I'm always a little troubled when I find myself on the side of conventional wisdom.  There's something, I don't know, icky to find yourself thinking along the same lines as many of your colleagues.  Makes me feel a little soft of brain.

But, now and then a thing comes along and it's hard to see differently than your peer.  That is without trying to bend reality to suit your needs.  So it is, in some ways, with the latest Ontario budget.

How else can you see this document as anything other than a series of bribes for votes?

And to do this while, with an entirely straight face, claiming that your budget has nothing to do with the coming election is an impressive feat of, I don't know what.  Self-deception, maybe.

I watched a good part of the budget speech — at least, the first 40 or so minutes — until my lifestream cut out and ended my misery.  The speech itself was like most of these things, an exercise in precision tedium.  Every region was name checked, and figures were listed alongside plenty of anonymized anecdotes to give it that human flavour.  But as dire and soul-crushing as watching it was, it contained some insight into what ground the Liberals plan to fight on.

Fortunately, if you had the same troubles I did, or if you were sane and didn't bother watching, the government has posted the text of his speech so you can catch up at your own pace.  (I recommend a brisk skim.)

"We are choosing to put our strengthened fiscal position to work to address the priorities of the people of Ontario.  And as a result, we project a deficit of $6.7 billion next year, less than one per cent of GDP.  With a clear plan to track back to balance.  Some will argue for more cuts others will call for more spending.  Our choice is deliberate and based upon a clear message from the people of Ontario*," Sousa said in his speech.

There's a fun idea in there that's worth teasing out some more.  Presumably, we're supposed to see in restraint shown by getting the budget into balance for twelve whole months proves how responsible the Liberal party is.  They've dug the province out of a hole once, they can surely do it again.

But, as Sousa himself points out, there was a reason for that last hole.

"The province has faced great challenges as we recovered from the largest global recession since the Great Depression.  We have overcome them and together we have achieved great things," he said in his speech.

Of course, this time, the hole will be one not dug by forces well outside the control of the government, it will be precisely because of the choices the government made.  To get the province back to balance, they'll be relying in large part on economic growth.

But Sousa goes to great pains in his speech to lay out how dire the province's position is.  Ontario has an aging population

Which, I think it's very important to point out here, that people with mortgages aren't the only ones affected by rising interest rates.  So are, say, provinces with billions of dollars in outstanding debt.

Now, I don't think it's necessary to run a province entirely without debt.  Debt is something that's useful to use someone else's greater resources to improve your own position.  People do this all the time getting a mortgage to buy a house.  But he handy thing with governments is that they don't retire and die like people do.

But where's the prudence in, on the one hand, warning about the dire consequences of rising interest rates, then on the other, purposefully racking up more debt.

But what if all of the various and assorted threats to the economy actually do serious damage.  If things are going well now, what happens when they go to hell?

The thing that gnaws at me through all of this, though, is that Sousa might be right in his claims.  His party might actually be the most responsible one.  Voters seem to overwhelmingly prefer the Progressive Conservatives, but that's a party led by Doug Ford.

Ford's response was to bluster, as is his way.  The newly promised free child care was absurdly generous gift, but he wasn't about to scrap it.  The tax cuts would increase taxes for a family of five by $1,000, $200 each for the parents and, somehow, the kids would be paying an additional $200 of tax yearly.  And, I assumed this part was a clichéd bit of artistic licence, but he actually did the "you get a car" Oprah schtick, like he was a dull parody Twitter account.

Details of what he'd do differently will have to wait for his platform, promised for sometime down the line.  Until then, it's nothing but air.  Very, very hot air.

So for all the disingenuous vote buying in the Liberal's budget, Ford has nothing approaching a credible alternative.  The utter insanity of politics in the province continues, and now that means that the Liberals might be the fiscally prudent ones.

***

* The "clear message from the people of Ontario" was a series of quotes from totally real people who exist but who were not named and who speak in neat and tidy political platitudes: "Continue to manage the finances of the Province responsibly."  "Create more economic opportunities for everyone."  "And help shoulder the burdens facing many Ontario families."

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics