{"id":19632,"date":"2013-03-28T13:48:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T18:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19632"},"modified":"2013-03-28T13:48:25","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T18:48:25","slug":"paul-wells-they-didnt-call-it-a-budget-because-it-isnt-a-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/03\/28\/paul-wells-they-didnt-call-it-a-budget-because-it-isnt-a-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Wells: They didn’t call it a budget because it isn’t<\/em> a budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

For example, a budget would actually provide you with comprehensible statements of anticipated revenues and spending for all the big ticket items<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I work in Ottawa and I try to stay on top of things, but this was news to me. In fact, I didn\u2019t even notice it until four days after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released his \u2014 er \u2014 plan on March 21. Of course, there was much chortling in the press gallery at the government\u2019s insistence on calling its annual account of revenues and expenses something besides a budget. But the significance of the thing took a while to sink in. Flaherty and his boss, Stephen Harper, do not call their big annual document a \u201cbudget\u201d anymore because it is no longer a budget.<\/p>\n

A budget, as anyone who has tried to run a household knows, is the moment when you stop telling yourself soothing tales and inject a note of reality into your life. On page 64 of the 1997 budget, for instance, the government of the day gave us an \u201coutlook for program spending\u201d with multi-year projections for spending levels in defence, Aboriginal programs, \u201cbusiness subsidies\u201d and so on. It was that straightforward.<\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s Economic Action Plans, by contrast, are carnivals of fantasy. EAP13 \u2014 we will use the government-approved hashtag, which I assume is pronounced to sound like a shriek of terror \u2014 is 200 pages longer than Budget 1997 but finds no room for a one-page program-spending outlook, nor indeed for a program-spending outlook of any length. Like the best funhouses, this one depends on its volume for much of its amusement value. The decision to merge CIDA into the Foreign Affairs Department is announced on the 31st page of a chapter on \u201csupporting families and communities,\u201d and I can only assume it is there as a reward for perseverance. The morning after Flaherty\u2019s speech, a diplomat asked me how it is possible for a G7 country to release a budget that does not at any point say how much the government will spend on defence next year. I gave the fellow a long answer. I should have said his premise was wrong, because \u2014 stop me if you\u2019ve heard this \u2014 it\u2019s not a budget.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For example, a budget would actually provide you with comprehensible statements of anticipated revenues and spending for all the big ticket items: I work in Ottawa and I try to stay on top of things, but this was news to me. In fact, I didn\u2019t even notice it until four days after Finance Minister Jim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,84,28],"tags":[697,86,213,258,101],"class_list":["post-19632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","category-media","tag-budget","tag-criticism","tag-newspapers","tag-stephenharper","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-56E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19634,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19632\/revisions\/19634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}