Opinion Column
By KERRY DIOTTE
They’re billing it as an “affordability budget.” But with the latest bloated federal Liberal budget unveiled, the schoolyard expression “liar, liar, pants on fire” comes to mind.
When Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was campaigning in 2015, the member of Parliament for Montreal, Quebec’s Papineau riding made a solemn vow to Canadians.
While then-prime minister Stephen Harper promised Conservatives would have a balanced budget, Trudeau swore Liberals would run “tiny, modest” deficits of less than $10 billion for three years. He’d then balance the budget by 2019-2020, Trudeau promised.
Like so many of his promises, Trudeau reneged on that. He lied. (As it turns out, budgets don’t balance themselves.)
And the latest Liberal budget has blown to smithereens any promised to rein in spending. Liberals will run a whopping deficit of nearly $40 billion for this fiscal year.
You don’t need a degree in economics to know that continued, excessive government spending is fuelling inflation, making everything we need to buy — gas, groceries, consumer goods etc. — more expensive.
It’s much like continuing to rack up spending on your credit card and not even being able to pay the minimum balance. We all know how that will end. Badly.
This Beluga-like budget will see Trudeau’s government spend a head-spinning $480 billion in a single year. It including details on almost $52 billion in new spending.
Trudeau’s spending orgy is even getting heat from Liberals. Former Liberal Governor of the Bank of Canada David Dodge said he believes that this budget will be the worst since 1982.
And here’s a sobering fact: This year, Canada will spend $54.1 billion to service Trudeau’s debt. This is more money than the government is sending the provinces for health care.
Laughably, Trudeau’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says her government is taking measures to cut back on spending.
Here’s one way Liberals boast they’ll do that. Canada’s 368,000 civil servant workforce will be trimmed by 5,000 members.
But wait for it … That will happen over the next four years … By attrition.
In other words, if someone retires or quits, they won’t be replaced. Wow. What restraint.
Because socialists love to tax us, there’s also $20 billion in new taxes detailed in this budget.
A Financial Post columnist summed up the budget this way:
“In what it bills as an ‘affordability budget,’ the federal government is spending oodles of money on housing, dental care, school lunches, pharmacare, Indigenous support, green subsidies and, of course, consultants’ fees and a padded public service.
“To finance all the new spending, it will issue still more bonds, which will push up interest rates even as the Bank of Canada tries to bring them down. Higher corporate and capital gains taxes will discourage the supply of goods and services to the market whether in housing starts or in food.
“Instead of improving affordability, the fiscal plan will impair it.”
Isn’t that just like the Liberals? Another promise made — and another promise broken — in one fell swoop.
Liar, liar pants on fire, indeed.
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