Article content continued

The 74-year-old finance minister will present his first (and maybe last) budget on April 21, which might just knock the Mike Duffy trial off the front pages for a day or two.

He hasn’t got much money to play with, since the Tories have already made their biggest promise — the “family tax cut” — to be promoted with all the subtlety of a stereo shop going-out-of-business sale, thanks to a $7.5-million propaganda budget.

The best ad for the tax cut will be the cheques themselves landing in the mailboxes of parents across the country in July.

It will be tedious, but fair for the Tories to go on about this. Elections are about choices; the Liberals and NDP would undo the tax cuts, and spend the money on other things.

But when Oliver goes on about the danger of debt, as he did Thursday, he’s stepping through the looking glass.

He warned voters of Opposition plans for “a debt burden our children should not bear.”

He bragged Canada’s debt is half that of the Group of Seven average, adding, “There’s a moral issue here, because to the extent we pile on more debt, we’re basically asking our children and grandchildren to pay for our expenditures.”

I thought: Oliver is being kind of tough on his boss here, isn’t he?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has added $122-billion to the federal debt since he took office. If Canada has a solid debt to gross domestic product ratio, it is not because of Harper, but because of his predecessors Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, who added only $33-billion in debt from 1993 to 2006.