The cost of the Afghan misadventurings, coupled with global meltdown, mean that Canadians will be running deficits until 2019, according to one prediction bandied about by the Winnipeg Sun (haven't read the story, just chowing down on the headline). That's a long time to be in relative recession.

James Travers
OTTAWA

Just last fall, fooling enough of the people, enough of the time was pretty easy. With an assist from political rivals, Stephen Harper kept economic reality at bay until after federal ballots were counted.

Now the Prime Minister is engaged in the much more difficult project of persuading history to repeat. He wants voters in the next election to believe the ballooning deficit, the one a recession-proof Canadian economy was so certain to evade, will fix itself.

Fantasy is the free lunch of politics. Eventually, this generation or another will have to pay the price of feasting at the groaning board of stimulus spending.

Worse still, that tab, tallied in more taxes, fewer programs or both, will land on the public table at a most inconvenient moment. About the time Ottawa forecasts its budget will be back into the black, the first swollen cohorts of baby boomers will flee the office for the golf course and medical clinic.

To play loosely with demographer David Foot's memorable metaphor, the pig is making its way through the python and will soon hit the federal fan. Pension and health-care demands will rise just when a government that spent wildly through good times and bad is promising to cut smaller cheques.

After doing his sums, the Prime Minister, who doubles as chief faux economist, forecasts only blue skies, even if they arrive later than first promised. Forget the damage to the manufacturing sector, threatened federal revenues and the staggering debt of its sustaining trading partner, Canada will surge from bust to boom and back to surplus with no structural deficit.

Much to Harper's annoyance, Parliament's independent budget officer Kevin Page, along with real McCoy economist Dale Orr, beg to differ. Infuriating the Prime Minister once again, Page's latest report predicts that come 2014, Ottawa's optimistic turnaround year, the federal government will still be $17 billion in the red. Supporting Page, Orr predicts it will take to 2019-20 to balance the books if Conservatives refuse, as Harper insists, to raise taxes or cut programs.

Even if that status quo scheme doesn't add up to economists, the bottom line is self-evident to politicians. Jump-starting the next campaign, Conservatives are already accusing rivals, most notably Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, of planning to raise taxes. That's only one of the options the Official Opposition is thinking about but it's the one Orr and others consider most likely if the next government, no matter which party forms it, concludes that five years is long enough to carry a deficit.

"If the current economic forecast prevails, Orr says, "raising taxes is the only realistic option to balance the budget by 2013-14."

Realism wasn't central to Conservative strategy in the last election; it's apparently not what they have in mind for the next. Hoping voters will suspend their disbelief a second time, the ruling party is again dangling the prospect of a pain-free future.

Splendid if true, the Conservative chiaroscuro rings false. Along with begging Canadians to forgive being misled last autumn, it asks a lot by murmuring "just trust us" to better manage the economy.

In effect, Harper and friends want to wipe clean the slate listing the compound errors that were pushing the federal government toward deficit even before the recession: successive GST cuts and profligate spending. They want enough voters to believe for just long enough that a prime minister and a party that got it wrong so often now have it right.



James Travers' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday