The federal Liberals presented their 2017 budget on Wednesday which projects a deficit of $25.8 billion in the next fiscal year. Banff - Airdrie Conservative MP Blake Richards thinks the government is mishandling Canadian's money.  

"We handed them a balanced budget when they took office less than two years ago and they've turned that into two years in a row of deficits in the neighbourhood of $25 - $30 billion. If you look at their projections over the next several years, we continue to see those kinds of deficits. There's absolutely no excuse for that sort of reckless spending."

Richards says when you add up those deficits, it means hundreds of billions of new dollars in debt. "That's just unbelievable. Hundreds of billions of dollars, not millions, but billions of dollars. That means in addition to the tax increases we're seeing for Canadians right now, future generations are going to be hit by huge tax increases by this government as well. That is completely unacceptable."

This year's budget was light on spending and long on vision. Much of the money promised doesn't actually kick in until the next fiscal year. Richards says it gets worse. "Many of the things they're announcing talk about money being spent over eleven years.  In my understanding this government was given a four year mandate so they're making promises on something that's two, three elections from now. They're just trying to convince people that they're doing something when in fact they're doing nothing."

The budget also called for spending of $7 billion over the next ten years for affordable child care, including creating 40,000 subsidized day care spots by 2019. Richards thinks day care is good, but he'd prefer to see parents have a choice of what to do with the money. "I tend to be one who believes it's important to give families a choice. Child care spaces can be helpful, but there are other families who would make other choices. I prefer to believe you get the dollars into the hands of parents and let them make those choices."

Richards doesn't think the budget has many benefits to the local area. "Infrastructure is a good example. Where you start to look at the details, everything is geared to the big cities, everything is geared to the future. You say 'gee, I don't see a lot of opportunity for our municipalities to benefit from this.'"

Richards had one final thought on the budget. "It's kind of all talk and no action with this Liberal government."  

 

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