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Last weekend, the Vancouver Sun published a fairly glowing profile of Finance Minister Mike de Jong. It was promoted on the front page with these words: "Right man, right job, right time."

The article focused a great deal of attention on de Jong's frugality and how unfazed he is by criticism. He's transferred this desire to save money in his private life to the public sphere, bringing forward a budget with an $879-million surplus.

The article reinforced my perception that de Jong and his boss, Premier Christy Clark, sometimes don't fully appreciate the differences between running a household and overseeing a $45.8-billion provincial budget, which can have an enormous impact on the consumption of goods and services.

Statistics Canada reported this week that the country's gross domestic product declined by 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2015. Final domestic demand (private consumption plus government consumption plus gross fixed investment) fell by 0.4 percent.

"Household final consumption expenditure grew 0.1% in the quarter," the agency stated. "Nonetheless, this was the slowest growth in household spending since the second quarter of 2012."

From the Statistics Canada data, it's clear that a lack of demand for goods and services is hampering the economy.

Economist Jim Stafford reacted to the news by tweeting: "Govt spending cuts (govt current spending fell 0.2% in 1Q) now adding to the macro malaise. #Austerity is a self-inflicted, needless injury."

Paul Krugman defined depression economics

Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman wrote a book about this issue in 2009 called The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.

He defined depression economics in this way: "Essentially it means that for the first time in two generations, failures on the demand side of the economy—insufficient private spending to make use of the available productive capacity—have become the clear and present limitation on prosperity for a large part of the world."

Here in B.C., there are opportunities for the provincial government to use its financial clout and its surplus to stimulate the economy just as it appears on the verge of going into recession. But that's not the de Jong way.

Krugman acknowledged in his book that the "usual objection" to using public spending as a stimulus is the delay it takes. That's because by the time the money is allocated, the slowdown has ended.

"That doesn't seem to be a major worry now, however: it's very hard to see any quick economic recovery, unless some unexpected new bubble arises to replace the housing bubble," Krugman noted.

Clark could have acted much earlier

There was an opportunity after the 2013 election for the Clark government to finance rapid transit in Surrey as a stimulus to lay a foundation for future economic growth. Instead, the premier decided to hold a nonbinding transportation and transit plebiscite, delaying this necessary infrastructure by a couple of years or more.

If there's another quarter of negative economic growth, Canada will officially have fallen into a recession. Yet our provincial government continues practising depression economics, in part because the premier appointed a finance minister with a fetish for saving money.

If the economy continues sinking, Clark risks becoming B.C.'s version of former Conservative prime minister R.B. Bennett, whose tight-fisted fiscal policies drove Canada deeper into depression during the Dirty '30s.