Harper’s crude attempt to pre-empt public debate on the budget

Since when do governments in office run radio ads that implore members of the public to call their MPs to support an upcoming budget? A budget whose content has yet to even be released? Harper must think that Canadians at large are as impulsive and pre-judgmental as Jack Layton, who apparently can divine a bad budget before he even lays eyes on it.

Meanwhile there is no coincidence to that fact that Harper has paid radio ads running at the very same time that he engages in the unprecedented release of certain selected details of the budget, namely the disclosure yesterday by a senior government official that Harper will be running a $64 billion deficit over the next two years.

Was this information released to the public because “focus groups” found that Canadians were unwilling to heed Harper’s advice to call their MPs to support the budget without any insight whatsoever into what the budget might contain? Or was the headline number of $64 billion released selectively to the public, in the hopes that Canadians would assume that $64 billion of deficit somehow translates into $64 billion of stimulus? And thereby hoping Canadians would tune out from the budget debate, upon assuming such a favourable outcome was in the works?

Once again Harper is parsimonious with the facts and selective in his disclosure. What Canadians need to know, amongst of host of other things, is how much of that $64 billion in projected deficit is stimulus and how much is the “do nothing” deficit that arises from the extension of Harper’s fiscal mismanagement of the past?