All the town is abuzz with the budget day news. Half the street had their lights on before 5 am, faces pressed to the windows waiting for the newspapers to be delivered. It’s budget day! It’s budget day!!!
Budgets used to be so drab. In the 70s and 80s there was a guy like Marc Lalonde stoking up the deficits like there was no tomorrow. Best wikipedia notation by the way: “He was very important and helpful.” In the 90’s it was all slash and burn as Paul Martin and Big Jean did the impossible and actually turned Canada around from being a rival to Italy in relation to fiscal house mess to being the talk of the G7 water cooler: “Jean said what? Paul said what?? I don’t believe it.” That is what Germany said to Japan.
There has been much made about PM Harper acting like a drunk NDPer at this moment in time, passing out Federal Government credit cards like Santa handing out candy canes. And it is true. But there is absolutely nothing indicating that the proper thing is to do otherwise. Except if, you know, Canada is not really having a recession. So there is more coming today as The Star semi-speculates:
The tax cuts will highlight a massive economic bailout plan with tens of billions of dollars in new federal spending and tax measures, $2 billion in help for the jobless, cash for the auto industry, $7 billion for urban reconstruction and measures to free up consumer and business loans. The budget will project a deficit of $64 billion over the next two years. The government is planning a series of tax initiatives, including incentives for home renovations to revive the building trades during the recession.
See, I don’t think so much that we are having a recession yet but the US is. The equivalent of the entire work force of PEI or Kingston or more was fired yesterday in the US. Home Depot is shutting stores for heaven’s sale – you know, the place you go to do it yourself to save money. The barber in Ithaca (a well off college town) said people who are getting once a month hair cuts are moving to one every six or eight weeks. The beer store owners told me that people are moving down in their buying patterns, too. The grocery store was mobbed on Sunday night but the malls were quiet. It could be January. It could also be the first January of a recession.
So while our biggest trade partner takes a hit, if we bridge build, home renovate, retool the car factories to make engines that run on hydro electricity is that so bad? Didn’t we spend the last 15 years through administrations that ran the gambit from the moderate centre-left to the moderate centre-right paying off the debt just in case this was going to happen? The self-defined “principled” who never have to actually do anything are not amused.
Utterly tangential amen: Amen.
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