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On Tuesday Trudeau announced he would scrap the F-35 fighter jet program and start all over, despite the impact on billions of dollars of Canadian contracts. More than 20 years ago Jean Chretien made a similar pledge, declaring he would cancel the Mulroney government’s purchase of EH-101 Cormorant helicopters to replace Canada’s decrepit Sea Kings, which even then were an outdated embarrassment. Chretien used the same justification as Trudeau – the Cormorants were too expensive, and Canada’s military could get by with something cheaper. He did cancel the deal, at a cost of $478 million in penalties, and never did pick a replacement. His successor, Paul Martin, eventually signed a contract for CH-148 Cyclones more than a decade later, but the program was yet another comedy of delays and cost overruns. The first Cyclone wasn’t delivered until this year, at triple the original cost. Being young and “progressive” means never having to learn history, I guess.

The Liberals pledge proudly that they will return Canada to years of deficit spending. It was Trudeau’s father, Pierre, who started the initial run of Canadian deficits, balancing the budget only once in 15 tries. Justin Trudeau initially promised three years of deficits, adding up to $30 billion, but is already fudging the figure. “If the situation becomes radically worse, we would revise those numbers,” he said in Toronto Monday. In other words, if running up a deficit fails to improve the economy – which isn’t suffering that much anyway – he would follow up with more deficits. That is exactly the trap earlier governments fell into, compounding the problem with new debts piled on old debts, sapping government revenue as interest costs rise. As noted by economist Don Drummond – who was hired by Ontario for advice on dealing with its own debt spiral – it’s far easier to start a borrowing program than to end one. Drummond told Canadian Press that successive governments in the 1970s and 1980s failed to adjust spending levels until Canada reached a crisis point in the 1990s and had to slash program budgets and transfers to provinces.