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The Liberals vowed to do better: their platform promised to “raise the bar on fiscal transparency.” So far, this is one Liberal promise that has yet to be kept; if anything, public finances are even more opaque than they were before they took power.

Their first effort — the economic and fiscal update released on Nov. 20 — was hardly an auspicious start. This update was, of course, yet another performance of “The Cupboard Is Bare,” an old, but timeless piece of theatre favoured by newly elected governments around the world. The Liberals followed the usual script, telling Canadians that the economic outlook and the state of public finances were more fragile than expected. This exercise is usually harmless: economic forecasts are notoriously imprecise, so replacing one set of projections with a less-optimistic scenario doesn’t change much.

A $6 billion deterioration in the February-March budget balance between 2015 and 2016 would be a remarkable development: the Canadian economy is in a stronger position than it was during the first quarter of 2015

What was curious in November was the Liberals’ insistence that the federal government would run a deficit in the fiscal year 2015-16 (ended March 31). What’s even more curious is their stubbornness in sticking to this projection, even as the monthly data published by the Department of Finance show that revenues continue to run ahead of what Conservative finance minister Joe Oliver projected in his last budget. Over the first 10 months of the year — that is, to January 2016 — the federal government ran a surplus of $4.3 billion. To bring that balance into deficit, it would have to turn the $1.6-billion surplus it ran in February and March 2015 into a $4.3-billion deficit during the same period in 2016.