The sad news emanating out of our federal Finance Department made me feel very old.
Because that’s exactly what I’ll be if I hang in long enough to see whether those Ottawa number crunchers are actually correct in their prognostications about the date when Canada will once again have a balanced federal budget.
Heck, maybe we’ll even have seen a Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup before that happy time finally rolls around in that far-off promised land, otherwise known as the year 2040.
No, sorry that’s not a typo. According to the eagle-eyed economists toiling away trying to keep up with the drunken-sailor spending the current government is embarked upon, we will wait 21 more years before seeing each side of the incoming and outgoing ledger tally up to the same amount.
This is absolutely shocking. When Justin Trudeau and his merry band of spendthrifts ran for office more than three years ago, they promised the nation’s books would be balanced by the end of their mandate, which arrives this fall.
Instead we are on pace to overspend by about $18 billion in the current fiscal year alone and there’s not a snowball’s hope even the slightest trace of cost-curbing is being considered.
Now if the country had slipped into a deep recession at some point during these past few years then there at least would be some excuse for this level of rancid overspending, but apart from Alberta’s long-running state of desperation the rest of Canada has been moving along quite comfortably.
In fact last November’s national unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 per cent, a 40-year low, as GDP, while not exactly skyrocketing, has bumbled along at a reasonable pace for several years as well.
So if the Grits can’t do what they promised when Canada – outside Wild Rose land – is humming along, then what hope is there that a balancing act will ever arrive, even by that distant year of 2040?
For heaven’s sake, we’ve been lucky that interest rates on the many billions we owe as a national debt have remained so low for so long, watch them bounce up to higher, historical levels and we might as well pitch 2140 as the year we promise to stop overspending.
And if, glory be, we do somehow manage to balance the annual books in 21 years, how much debt will we have burdened ourselves with by then? Actually those same economists worked it out – a staggering bill of $960 billion.
This is what happens when a government is quite content to spend a billion here and another billion there, all designed to placate one interest group or another. The latest public relations handout is going to our beleaguered energy industry – desperate to get a pipeline to tidewater but instead given some ramshackle giveaway involving about $1.6 billion in a vain hope they’ll take the cash and shut up.
That is the way Canada is run these days. Whine loud enough and you’ll get a thin slice of the borrowed cake and perhaps a tearful apology into the bargain. Yes, that’s a lot easier than actually tackling the issues the country faces, which would entail making tough decisions to ensure the future prosperity of Canadians yet to be born.
Even the promise of a balanced budget in 21 years comes with some caveats from the finance gurus.
They warn the numbers are “subject to a fair degree of uncertainty” as they don’t take into account any new government spending programs.
Oh, I suspect we might have a fair few more of those foisted upon us by 2040. Don’t you?
Chris Nelson is a long-time journalist. His columns on Alberta politics run monthly in the St. Albert Gazette.
