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I’m unsure the just-finished budget season did much to clarify where Canada is headed. That’s a missed opportunity because the economy already is slowing after a year of out-sized growth. The lack of focus suggests he country’s finance ministers should get together more often to think about where they want to go and the policies that will be required to get there.

There are four broad themes that policymakers and the men and women who influence them need to take seriously: climate change, competitiveness, debt, and inequality.

Let’s set climate change aside for another time; existential threats warrant columns of their own. Of the other three, competitiveness and debt probably are the most urgent, if only because bold decisions made in another era left Canada with a social safety net that so far has prevented a critical mass of citizens from being left behind. Feeble businesses and excessive debt are present dangers, and therefore warrant immediate attention. And yet Canada’s finance ministers over the past couple of months mostly emphasized the social issues associated with inequality alone.

It’s wise to think about heading off the sort of social upheaval that grips Donald Trump’s America, but it’s a puzzle to me how the federal government, Ontario and Quebec could present financial plans that would do little, if anything, to offset what Trump is doing to business sentiment.