With America watching, Liberals deliver timid plan

It is, for better or worse, a document Donald Trump can live with. For make no mistake, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has penned the 2017 federal budget as if America were breathing over its shoulder.

There are, for instance, very few huge-ticket spending items (those who do win big, such as the Canada Revenue Agency, are entities whose job is to find missing money). Where new programs are created, or old ones boosted, re-allocation is mostly the name of the game.

And there are lots of shout-outs to the Americans in budget 2017. For instance, in a section on defence spending, the budget stresses Canada’s NATO loyalties, support of the Baltics and Ukraine, and long-term plans for capital investment. In a section on asylum claimants, the budget discusses ferreting out “fraudulent” asylum seekers, which sounds more American than Canadian.

Even in introducing gender analysis to budgeting — a lovely, Canadian thing to do — there’s a nod by the finance minister to the CanadaUnited States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders, which, you may recall, was officially launched in Washington recently by Trudeau, Trump and first daughter Ivanka.

And of course, there’s the over-arching theme of budget 2017: innovation. Ignore for a moment the cringeworthy cliché “Innovation is, simply put, the understanding that better is always possible” (yes, they actually wrote that). The notion of an innovation economy is meant to market Canada as a slick, forward-looking economy, just the sort any trading partner would want to dance with.

Yet while the word “innovation” is peppered throughout the budget, there is little new spending attached to it; the economic plan is more aspirational than concrete (this, too, would please the Trumpites, who, presumably, are not impressed by nations that spend like drunken sailors). The deficit will remain high — $28.5 billion projected, including a $3-billion contingency fund — but the debt-to-GDP ratio remains acceptable, nothing to set off international alarm bells.

Even in those plans clearly not aimed at Americans, there is little to offend; the budget is a tinkerer’s dream, not a revolutionary’s.

For instance, it attempts to clean up a bunch of boutique tax credits that bean counters deem ineffectual. It attempts to streamline tax relief available to caregivers of the disabled or elderly. It provides some seed money, and ideas, for helping retrain people of all ages and provide better access to sciences for young men and women, and for indigenous Canadians.

There are slightly loopy promises, such as the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, and hip talk of technology “super clusters.” But with so little fresh cash involved, it’s hard to be either worried or excited by them. The promised public-private Infrastructure Bank will be running soon, though which public transit projects (stage 2 of the LRT, anyone?) it will fund are only hinted at.

How will a government that knows it can’t commit to really big spending until the fog clears south of the border save pennies in the meantime? This year, it will start a “comprehensive review” of three federal departments in order to eliminate inefficiencies. Which ones? We’ll know later.

Distinctly un-Trumpian, the federal government seems wedded to childcare funding: The budget commits to investing an addition $7 billion over 10 years for more affordable childcare across the country. Good, but it won’t happen quickly.’

It’s a timid, tentative budget. Probably wise — just in case someone from the White House reads it. — Christina Spencer, for the Citizen’s editorial board.