A $29-billion deficit federal budget is more than Canadians bargained for.
The Liberal government announced its 2016 budget last week, and the deficit came in at three times what was promised in the election campaign. The feds also broke the news that they would run deficits for their entire term.
It raises questions of whether Canadians are getting what we were promised.
The budget is noteworthy for its social program spending, with restructured child and family benefits, billions for indigenous people and expanded Employment Insurance access. Ideally, it means that Canadians are lifted up and over a number of years with the result that there are net savings in social costs because fewer people need help. These are long-term outcomes, though, that can’t be measured within the confines of one year. In the meantime, financing ongoing programs with deficit dollars could get troublesome.
In the bigger picture, the deficit is burdensome if it makes a dent in our country’s debt-to-GDP ratio. But we can’t know those numbers today. It’s hard to predict, for example, how many jobs will be created by infrastructure spending schemes and harder still to calculate economic impacts of those projects.
A $29-billion deficit is too much, but the problem in saying that is that it begs the question: what’s the right number? The $10 billion the Liberals promised? The $10 billion, plus the billions that are considered contingencies, plus allowances for downgraded economic forecasts since the campaign?
Some of the outcomes of the 2016 budget will be up to Canadians, businesses and individuals, and our successes and failures within this framework. And maybe that’s how it should be.
– Black Press
