Budget was a bit of a snooze - but they did delivery it - deficit looks like it is going to become a permanent feature.

By Ray Rivers

March 31st, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

The federal government brought down a budget last week. Did anybody notice? Well if you drink wine it’ll cost you a little more. The tax credit for taking public transit is gone and you’ll have to pay the HST on your next Uber ride. There is also supposed to be more money for infrastructure, innovation and child care but these benefits will not be as noticeable as the taxes, nor immediately applicable to many of us.

It was all a bit anti-climatic. Even the people’s broadcaster (CBC) muted the Finance Minister’s speech and plugged in one of their own reporters instead. Why hear it from the horse’s mouth (no offence intended) when there is some reporter, barely exhumed from the pre-budget ‘lock-up’, who can ramble-on quoting second-hand information from his notebook of cryptic scribblings?

Prime Minister Trudeau congratulating Finance Minister Morneau on the delivery of the 2017 budget

I recall watching Flaherty and Martin being allowed to wax on poetic, why not Morneau? Over a thousand journalists, independents from think-tanks, and other influential people spend budget day together locked in a big room and not released until the budget is read out. But since most of the budget has already been leaked by budget day, it might just be the expensive feeding and watering that has them coming back each year. Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch? Perhaps it’s time to get rid of the budget lock-up.

Pre-budget speculation had investors worried that Trudeau would impose a higher tax rate on income from capital gains. After all income is income, and that might help slow down the crazy inflation in the housing sector, particularly if homes selling for more than a million were included as taxable, which was one rumour.

It was Justin’s father who first introduced capital gains taxes and taxation had been applicable to 75% of that income in those days gone by. Anyway, that rumour was false, though that extra cash would come in useful for a government mired in red ink. That old saw, that you have to be crazy not to borrow at today’s ridiculously low interest rates, doesn’t sound so reasonable when one considers that even a balanced budget, let alone surplus, isn’t expected before the end of this decade, and well beyond the next election.

If this budget was designed to keep folks on-side with the Liberals it mostly failed. Despite its glossy front web page, it is long on minutia and mostly short on substance and vision, certainly compared to the last one. But then this is only a mid-term instrument, tailored to not steal the spotlight from the more important one coming in the election year. And perhaps we’re all too demanding and our expectations are too high – or maybe it’s the rumour mill that keeps whetting our appetite for more.

Trudeau has been a media darling ?

Trudeau has been a media darling since coming to power, in fact even more admired abroad than at home. Though when it comes to that domestic audience, his boat is starting to leak and according to one poll is now listing and behind the leaderless Tories for the first time since his solid win in 2015. How could that be? That voters saying they’d prefer a party with no leader to the current government? Well as Diefenbaker used to say…”polls are for dogs”.

Halfway into an election term, the public usually gets antsy – that mid-term itch. And there are some reasons for the public to start to back-off from their leader. Trudeau has done himself no favour with this on-going cash-for-access thing. And his expensive Christmas holiday, at our expense, in the Bahamas has proven unpopular among those of us who never seem to make the Aga Khan’s guest list, no matter how hard we try. And, like Harper before him, those idealistic promises on transparency are getting harder to fulfill once in office. Small things but still….

Bombardier’s CS100 assembly line is seen at the company’s plant Friday, December 18, 2015 in Mirabel, Que. After years of delays and cost overruns, Bombardier’s CSeries commercial aircraft has been certified by Canada’s transportation regulator. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

There was this Castro fiasco a little while ago, and then elbow-gate showed a lack of composure in a leader we’d assumed had it all together. Some folks resent his subsidy to giant Bombardier, particularly as the company’s management has just given themselves whacking big (millions of dollars) raises while simultaneously laying off a chunk of their the wage-earning labour force. Lately some folks are unhappy about the business dealings between the government and Trudeau’s close friend Tom Pitfield.

The government has just dropped one of those white papers on parliamentary reform, which would give MPs a four day work week in Ottawa and require the PM to only show up one day a week for question period. There is the carbon tax, though at least environmentalists will appreciate the government cutting a subsidy to the oil sector. After all, why carbon tax the public so they’ll use less oil, while simultaneously encouraging more oil development with an almost instantaneous rapid capital write-off.

How are we liking this so far? Sunny ways?

Oh yes, and then for those who really care about electoral reform, there was that broken promise on ridding us of the unfair first-past-the-post system. While one can accommodate foot dragging while a government slogs through the mud of its agenda, this was a veritable ‘balls-up’ and a breach of faith.

It’s a long road in political life until the next election. And what really matters are the first and last budgets in the cycle. Tweeners, like this one don’t really count much. And whether this is a made-in-Canada budget or not, Trudeau had to be looking over his shoulder at what is happening south of the border. Trump is just beginning his own tax reform process so it may have been sensible for us to wait. After all our guy doesn’t want to get too far out of sync with our greatest trading partner and best friend.

Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.     Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

Budget –     Child Care Promises –     Lock-Up Lunches –

Trudeau Popularity –     Broken Promises – 

Parliament Reform –     More Parliament –     Even More Parliament – 

Transparency –      Oil Subsidy –      Bombardier –      Pitfield –

Deficits –