Laws requiring such things as balanced budgets and fixed election dates are not usually carved in stone. More often, they are written in disappearing ink.
Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver promised last week that the government will bring in legislation making budget deficits illegal.
Does this mean we can expect the next red-ink budget to bring police swooping down on the House of Commons to handcuff the offenders and lead them away in a parliamentary perp walk?
No, the Conservatives鈥� get-tough-on-crime approach is not likely to extend to fiscally deficient politicians. Rather, cabinet ministers and deputy ministers would see their pay docked five per cent if the government fails to balance its books. Operating spending would be frozen and the finance minister would be required to testify before the finance committee to present a plan and 鈥渃oncrete timelines鈥� to return to balanced budgets.
Harsh penalties, indeed, right up there with being pelted with powder puffs. But it鈥檚 not likely to go that far. A good con plan 鈥� and that鈥檚 what this is 鈥� always includes plenty of escape routes.
鈥淭he only acceptable deficit would be one that responds to a recession or to an 鈥榚xtraordinary鈥� circumstance 鈥� that is war or a natural disaster with a cost exceeding $3 billion in one year,鈥� said Oliver. 鈥淭he proposed bill would acknowledge the potential need for deficits to counter economic decline.鈥�
In other words, the government will interpret conditions to suit its purposes.
A balanced-budget law would perhaps have a little more meaning if it was proposed by a government that was walked the talk, but in this case, it鈥檚 like promising to ban smoking while puffing on a cigarette.
The Conservatives are always pounding the fiscal-responsibility drum, and both Oliver and Prime Minister Stephen Harper are fond of summoning the Ghost of Reckless Spending Past, invoking the sins of previous governments.Yet those previous governments had been running surpluses for years. After they were first elected in 2006, the Conservatives slashed the GST by two percentage point, largely wiping out the surplus they had inherited from the Liberals. They then added another $150 billion to the debt in a frenzy of 鈥渟timulus鈥� spending to ward off the effects of the 2008-09 recession, even after the recovery was underway.
A balanced budget is desirable, but sometimes, as the Conservatives learned, conditions call for a deficit. And governments can do little to control those conditions; they can only react to them. It will do little good to put a straitjacket on future governments, whatever parties form them, because conditions of the day will dictate policies, not a law that can be repealed, amended or ignored at the whim of the government.
Balanced-budget laws don鈥檛 have much of a shelf life. sa国际传媒 introduced sa国际传媒鈥檚 first balanced-budget law in 1991, when the former Social Credit government passed its Taxpayer Protection Act. The New Democrats repealed that law shortly thereafter and ran a series of deficits, but in 2000, just before their electoral defeat, passed the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act.
The Liberals under Gordon Campbell then introduced their own Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act, which they subsequently amended when they deemed it necessary to run deficits. Balanced-budget laws in other jurisdictions have met similar fates.
In 2006, Harper promised transparency in government, and in one sense, he has kept that promise. The balanced-budget law is as transparent as they come 鈥� most Canadians will be able to see right through it and know it for what it is: an election gimmick that has little meaning.
