A campaign launched this week by The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the Trudeau government to honour a 2015 election promise to balance the federal budget.
CTF Federal Director Aaron Wudrick says the 2015 Liberal platform promised three deficits totaling $26-billion followed by a $1-billion dollar surplus for 2019-2020.
Wudrick cautions the Liberals have so far run a combined deficit of roughly $56-billion.
“They were going to run three of what they called ‘modest deficits’ and then they were going to balance. It’s safe to say they’ve come in nowhere near that,” said Wudrick. “That’s not a rounding error or chump change, it’s a significant amount of money we have to eventually pay back.”
Wudrick adds the Trudeau government is currently projected to run another $20-billion deficit for the next fiscal year, saying it will be tough to balance the books under that estimate, especially during an election year.
The challenge, Wudrick maintains is not that the federal government didn’t have enough revenue, but that they had chosen to spend more than originally projected.
“It’s always challenging for politicians in an election year to reign spending in, but to be responsible and think of the long term interests of the country — some people are willing to accept deficit spending when times are bad, times are good right now, the economy is doing very well, I think the obvious question is — if you can’t balance the budget now when times are good, when are you ever going to be able to balance it?”
