What has this to do with budgets?

Once upon a time the federal budget was about the budget of the federal government. It was an annual opportunity for Parliament and the public to examine the federal government’s program of expenses and revenues for the coming fiscal year.

As time went on, it became more and more about economic growth, and the ways in which government is supposed to influence it. To the language of accounting, then, was added the language of economics.

All that is now in the past. With this installment the federal budget has reached the final stage of transformation. It is now about virtually everything else except spending or taxing or the economy. Economic analysis, in particular, is not only noticeably absent but in places explicitly abolished. What is more, it proposes to make this approach permanent.

Whether this represents progress may be doubted. The Canadian economy, notwithstanding a couple of strong quarters built off of last-year’s oil price rebound, faces some serious and pressing challenges. Business investment has fallen sharply over the last decade, and now limps along at among the lowest levels, in proportion to the economy, of any OECD country. Productivity growth, not coincidentally, has also been weak.

And things are about to get worse. Until lately the Canadian economy has had the benefit of three things: high prices for the commodities we sell abroad, rapid growth in the labour force, and a substantial tax advantage over the U. S. All three are now gone: the first due to changes in the world economy; the second, to the aging of the population; the third, to the recent U.S. tax reform.

You would think, then, that any government presenting a budget at this moment would be seized with the need to respond to these developments. Notably, it would be looking for ways to spur productivity, forcing industry to compete more vigorously while reducing barriers to investment. It would aim to restore Canada’s tax- competitiveness with a reform plan of its own. And, to boost confidence, it would outline some path to balancing the budget.

You would think that, if you thought budgets were still about budgeting or the economy — or growth. But while “growth” is mentioned in the budget title — Equality + Growth — its second billing is telling. This is a budget that is much more about equality than it is growth. That, and pandering to every conceivable Liberal client group and policy cult: environmentalists, seasonal EI recipients, multic ulturalism, official language groups, regional development, all the way to the media ( it’s only $ 50 million over five years this time, but that’s just an appetizer: the main course is still to come). And, of course, feminists.

Budgets used to be written by the Finance department. This one appears to have been written out of Status of Women Canada ( the budget proposes to make it a full department, but on the evidence it would appear to have taken over the entire government) or perhaps a campus gender studies course: this is surely the world’s first “intersectional” budget.

To be fair, encouraging more women to enter and stay in the labour force, as a number of measures in the budget propose to do, is not only about equality but growth: it is one way in which to offset the increasing numbers of retirees leaving the workforce. The same cannot be said for institutionalizing — for all future governments, this budget claims — the mix of ideological cant and bureaucratic busywork known as “gender-based analysis,” still less the fantastic anti-economics of “equal pay for work of equal value.”

There will be further opportunities to address this: the legislation is to be introduced this fall. For now it is worth noting that this is not about “equal pay for equal work” — that is, for the same jobs. This is about equalizing pay for different jobs — wholly different occupational categories, in fact — where one is thought to be “undervalued.” Or rather, where it is both “undervalued” and female- dominated, relative to a (presumably “overvalued”) male-dominated category.

Whether their work is in fact “undervalued” in some philosophical sense is an interesting question. Alas, it is how it is, in fact, valued by the people who might be willing to pay them. Theory and evidence both suggest the primary determinant of wages is supply and demand, not the pseudo- objective calculations of “skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.” That won’t change just because the government fiddles about with pay scales.

The budget claims that the effect of raising the price of “undervalued” work will be to raise the demand for them ( or in Libspeak, “will set the standard for how women’s work is valued in the workplace.”) The more likely effect, so far as it is ac- tually enforced, will be to reduce hiring. This is, after all, not the public sector we are talking about, from which supply and demand have already more or less been banished, but the federally regulated private sector.

Beyond that, there really isn’t a great deal to this budget. The overall approach might be described as social justice on the cheap — if by cheap you mean “all- time record levels of spending.” But, perhaps implausibly, the government proposes not to increase it further in future years, flatlining expenses in real per capita terms and reducing them in proportion to GDP. So by that standard they’re skinflints.

At the very least this is at odds with the budget rhetoric about Canadians having “rejected austerity” at the last election. ( Fun fact? Spending over the Harper government’s last five years: 13.7 per cent of GDP. Projected spending over the next five years: 13.8 per cent of GDP.) Perhaps by “rejecting austerity” the government simply means “never balancing the budget,” as the budget would lead us to believe is the plan. But even that doesn’t prevent the debt- to- GDP ratio from falling. Assuming no great increase in interest rates. Assuming no recession. Ten years into a recovery.

But there I go again, talking budgets, at budget time.

THE OVERALL APPROACH MIGHT BE DESCRIBED AS SOCIAL JUSTICE ON THE CHEAP.