A lot of window dressing for a crowd always in a pickle

By Ivan Morgan
December 1, 2023 Edition

I know, I know . . . Not another budget column. I’m sorry but it’s your money and you deserve to understand what’s going on.

One of the many silly things government does is pre-budget consultations. This is government at it’s most passive-aggressive. These consultations are designed as part safety valve – allowing people to feel they have had a say, and part teaching folks how government’s budgeting hands are tied. 

In truth the whole exercise has little to nothing to do with the setting the budget.

I got a government email asking me to participate online in this year’s consultations. After a long and involved process of registering on the website, and having read a warning that lets me know I can’t be abusive or disrespectful etc. etc., I clicked to a “Budget 2024 Planner” which bills itself as interactive, because I get to decide what slice of the budget pie I can allocate funds for: health care, education, transportation and the like. The point of this is to show folks that budgeting is hard. This is the passive aggressive part. Allocate too much for education? Well, you’ll have to cut something else.

They also warn you can’t exceed $8.3 billion. That’s where government and your silly interactive exercise differ. They can borrow. The only fixed budget item you can’t adjust is the $722,874,800 (8 per cent of the budget) in debt payments we owe this year. You can make cuts to the transportation budget so people risk their lives on unplowed roads, or cuts to health care so folks have to wait hours in emergency in pain, or cuts to social services and housing so hungry people freeze outside in the dark because of a lack of government support, but don’t even THINK about not paying the banks. Those payments are carved in stone.

The second part of the consultation asks you to rate funding priorities and submit even more personal information. #whatever.

From time-to-time people tell me I am too cynical. Nothing, as a former premier was fond of saying, could be further from the truth. I am a born optimist, but I have eyes. It’s the budget consultation process that’s cynical. Its nonsense. Busywork for government staff.

In my time I covered and participated in a lot of budget consultations. I remember then Finance Minister Tom Marshall’s travelling consultations with a ticking debt clock on a big screen at the front of the room, showing the participants how the debt was growing thousands of dollars a minute while they met (and that was in 2008!) To his credit, he tried.

I was at another budget consultation where the only official besides the minister was his nervous director of communications. That spoke volumes. I was at a consultation where officials passed around “clickers” – little handheld interactive devices we were told to use to answer government’s questions. In reality they did little more that piss off participants. I was at pre-budget consultation where folks went aboard the minister. She actually hosted the public event. Angry people yelling at the minster made for good TV and bad publicity for the Liberals (although I was told privately by some other cabinet ministers that they loved watching their unpopular colleague get roasted).

No surprise that consultations are now relegated to online gimmicks. Respectful clicking and typing please. God forbid you face the people who pay the taxes in person. 

In truth government has very little wiggle room when it comes to the budget. A lot of the costs are fixed, and a lot are growing. Unless the price of oil skyrockets, there isn’t enough money to go around. (Which is why you didn’t get a $500 payout this year). In the end government always decides to kick the can down the road and borrow to cover operating expenses rather than make the actual tough decisions which someone, some day, are going to have to make. That’s why we owe so much.

These consultation exercises are designed to create a talking point, so government can say they asked people. If you feel like participating, fill your boots.

I am no cynic – the system is broken and there is little appetite to fix it. As an optimist I can tell you I believe some day it will be fixed. This place has been in worse pickles, and we got through.  Until then government hopes you will just stay quiet and respectful and keep paying for all this silliness.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com