BNN wants your budget deficit reduction ideas

Treasury Board President Tony Clement has taken over the reins of a process to find $4 billion of reductions to the annual Canadian federal budget. If you didn’t see Kim Parlee and I on Business Day at 3pm yesterday on the Business News Network, then here’s some news.

We’d like to collect some ideas from BNN viewers to send along to Minister Clement. If we get some great ones, perhaps he might even come on the show to hear more. Since so many of our blog readers have an interest in such things, I’d love you to chime in. Send your ideas to businessday@bnn.ca, or post them in our comment section if you prefer.

My first idea, which I offered up on the show, was for the Feds to put a bunch of their real estate into a REIT, and take it public. Investors around the world are looking for stable yields, and there’s never enough good, accessible, REIT product available to go around it seems.

Thanks in advance.

(BTW, since I get asked this with some regularity at Starbucks, the BNN gig is a weekly co-host thing. And, no, I won’t be quitting my day job.)

MRM