Opposition parties fear the Harper government intends to use the global economic crisis as an excuse to carry out ideologically-driven spending cuts.
They'll be scouring the supplementary spending estimates, to be released Monday, for evidence that the government is using the meltdown to justify reductions that might otherwise be too politically explosive to touch.
But much as some Tories would like to take advantage of economic chaos to downsize government, insiders doubt Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority regime has either the clout or the desire to tackle contentious budget cuts.
Still, hope springs eternal among bedrock Conservatives.
"I'm hopeful there will be some ideologically-driven, neo-conservative cuts to government," political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Harper, said in an interview.
Such cuts, he added, would be consistent with Harper's long-term goal of reducing the size and scope of government.
"I think that's always been sort of the long-term plan, the way that Stephen was going about it of first depriving the government of surpluses through cutting taxes . . . You get rid of the surpluses and then it makes it easier to make some expenditure reductions."
At a minimum, Flanagan said: "I think there's certainly room for some incremental cuts to useless programs."
CBC, AECL touted as potential targets
The government has already used the economic crisis to put off plans for a national portrait gallery, citing the need for fiscal restraint in uncertain times.
From Flanagan's perspective, the government would do well to scupper a host of grants, contracts and business subsidies and to pare a lot of what he considers wasteful spending on cultural and aboriginal programs.
Opposition MPs fear the CBC -- deeply distrusted by many Tories who consider it a hotbed of Liberal sympathizers -- may be targeted as well. The Tories have seemed to be softening up public opinion recently by highlighting allegations of lavish executive spending at the public broadcaster.
"It would be absolutely consistent with the Conservatives, particularly now when they can use the foil of an economic downturn, to cut programs and institutions they don't like," said Liberal finance critic Scott Brison.
"The CBC would certainly be one of those national institutions that the Conservatives clearly don't like."
As well, opposition MPs are suspicious the government will try to downsize the public service and sell off Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
Flanagan said a five-per-cent cut to the CBC's $1-billion budget might be in line, much as the previous Liberal government imposed reductions during the last era of restraint in the mid-1990s.
Flanagan wishes Harper would go even farther and slap a for sale sign on the public broadcaster -- but doubts anything so radical is on the agenda.
"Not with a minority government," Flanagan said.
"It would require legislation. I can't imagine the other parties approving legislation to privatize the CBC, much as I would support at least selling off parts of it, or the Post Office."
In any event, Flanagan said Harper appears to have long since given up a "strongly ideological approach" to reducing the size of government.
"I think you'll see them do what governments have done in the past when they've had to downsize, which is they do what's politically possible. Rather than being driven by some clear vision of a smaller government . . . I would guess that it will be sort of ad hoc based on what's politically possible."
However, Ralph Goodale, a former Liberal finance minister, argued that long before the current economic crisis the Conservatives had been "pursuing a very ideological agenda, a very neo-conservative point of view that slashed the role of the government of Canada in the lives of Canadians."
He predicted that agenda will escalate now that the government can use the global economic crisis as cover.
"(Harper) will blame it on the international situation but in reality he only has himself to blame," said Goodale.
