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Once upon a time the federal budget was about the budget of the federal government. It was an annual opportunity for Parliament and the public to examine the federal government’s program of expenses and revenues for the coming fiscal year.

As time went on, it became more and more about economic growth, and the ways in which government is supposed to influence it. To the language of accounting, then, was added the language of economics.

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All that is now in the past. With this installment the federal budget has reached the final stage of transformation. It is now about virtually everything else except spending or taxing or the economy. Economic analysis, in particular, is not only noticeably absent but in places explicitly abolished. What is more, it proposes to make this approach permanent.

Whether this represents progress may be doubted. The Canadian economy, notwithstanding a couple of strong quarters built off of last-year’s oil price rebound, faces some serious and pressing challenges. Business investment has fallen sharply over the last decade, and now limps along at among the lowest levels, in proportion to the economy, of any OECD country. Productivity growth, not coincidentally, has also been weak.