Canada: National office asked to slash $1.3 million from budget

Marites N. Sisonstaff writer
Oct 21, 2008

Directors at the General Synod office have been asked to slash $1.3 million from the 2009 budget, a move designed to break a recurring pattern in recent years of huge budget deficits.

Incurring yearly deficits is “not a healthy direction for us to keep moving; some would say it’s irresponsible,” Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said in a meeting with staff at the national office in Toronto. “There are dioceses where deficit budgeting is forbidden. It doesn’t look good for us to be doing it.”

Last year, the Council of General Synod (CoGS), the church’s governing body between General Synods, approved a 2008 budget that already projected a net operating loss of $1.3 million. An undesignated bequest of $4 million from the Dashwood estate helped bridge the deficit, the seventh in as many years. the rest