My Problem with Mr Flaherty

I know I'm about a week late on this issue but this is my blog so ha ha. The Canadian federal deficit has been raised to 50 billion dollars. That is an extra 16 billion dollars from the budget announced in January. 16 billion dollars. Wow that seems like a lot, and it is. It is roughly (I'm not sure so don't quote me) 3.4% of the national GDP. When you look at it that way then it doesn't look as bad. It's still really huge, but it's not as big as it could be. So after saying that, I still have a problem with this whole budget hoopla. It is how the Prime Minister and the Federal Budget Minister handled the situation. Going back a bit over a year from now, Economists were predicting hard economic times coming soon (nothing compared to what actually happened, but hard times none the less). The party in charge of this country did nothing to try and prevent it. Then when the economic downturn hit us hard in September and October, they denied the almost certain recession and decided to call an election. During the whole election they continued to deny an oncoming recession. It wasn't until after the election that they acknowledged it and even then they decided to do nothing. The December fiscal update had no plans for economic stimulus. Eventually, from the threat of the new Liberal Party leader (Michael Ignatieff) they created a budget (a red one at that) with a 34 billion dollar deficit. Finally some truth, right? Not just last week Jim Flaherty came out and said that the deficit would be closer to 50 billion. That is my problem. He lied and denied and lied and denied. If he had had this number in the January budget then I would not be nearly as upset as I am. But he did not. He lied and deserves to pay with his job.