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It is entirely possible that in all this blizzard of new spending — now at its highest level, after inflation and population growth, in our history — the odd dollar or billion might have gone astray. But it is spending, rather than the deficit, that is the issue; while the level of spending, likewise, is distressing, it is more because it is composed of so much misspending than because of the overall burden it represents.

This is an unwelcome message for Conservatives, who have grown too used to letting the deficit do their dirty work for them. It was so much easier, after all, to say of a popular but needless program that “we can’t afford it,” rather than criticize it on its merits, as a silly waste of money. It was easy, that is, so long as deficits were truly monstrous — when they were six per cent of GDP, rather than 0.6 per cent — and the public duly frightened. But now that neither seems to apply, they will need to find a new message.

Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

That doesn’t mean deficits are irrelevant. We do not go to hell if we fail to balance the budget in a given year, but the requirement does impose a needed discipline on spending — on the quality, as much as the quantity. If you have to choose between A and B you’re likely to subject both to far more scrutiny than if you’re told you can have both A and B.

And while the deficit and debt do not look like serious threats now — the debt-to-GDP ratio is to fall to 30.5 per cent this year, its lowest level since before the crisis and the third-lowest it has been since 1982 — that does not mean they could not become so in future. We are still running deficits even after a year in which the economy grew 5.5 per cent in nominal terms — and nearly 10 years after the last recession.