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All right, all right, we’ve all had our bit of fun. I admit it was good sport to ridicule the Conservative government, the government that has run seven straight deficits, for bringing in legislation that would make it harder for governments to run deficits.

It was too easy to point out that the same government that now proposes to bind itself to balance the budget every year also passed legislation requiring elections to be held on a fixed schedule, only to throw it over at the first opportunity. Fish in a barrel would make a more elusive target.

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But we already knew the Harper Conservatives were shameless hypocrites. What about the legislation itself? No doubt it is intended to appeal to the base in an election year, to reassure them of the government’s fiscal conservative bona fides, as every armchair strategist noted. But how does it stand up on its merits?

Not well, in the all-but-unanimous view of the commentariat. “Balanced-budget legislation is a singularly futile undertaking,” despaired the Globe and Mail, in its singularly overwrought style. “It’s either a symbolic and empty gesture, or a binding commitment that should never be made.”