CHP
Commentary

No Budget? . . . How Convenient!

May 27, 2025   |   Author: Rod Taylor   |   Volume 32    Issue 21  
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Rod TaylorThere is a tendency today to want to eliminate standards. Among many teachers and others in the education establishment, there has been a revolt against standardized testing and grades. The basic idea is that we oughtn’t to apply rigorous and artificial measurements to all students. These teachers feel that by imposing standards of achievement, we may discourage students who cannot achieve those goals. Of course, some of us wonder whether the concern is actually for the students or for the teachers who have not been able to bring the students up to acceptable standards in literacy, mathematics, etc.

In defence of teachers, they have a huge challenge in attempting to motivate and encourage their students to put in the work required, the hours of study, to achieve the same level of competence as young people of previous generations. There are many aspects to the decline in academic standards, aside from individual teaching methods: dysfunctional homes, electronic distractions, loss of moral standards, loss of respect for authority figures (including both parents and teachers), and a general collapse of discipline in all spheres of life. Teachers are bound by new standards of political correctness and are themselves graded . . . not by how well they perform but by how well they conform.

But this article is not about theories of education. It’s about the shocking revelation that our newly-elected Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Mark Carney, has launched his term of office with a declaration that his government will NOT be presenting a budget in 2025. It’s particularly shocking since he was showcased as a financial wizard who has served as Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. During the recent federal election, financial concerns were the driving force that led many Canadians to vote (vicariously, through party affiliation) for the man deemed to be most competent, qualified and experienced in the realm of economics. It could be assumed that a man so gifted in the area of finance, and one making so many promises regarding retaliatory tariffs, housing availability, lowered taxes, etc. would be capable of putting out a budget. Budgets are the basis upon which spending decisions are made. And budgets are the standard—the baseline—by which performance can be judged. And that’s the point: like standardized testing for students, a federal budget gives a measure of comparison by which the performance of a government can be assessed. When a government—like that of Justin Trudeau for the past nine years—fails to keep spending within limits prescribed by its budgets, voters and taxpayers can say, “Weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

If, on the other hand, there is no budget, how are the citizens to know whether the government is following any plan or keeping any promises? Of course, we can always go back to campaign promises. That doesn’t seem to bother politicians all that much. Former PM, Stephen Harper, promised (several times) to balance the budget. He failed (PDF). Former PM Justin Trudeau promised (in 2015) to run “a few small deficits” before balancing the budget. He failed. Big time. In nine years of consecutive deficits, he more than doubled the national debt.

Prime Minister, Mark Carney, plans to run even bigger deficits than his predecessor. But he plans to camouflage that crazy spending by separating expenses into “operating” and “capital” expenses. That way—he thinks—he can claim to balance the “operating budget” while running ongoing deficits in the “capital budget.” No amount of obfuscation, however, will actually balance the books. Spending more than revenues will still mean an increasing debt load, higher taxes and higher inflation. And besides, if a man can’t produce one budget, how can he produce two? In the old days, we believed that “two sets of books” was a sign of fraud and corruption. It still is.

When I worked in the lumber industry, I did a lot of daily measuring and comparing. We shared that data with machine operators, with lumber graders and with management. We had goals and targets for production, for quality, for value recovery, for uptime, for safety statistics, etc. We operated under the mantra, “What gets measured gets done.” And we were able to track improvements. These comparisons were both educational and motivational. Often, operators would compete to achieve better numbers. Sometimes, like athletes, they would even compete against their own records of past performance. They wanted to improve and to be “the best they can be.”

Our government needs a standard by which they can gauge their own success . . . and more importantly, by which we, the taxpayers, voters and citizens can gauge that success. For the economy, the baseline standard has to be a balanced budget. But if there’s no budget, there’s no way to measure the success or failure of any particular actions or policies.

The Christian Heritage Party has long had a policy of mandatory balanced budgets. We invite our new Prime Minister to table balanced budget legislation and to table a budget that meets that standard.

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