Deficit Jim blames BC and ON

Lost in all the finger pointing by Harper, Canon and crew about how the world listens more to Ignatieff, than I guess, Harper, Canon and crew.

Deficit Jim set a new record yesterday, producing the country's largest deficit ever. Originally projected to come in at $53.8 billion, the new record for fiscal year ending March 31, 2010 is $55.6 billion.

And guess who's fault it was: The liberal provincial governments of BC and Ontario.

From the CBC:

That figure is almost $2 billion higher than the $53.8-billion deficit projected in the federal budget last March, and was largely prompted by a one-time transfer of $5.6 billion to Ontario and British Columbia to help them make the transition to the harmonized sales tax.

Of course the only reason that both provinces agreed to switch to a single, value added tax scheme this July, was because the federal offered them $5.3 billion to do so, and one would assume that our finance minister would have planned for that expenditure, since the switch didn't take place until the next fiscal year.

But hey, don’t worry Canada, Jim is promising to produce a surplus by March 2016 at which time I’ll be 67 years old.

I wonder if we will still have the old age pension and universal health care by then.

h/t Bowies Blog