By Pepper Parr
January 26, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON.
Ray Rivers, our political columnist is in New Zealand – spending as much time as he can fishing.
Gazette political columnist heads for the ocean hoping to catch enough fish for a family dinner. He kind of likes the idea of not having to shovel snow.
Through the magic of the internet he is able to keep up with events in Canada and will write next about the difficulties a delay in delivering the budget means to everyday people.
Budgets are complex documents and involve every department of the federal government. The change in world oil prices has created close to total havoc with the budget the federal government was expected to deliver in March.
Rivers was a federal bureaucrat for more than twenty years – he has worked on putting together the operating level of budgets for several departments. Later this week he will talk about just what is probably going on within the federal bureaucracy. His political experience allows him to explain how a government puts a spin on a budget.
The impact of those oil price changes are spinning everything for governments around the world. They just might force Alberta into creating a sales tax – and once that tax is in place it might never get lifted.
Big changes – Rivers will write about them in his next column.
