After all the furore and palaver of the SNC-Lavalin scandal that has gripped Canada during the last seven weeks, the federal budget was presented in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 19. The prime minister and finance minister were grinning like a pair of Cheshire cats who swallowed the proverbial canaries, telling those who chose to listen that everyone will be cared for during the next five years, thanks to spending tactics included in this 460-page budget. Millennials will gain easier access to loans for house purchases, Indigenous people will benefit on all sorts of expenditures that top $8 billion, and seniors will eventually benefit from lower drug costs, that will presumably keep them alive longer to pay more taxes.
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All that is required from Canadians to benefit from all these wondrous promises over the next five years, is to cast a vote for the Liberals on Oct. 21. Nowhere in those 460 pages is there even a passing mention of a “Balanced Budget,” anywhere in the foreseeable future. In 2015, Justin Trudeau made campaign declarations that “the budget will balance itself,” followed with a pre-election plan for $10-billion deficit spending to boost the economy. When his first budget was actually presented, the reality was a $30-billion deficit in 2016. A balanced budget was promised by 2019.
In Tuesday’s budget the deficit is $15 billion this year, then $20 billion next year, and so on down into that deep dark bottomless rabbit hole of never-ending debt; that’s where promises are made, but never kept. Of course, all this pandemonium and hubbub of good cheer in an election year, is ultimately designed to drown out any request for much-needed investigation of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. The Liberals desperately want to put that behind them and change the channel, but will Canadian voters really be so gullible?
–Bernie Smith
@SalmonArm
newsroom@saobserver.net
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