Is the federal government still running a deficit? It depends

Opponents are technically right in accusing the Liberals of failing to live up to their 2015 fiscal platform promises. But the Liberals can truthfully say that they kept those promises.

Pointing to Public Accounts data, the Conservative Party and business journalists agree that the Liberals broke their promise to run deficits of no more than $10-billion and to return quickly to a surplus. But Statistics Canada’s National Accounts data leads to a very different conclusion.Photograph courtesy of Pixabay

Opinion

BY MICHAEL HATFIELD

October 16, 2019

OTTAWA—During the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals announced that, if elected, they would temporarily run a deficit of approximately $10-billion to stimulate the economy and reduce poverty. However, they expected to return the federal budget to a surplus position in the 2017-18 fiscal year. P...

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