Article content

With the budget just four weeks away, it is unclear why the finance minister felt compelled to scoop himself with Monday’s economic statement. That is to say, it is perfectly clear.

Given the pounding he has been taking in the Commons in recent days, Bill Morneau could hardly have been looking forward to weeks more of the same treatment: the opposition demanding to know daily whether the deficit would be more than $30 billion, less than $30 billion, knowing he could not answer but every day drilling the same message deeper into the public’s cranium: the Liberals promised a deficit of $10 billion, but delivered a deficit three times as large. By the time it got to budget day, whatever explanation or nuance the minister might have liked to attach to that figure would have been lost.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Andrew Coyne: Liberals launch the 'not-our-fault' defence as deficit forecast balloons to $18.4 billion Back to video

So the decision was taken — in some haste, it appears — to break the news in two stages. Monday’s statement, with its revised projections for economic growth, revenues, spending and the deficit, was the “it’s-not-our-fault” stage. With the economy growing much slower than expected even as late as last November’s economic update, revenues are off sharply, meaning the deficit for the coming fiscal year is now projected to be much larger than anyone had hitherto foreseen: not the $3.9 billion forecast in November, still less the small surplus projected in last April’s budget, but $18.4 billion.