Every deficit estimate has been missed

Re Tories choose deficit-cutting over spending, March 22 Once again Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would ask us to believe that he actually knows what he’s doing, that the deficit still will be defeated by 2015, that everything good in the economy is a direct result of the Economic Action Plan and that anything bad must have something to do with the Liberals, the U.S. or Europe. The reality is that Flaherty has never penned a budget or deficit target he could actually hit. Let’s first recall that $13.8 billion was the size of the surplus the Conservatives inherited from the Paul Martin Liberals. Then, during the first eight months of the 2008 recession, Flaherty and the Harper Conservatives repeatedly denied Canada was in a recession, insisting there was no recession or deficit and that the budget would balance. Realizing toward the end of the year that there was, indeed, a recession, Flaherty tried unsuccessfully over the next several months to accurately estimate the coming deficit, arriving finally after nearly a year of inaccurate guesses at a figure of $56 billion. Every Flaherty deficit estimate since has also been missed. The reality is that without the Harper Conservative’s 2-point GST reductions and the slashing of corporate tax rates from 21per cent before January 2008 to 15 per cent as of January 2012, Canada would at this point be already back into a surplus.

Edward Carson,

Toronto