Having read the budget I can say that it did not surprise me. It does not contain any of the poison pills that the opposition was talking about a couple of weeks ago and it is not the progressive budget it would have been if PMJT was still the head of the Canadian government. I stated in this space a few months ago that PMMC would have fit in quite well in the Progressive Conservative cabinet of Joe Clark and this budget proves it. Make no mistake that this is a progressive conservative budget.
As with all progressive conservatives, and all conservatives for that matter, they talk a good game with regard to reducing deficits but when push comes to shove they fail as much as non-conservative governments. This budget did not buck that trend. The actual number given for the deficit this year is an eye catcher but as some have noted if you account for inflation it is no bigger than the average deficit from the last 50 years. At any rate, the usual deficit hawks are loudly condemning the Federal deficit, from a Liberal government, but as usual they are dead silent about the deficits, and some rather egregious mishandling of taxpayers money, from Conservative provincial governments. I am certain that must be a coincidence.
What makes the current deficit a progressive conservative one instead of a conservative one is it is being created by investing in stuff Canada needs. They are borrowing money for big projects and the military instead of just borrowing money to transfer it to the wealthy in the form of tax breaks, which is what the last federal Conservative government did several times in their nine years in power. A progressive budget would have borrowed money to give to ordinary Canadians, who we are told are going through an "affordability crisis".
The amount of money involved is quite impressive and it cannot have anything but a positive impact on overall economic activity. That is not to say that its impact will always be positive but overall it probably will.
My biggest beef with the budget is its measures to shrink the public service. It does not make sense to plan to invest billions but also get rid of the people who will be required to make certain the money is being spent as intended. After all, when this kind of money is being talked about it is inevitable that some will wind up where is should not be. You need people to keep that to a minimum but that is harder to do if you are giving the people charged with doing that pink slips.
As well, these periodic reductions in the size of the public service have always been shell games. Certainly they reduce the size of the public service, for about a month, maybe six. Then the government departments go back to hiring more staff because they realize that they need them. Oftentimes the staff they hire back are those that left during the workforce reduction. When you add that most staff reductions take place as a result of people taking incentive packages to volunteer to leave what really happens is the government gives many employees months long paid vacations.
Really these workforce reductions are just a publicity stunt and it is disappointing that the current government is doing this. I would have thought that a former Bank Governor would be able to figure this out and approach workforce reduction if a different and sustainable way.
I cannot speak about the budget without talking about how it has discombobulated the Conservative Party. It is probably not the reason for their current troubles but it seems to have been a catalyst for the unrest in the party that was inevitable after their election loss in April and Pierre Poilievre' s refusal to step down as leader of the CPC. These things do not go way quickly so it will be interesting to see how this all finally shakes out.
For a first budget I cannot say I am surprised by it. It is certainly ambitious and if they achieve even half of what it sets out to do then it could very well be the transformative budget the Liberals are selling it as. However, there is alot of time and politics to go before we will begin to see this transformation so I would not get too excited about it yet.
I would be very surprised if this budget caused the government to fall and trigger an election. If I am the opposition parties I do not want to piss off the electorate by triggering an early election and fight said election against this budget. Stranger thing have happened so we will have to wait and see but I believe you do not need to worry about campaigning in the snow.
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