We commend Greg Weston for his history lesson on our country’s deficit budgets. His column from yesterday is a must read: Shrinking government won’t trim deficit / Doing unpopular things like hiking GST will. Here it is:
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/greg_weston/2010/01/22/12577276.html
Weston writes Canadians are in for some rough times ahead: Canada’s history is littered with valiant attempts to curb government spending, an exercise once aptly described as “digging in quicksand.”
He reminds us of the struggle through the past 35 years:
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Pierre Trudeau and John Turner fathered our national debt and the practice of deficit spending. In 1976, we saw the deficit increase from $2 billion to $6 billion
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The auditor general of the day warned Canadians that Pierre Trudeau’s government was losing control of the public purse. By the time the Liberals left office in 1984, the $6-billion deficit was $34 billion.
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Brian Mulroney did nothing to curb the year-over-year deficits and, when he left office nine years later, the deficit was over $39 billion.
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Jean Chretien and Paul Martin successfully turned a $36-billion deficit into a $3-billion surplus. But as Weston tells us: “the big myth of the day was it all happened from ruthless cost cutting. A big part of the deficit was eliminated from raising taxes, raiding the Employment Insurance fund, and reducing federal payments to the provinces for health care and education.”
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In 2006, the Harper government won power from the Liberals and inherited a healthy $13-billion annual surplus. Three years later, the Conservatives posted a $5.6-billion deficit. This was, in part, because spending on government programs increased by $32 billion, or 18%.
And so, this brings us up to our current government’s new budget to be introduced in March…
