Budgets

Both the federal government and the government of Ontario brought down budgets in the last week. The federal government has adopted the tried and tested Liberal Party of Canada approach to the budget. Sprinkle a tiny little bit of money to just about everybody, and try to use that to hide honking big corporate tax cuts. Excellent, just what we need. At a time when corporate profits are going off the scale, what they need is another tax cut. All this while money could be used to fight poverty, reduce the debt burden on post-secondary students, fight global climate change, encourage primary health-care, ensure that aboriginals have a decent standard of living or so much more. Jack Layton put it quite well when he said that the federal budget "put crumbs on the kitchen table and a buffet on the board-room table." I'm not surprised, but I had been hoping for more. With the amount of money being thrown around, Jim Flahrety has reduced the expected surplus next year to just $300 million dollars. Remember that number. You're going to hear it again.

The provincial situation is a little bit more positive. The Ontario Liberals have been feeling the pressure from the NDP on the left to do something, anything, for working-class and poor Ontarians. As a result, there is going to be an Ontario Child Benefit for families earning less than $20 000/year phased in over the next couple years. In conjunction with this, the provincial government will stop clawing back the National Child Benefit from families on welfare (though not for three or four years, which is far too long). Thirdly, the government will raise the minimum wage $0.75/hr each March for three years, starting next year. This will bring minimum wage to $10.25/hr by 2010. This is a decent start, but the minimum wage needs to be at least $10/hr now, and it needs to get there now, not in three years. After all, Dalton McGuinty and the other MPs didn't have to wait three years for their fat raises, so why should the lowest income people in this country have to wait for their (rather slim) raises? Also, this provincial budget was balanced, with an estimated surplus of $300 million next year.

Remember that number? That means that at the federal level, Flahrety has reduced the federal government's fiscal situation to the same as a province that has just introduced its first balanced budget in at least 4 years. That means that the slightest downturn in the economy, which will come (it's called the business cycle, folks), we are back to deficits. Good job Harpokons. I hope you're happy.

Cheers

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