http:\/\/www.torontosun.com\/news\/columnists\/greg_weston\/2010\/01\/22\/12577276.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWeston writes Canadians are in for some rough times ahead:\u00a0 <\/span>Canada\u2019s history is littered with valiant attempts to curb government spending, an exercise once aptly described as \u201cdigging in quicksand.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe reminds us of the struggle through the past 35 years: <\/span><\/p>\n\n- \n
Pierre Trudeau and John Turner fathered our national debt and the practice of deficit spending. In 1976, we saw the deficit increase from $2 billion to $6 billion <\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
The auditor general of the day warned Canadians that Pierre Trudeau\u2019s government was losing control of the public purse. By the time the Liberals left office in 1984, the $6-billion deficit was $34 billion.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Brian Mulroney did nothing to curb the year-over-year deficits and, when he left office nine years later, the deficit was over $39 billion.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Jean Chretien and Paul Martin successfully turned a $36-billion deficit into a $3-billion surplus. But as Weston tells us: \u201cthe big myth of the day was it all happened from ruthless cost cutting. A big part of the deficit was eliminated from raising taxes, raiding the Employment Insurance fund, and reducing federal payments to the provinces for health care and education.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
In 2006, the Harper government won power from the Liberals and inherited a healthy $13-billion annual surplus. Three years later, the Conservatives posted a $5.6-billion deficit. This was, in part, because spending on government programs increased by $32 billion, or 18%.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAnd so, this brings us up to our current government\u2019s new budget to be introduced in March\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 We commend Greg Weston for his history lesson on our country\u2019s deficit budgets. His column from yesterday is a must read: Shrinking government won\u2019t trim deficit \/ Doing unpopular things like hiking GST will.\u00a0 Here it is: \u00a0 http:\/\/www.torontosun.com\/news\/columnists\/greg_weston\/2010\/01\/22\/12577276.html \u00a0 Weston writes Canadians are in for some rough times ahead:\u00a0 Canada\u2019s history is littered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[52,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}