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The Liberal election platform remains studiously ambiguous on the issue. The word “stimulus” itself does not appear. Nevertheless the document is filled with language to the effect that “our economy is stuck in neutral,” that it is time to “kick-start investment” in order to “turn our economy around and get it growing again.” If the plan was actually to increase the economy’s productive potential by a few tenths of a percentage point over many years, you’d never know it.

A campaigning Justin Trudeau left no doubt. His deficit plan, he said on numerous occasions, was needed to “kick-start the economy.” Conservative “austerity” was holding the economy back. Liberal spending would liberate it. “We’re in a recession and growth has stalled so now is the time to invest,” the future prime minister said.

It was all for show, of course. Trudeau now tells interviewers that the day he announced the deficit plan, in contrast to the NDP vow to run balanced budgets, was the day he “won the election.” But there is little substantive difference between a balanced budget and a $10-billion deficit: The federal government spends $10 billion every 12 days. Whatever significance it had was purely symbolic.

Indeed, the intervening months have been filled with much debate about whether this was enough — some Bay Street economists were demanding deficits of $50 billion or more — or whether, as most academic economists insisted, the whole idea was misbegotten. The limitations of fiscal policy, after all, are well-documented, and have not changed. Simply put, the money has to come from somewhere. Either the government borrows from Canadians — in which case it leaves that much less for private investment — or it borrows from foreigners. And since foreigners can only lend us the dollars they earn from us on trade, whatever stimulative impact the increase in public spending may have is offset by a deterioration in the balance of trade.