But if we take the time to remove our partisan blinders, we would realize this budget is one of the most important in over a decade and has done what it set out to do - take care of Canadians.
From tax cuts for ordinary Canadians, to job creation and infrastructure spending, to frozen EI premiums and a 5 week extension, it hopes to weather to recessionary storm by giving Canadians the tools they need to come out at the end of this thing - money, jobs, infrastructure, stability and LESS TAXES.
It is a budget for Canadians, and they will not care that our debt is increasing, it's already over half a billion, so what's 34 billion more? If you really want to own some of the debt, buy a Canada savings bond, keep our debt in Canada.
What could the government have done in a recession? (Still not convinced we are in one yet.)
Monetary policy - reduce the bank rate to stimulate spending. That's what the Bank of Canada has been doing, but with our bank rate at 1%, there is not much room to reduce it further.
Fiscal policy - reduce taxes and/or increase spending. This is what the budget did, it reduced taxes and increased spending, now we have to wait and see how quickly it works. The problem with fiscal policies is that they are slower moving than monetary policy. We might be out of the recession before the fiscal policies kick in.
What the government did not do, that the coalition would have, is start new social programs like a national daycare program, or carbon credit money sucking scheme. (H/T to MaryT)
I also liked the cap on public service salaries. This was sure to upset our socialist NDP friends and the unions.
According to Keynesian economics this is a good budget. Unfortunately, it's bound to upset fiscal Conservatives. I hope once the budget is passed, we can start talking about program reductions. Think of all the baby boomers who will be retiring, let's not replace them.
Given the liberal bent of the bureaucrats, this must have been an easy budget to put together. Now, if they would only retire, we could get some new thinking into the public service.
The budget, it's okay as long as we see some program reductions after we are out of the rough patch. There is plenty of fat to be cut from programs.
