Despite their firm commitment during the recent federal election campaign to keep the budget balanced, the governing Conservatives are increasingly wavering on whether Canada will soon plunge back into the red.

They don’t need to. The federal government need only look back to the situation inherited by Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government in 1993.

In the early 1990s, Canada was in rough shape. Decades of fiscal recklessness by Liberal and Conservative governments had reached a boiling point. The national debt was approaching $500 billion — and would reach an all-time high of $562.9 billion in 1996/1997.

Chrétien’s Liberal government — prompted in part by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s debt clock it toured from coast to coast — got to work.

Spending was significantly reduced, department by department. Business subsidies were slashed from $3.8 billion to $1.5 billion, a decrease of 153 per cent.

The program review also called for selling the federal government’s remaining shares in Petro Canada. Another Crown asset, Canada Communication Group (formerly the Queen’s Printer) was privatized while budgets of other Crown corporations were substantially reduced.

In just two fiscal years, program spending fell by $12 billion and, a year later, the federal government posted a balanced budget, ending Canada’s deficit streak at 27 fiscal years, a period in which the national debt rose from $19.3 billion to $560 billion — a mind-boggling 2,800 per cent.

Now, a global economic downturn is threatening to reduce government revenues, leaving three options: raise taxes, cut spending or run deficits.

Thankfully, when it comes to battening down the hatches and living within one’s means, Canadian households are again ahead of the politicians. An October 2008 Ipsos-Reid poll confirmed an entrenched view in this country: Canadians do not want their federal government to raise taxes or go into deficit to make ends meet.

— Tri City News