How Harper Put Canada Massively in the Red

[Oscar]

How Harper Put Canada Massively in the Red

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/06/12/Ha ... ign=120615 ]

He ate up a huge federal surplus, piled up six deficits. This PM wants to run on fiscal smarts? Last in series.

By Mel Hurtig, TheTyee.ca June 12, 2015

[Editor's note: This is the last of five excerpts this week from The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper's Takeover of Canada by noted Canadian nationalist Mel Hurtig. For an interview with Hurtig about his just published book, click here: [ http://thetyee.ca/Culture/2015/06/08/Ar ... en-Harper/ ] .
To find the whole series click here: [ http://thetyee.ca/Series/2015/06/08/Mel-Hurtig-Book/ ].

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In the run up to the 2015 federal election, the Harper government will try to convince Canadians that the prime minister and his crew have been excellent managers of the Canadian economy and that only they are capable of delivering the same stellar results in the future. Heading into this election, they had intended to present a balanced federal budget as proof of their sound stewardship. But as I write this in spring 2015, the latest projections are that the Harper government will have difficulty delivering the long-promised surplus this year. Thanks to the precipitous fall in oil prices and revenues, the government's budgetary watchdog, Mostafa Askari, estimated a deficit as high as $1.2 billion for this year, and as much as $400 million the year following. [ http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015 ... -says.html ]

However, if the government is determined, Askari said, a balanced budget is still feasible should they choose to slow spending or delay capital projects. With the government's earlier forecasts in a tailspin, the budget for the current fiscal year was delayed, no doubt to allow time for a wizard to conjure new numbers that will allow Harper to pull a triumphant, balanced budget out of the proverbial hat.

But Harper's fiscal management is a tale of reversal and failure, not triumph. Department of Finance Fiscal Reference Tables reveal that in the years before Harper became prime minister, there were nine consecutive years of budgetary surpluses, from 1997 to 2007. In eight of those years, Ottawa amassed a surplus of over $79 billion. Yet In Harper's first eight years as prime minister, he managed to produce a deficit of almost $127 billion.

As Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale points out, Stephen Harper put the country back into deficit "before (not because of) the recession which arrived in late 2008." [ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ralph-good ... 91064.html ]

Harper has delivered six years of budgetary deficits since. Goodale sums up the impact for Canadians: "Since 2006, [the middle-class has] endured nine years of frustrating stagnation, insecure jobs, declining job quality, flat incomes, ballooning debt, escalating education costs, low savings, inadequate pensions and the growing spectre of the current generation of young Canadians not doing as well as their parents did."

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Our chance to choose

In this and four previous excerpts from my new book, The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper's Takeover of Canada, [ http://thetyee.ca/Series/2015/06/08/Mel-Hurtig-Book/ ] I have laid bare the sorry record of the Harper government in its management of our country's economy and our government's fiscal priorities.

It wasn't so long ago that Canada was a world leader in policy designed to produce a better, fairer and more just country for everyone. In recent years, all this has changed. Canada has dropped down the list of socially-progressive countries, with levels of poverty that most other major developed countries would not tolerate. Canada is changing rapidly and for the worse.

Please keep all of this in mind during the lead up to the federal election and as you head to the polls later this year. No amount of media or political spin can change the reality that many Canadians across this country are struggling to make ends meet in an economy that is increasingly geared towards rewarding the rich. Canada is drifting towards a state and a condition that is unrecognizable.
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Vancouver-based Mel Hurtig is the bookseller, publisher and creator of The Canadian Encyclopedia who became a political activist and published many bestselling books including The Betrayal of Canada. His latest book is The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper's Takeover of Canada, excerpted five times this week in The Tyee with the author's permission. To read the entire series, go here: [ http://thetyee.ca/Series/2015/06/08/Mel-Hurtig-Book/ ].