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It’s the standard theory of Election 2015. It’s one I’ve offered, myself. But you have to admit it’s a little odd. The difference between paralytic NDP timidity and swashbuckling Liberal boldness, it would seem, was a deficit of less than one-half of one per cent of GDP — not even rounding error. Moreover, the Liberals promised to repair this minor breach almost instantly, returning to balance within two years.

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This, remember, at a time when both parties were insisting the economy was tumbling into recession, on the heels of the “worst economic growth record since the Depression.” And the radical, progressive, damn-the-torpedoes formula for addressing this crisis — the defining difference between the two opposition parties — was a pledge to borrow about two days’ worth of GDP, for a couple of years, then stop. Half a yard onward rode the Six Hundred.

Oh well. Perception is reality and all that. Perhaps the Liberals thought the economy would actually recover pretty quickly on its own. If a little timely spending allowed them to claim the credit, where’s the harm in that? Otherwise it’s hard to square the floridity of their rhetoric, on the urgent need for, and miraculous benefits of, deficit financing, with the tepidity of what they were actually proposing.

Indeed, the Liberals boasted that their deficits, at their peak, would be “less than half the average Harper deficit of over $20 billion per year.” The combination of “fiscal discipline with investments in economic growth,” they promised, “will end the Harper legacy of chronic deficits and reduce Canada’s federal debt-to-GDP ratio each year.”