Federal Budget

Tomorrow our new federal government will present its first budget. Many  of us who are political junkies will spend a few hours glued to our television screens/computer monitors mesmerized by the excitement of it all. For those who have better things to do or more likely can think of few things more boring than listening to a never ending speech, full of meaningless numbers - let me tell you what will happen.

He (the finance minister) will thump down on his lectern a rather thick, newly printed tome. He might, on occasion, wave it around but it will really be too heavy to lift. He will present the highlights of the budget, interspersed with the aforementioned meaningless numbers that are, at best, guesses of what may happen; the minister will be frequently interrupted by members of his political party as they cheer and thump their desk tops on cue. The opposition, if it is feeling particularly feisty, may occasional mumble "shame, shame" - but probably not. They, in general, will sit there practicing their looks of boredom and/or disgust.

After the speech, the leaders of the various political parties will talk to reporters. They will all say that they are disappointed, that the government missed an opportunity, that it ignored a specific group, that it either spent too little money, too much money, raised the taxes too much or not enough. In other words the budget will be universally condemned as being the worst possible budget. The leaders of various groups ( First Nations, small business federation etc) will then be interviewed for their three minute interpretations and they too will express their disappointment. The highest praise any interviewee will give the new budget will be to say that they will have to wait and see.

Later on the evening news, the pundits who have spent the day in the " lock-up" (they get to see the budget before anyone else but can't talk about it until after the finance minister's speech) will, depending upon their political orientation, pontificate as to the errors, omissions and the occasional good point .However, the next day when we get up, the world will not have come to an end as suggested by the opposition nor will the world be a forever sunny place as promised by the  government.  For the vast majority of Canadians nothing will have changed.  Nothing will have changed because neither the present party in power or any of the opposition parties are prepared to risk the ire of the voting public or the big companies by proposing fundamental changes as to how we provide for or pay for those changes.

It should be obvious that we as a society cannot, on one hand reduce the cost of being a Canadian while at the same time expect that the quality and level of services will increase. We need to accept that if we think that such things as supporting First Nations communities, making sure that seniors can age in place and that all people have access to safe and affordable housing etc. etc. are part of our critical value system - that those things in part define who and what we are as a country - then we need to be ready to pay for it.