Trudeau, ministers begin cross country tour to sell budget plan

OTTAWA – Justin Trudeau is leading a full court press to sell his government’s maiden budget.

The prime minister will kick off the promotional blitz this morning with a series of interviews on radio and television.

His cabinet ministers, meanwhile, will be fanning out across the country to highlight various aspects of the big-spending budget which will plunge the country deep into red ink as the government pours billions into infrastructure, a new child care benefit and improving the lot of Indigenous Peoples, among other things.

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Finance Minister Bill Morneau will be giving a breakfast speech and fielding media questions in Ottawa while Treasury Board president Scott Brison will be at Dalhousie University in Halifax to tout the various ways the budget is designed to help middle-class Canadians.

Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains will be will be doing the same in a speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade while Immigration Minister John McCallum, a former Royal Bank economist, will address the Markham Board of Trade.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau, meanwhile, is making himself available to talk to the media in Montreal.

And that’s just the start. On Thursday, Small Business Minister Bardish Chagger will be touting the budget in London and Kitchener, Ont., Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr will be doing the same in Winnipeg and Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi will be in Vancouver.

But if initial reaction is any gauge, the budget may not need a hard sell.

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With billions in spending on everything from Indigenous Peoples to post-secondary education, middle and modest income families, municipal infrastructure, the recently unemployed, veterans and seniors, the budget appeared to satisfy many constituencies.

Dozens of stakeholder groups gathered on Parliament Hill to provide budget reaction offered an unusual consensus in lauding the Liberal efforts.

And the sharpest critics left the big-spending budget comfortably parked in the “Goldilocks” zone between too hot and too cold.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation offered a withering review of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s string of deficits and the absence of any timetable for a return to balance.

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“If this government held a contest to pick a title for this budget, the winner would probably be ‘Spendy McDebtface,”‘ said the tax lobby group’s director Aaron Wudrick.

The budget projects $113.2 billion in red ink over the next five years, including a $29.4-billion deficit in 2016-17, $29 billion the following year and almost $23 billion in 2018-19.

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But the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives took Morneau to task for spending too little, noting next year’s deficit amounts to just 1.5 per cent of GDP, smaller than any federal deficit run between 1974 and 1996.

“The Liberals are spending in the right places, but the amounts aren’t up to the task,” said the think-tank’s senior economist, David Macdonald. “The deficit is too small to really tackle Canada’s biggest economic challenges: unemployment and slow growth.”

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce reacted with cautious optimism under the headline: A Budget Spread Too Thin.

“With the right choices, Ottawa can help grow business and make Canada more competitive,” chamber president Perrin Beatty said in the release.

“With the wrong choices, these are deficits that could easily spiral and hobble our economic competitiveness. The business community is ready to work with the government to make sure that, collectively, we take the right path.”