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And, er, raised taxes markedly while racking up giant deficits that have doubled the provincial debt.

Like the Ontario Liberals, Trudeau’s federal team is coming in with real problems to solve. Canada’s economy tilted hard toward the oil industry when prices were high and is in a real mess now that prices have crashed. The Conservatives hollowed out a lot of programs that should have been ready to carry some of the load when the flashy oil money dried up — basic science and research, culture, export development — and the Liberals are putting that right.

Anyone who lives in a city knows that we’ve been coasting for decades on money we spent in the 1960s and ’70s. We built roads and dug tunnels and laid tracks that carried people and goods quickly and efficiently for a long time, and now they’re either falling apart or full or both. It really is time to do something.

But this isn’t just the pendulum swinging back the other way. The Liberals have shoved it so hard it’s spinning and given every indication they intend to give it another whack every time it comes around.

That’s what the Ontario government has done, in the belief that our problem is that we starved our economy of legitimate government activity for too long and we’ve really needed to catch up.

There’s not a ton of evidence that it’s worked: to the extent that a balanced provincial budget is in sight off in the distance again, it’s thanks to cheap oil, aggressive federal spending and an American economy that’s finally getting its own act together again. That hasn’t stopped the Ontario government from taking credit, obviously, but the connection is tenuous at best.

If there’s a balanced budget in the Trudeau government’s future, it’s way off beyond its planning horizon, which goes as far as 2021. By then, if nothing whatsoever goes amiss, we’ll have a government that takes in way more money, spends way more money, and still has a $14.3-billion deficit.

We’ll have solved some genuine national problems. And perhaps given ourselves some new ones that are much worse.

dreevely@postmedia.com

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