‘Who let her in??!’ Minister’s staff accidentally text deliberations about 15 per cent spending cut to reporter

The staffer added that no other departments do that kind of work. “Others only do science and monitoring.”

Dabrusin’s chief of staff then directs the staffer to update Dabrusin via text.

“Eek I don’t know how to help the (minister)” the senior policy advisor wrote back.

“There is nowhere else to cut … she could ask for steeper cuts in (Environment and Climate Change Canada) or accept these (Canada Water Agency) cuts and commit to raising her concerns at (Treasury Board)? Their annual budget is so small you can’t escape political consequences with a 15 per cent cut.”

Reached for comment, a spokeswoman for Dabrusin did not explain how a reporter, who discovered the text conversation upon returning from vacation on Monday, ended up added to the group chat, nor confirm specifics around the internal conversation.

Instead, Jenna Ghassabeh pointed to Carney’s promised spending review.

“As part of that mandate, we are comprehensively reviewing government spending to ensure programming is being delivered efficiently and effectively,” Ghassabeh said.

“While this process requires candid discussions on various options, no final funding decisions have been taken at this time.”

Earlier this year, the White House dealt with the fallout from a much higher-stakes leak after The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief was added to a Signal group text by U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, where he and other top administration officials discussed a strike against the Houthis in Yemen.

In Canada, Mohammad Kamal, a spokesman for the Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali, said that departments and agencies were still working on their savings plans, details of which he said would be kept secret, save for Carney’s cabinet, until decisions were finalized.

A spokesman for the Canada Water Agency did not answer direct questions about conversations between the agency’s president and Dabrusin’s office about proposed cuts.

“Organizations are being asked to bring forward ambitious savings proposals to spend less on the day-to-day running of government by targeting programs and activities that are underperforming, not core to the federal mandate, duplicative, or misaligned with government priorities,” wrote spokesman Joseph Peloquin-Hopfner.

Andrew Van Iterson, a spokesman for the Green Budget Coalition, which represents upwards of 20 different environmental and conservation organizations, said that broadly speaking, he sees value in the government undertaking a spending review.

“At the same time,” he said in an interview, “Environment Canada is one of the smallest, least funded departments.”

He said that comes as Canada and the rest of the world are trying to address climate and biodiversity issues.

“So broadly, we understand the drive to review … spending. But we’re also really nervous about what that could mean, because in the broader government budget, environmental spending is relatively small, and there’s a lot of really critical pieces there.”

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