his first volley of cuts will save.

It’s the same government that has increased partisan advertising, government travel, and contracts given out for communications services by $800 million (or 32 per cent) since coming into office – an unprecedented figure. By way of comparison, over the last four years of the previous Liberal government, this area only increased by 2.3 per cent.

The same government that is now calling on Canadians to tighten their belts increased spending on management consultants by $570 million a year since being elected – an astounding 165 per cent increase over the previous Liberal government.

And this is the same government that has a Finance Minister who tables a budget that warns of cuts to come, and then the next day spends $5,000 in taxpayer’s funds to fly to Tim Horton’s for a photo-op.

This government has no qualms about increasing its own partisan spending, while cutting services for everyone else. They will create jobs for their friends by increasing the number of Conservative inisters, senators, and appointees – but they will cut jobs held by average Canadians, while refusing to create new ones.

It is no way to lead a country as great as Canada.