Who gets the advantage?
By Davie Wong, Columnist
Hallelujah! After a long eight years, Canada finally has a budget surplus. But what does that mean exactly?
It means that Stephen Harper’s long-term financial plan has finally come to fruition. Despite everything that has happened since the global financial crisis in 2007, Canada has finally achieved what Harper and Thomas Mulcair would call success with the budget.
Throughout the election campaign so far, the economy has been a huge part of the debates. When Statistics Canada announced earlier this month that the Canadian economy showed signs of indeed being in a recession—as Mulcair and Justin Trudeau so often pointed out—Harper received a lot of flak for failing to revive the Canadian economy as he had promised so many times in the past.
But now, with the announcement of the federal surplus, Harper can finally take a breath of relief. This news comes just at the right time, as the Conservatives have received a mammoth amount of negative attention from the Duffy scandal to leaky candidates. Although Canadians want change, Harper finally has the evidence he needs to tell Canadians that maybe change isn’t the right way to go here.
While the Conservative Party received the news very well, the NDP also took their moment in the limelight. Throughout the election campaign, Mulcair has made balancing the budget his focus. Like Harper, Mulcair believes that the best course of action for the Canadian economy is balancing the federal budget. With the surplus, Mulcair would be walking into a year where he has already fulfilled his promise and could focus 0n broader things such as better healthcare quality and more affordable, $15-a-day child care.
One party that didn’t benefit from the surplus budget announcement was Trudeau and his Liberal Party. They had banked their chances in the coming election on the budget being another deficit. Their plan even stated that Canada would be in deficit until 2019. For the Liberals, the budget being positive not only puts their plan in a bad light, it shows the country what many have speculated; that Trudeau is too inexperienced.
Despite all of this, Trudeau still stands by his and his party’s plan to run at a deficit until 2019. He speculates that the budget being at a positive this year is a false truth, and, in reality, the number is only positive because Harper planned it to be for the election. In a statement addressing supporters on September 14, Trudeau accused Harper of “under-spending and making cuts to Veterans Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs, to seniors, in the billions of dollars so that he could balance the books in time for his election.”
A lot of what Trudeau pointed out makes sense in terms of political timing. The timing of the release of the report by Finance Department was mostly in favour of the current Prime Minister, who was experiencing a slide in polls. The timing also made Trudeau and his party look silly, and discredited much of their economic platform.
But what do the numbers say? Well, the numbers say exactly what has been reported. This year, the Canadian budget is at a surplus: a $3 billion surplus to be exact. The report issued by the Finance Department reads that the revenue comes from higher gains in personal and corporate income taxes than was originally anticipated. It also showed that direct program spending was $1.5 billion less than originally forecasted.
For the first time since 2007–2008, the Canadian budget is at a surplus. Those are the facts. Whether it is from a strong infrastructure, as Harper has been so focused on, or it is from making drastic cuts to look good, as Trudeau believes, the Canadian budget is finally back on track. Let’s see how long it lasts.
