February 2009: Budgetary Surplus Of $0.8 billion

I also heard it on 650NTR yesterday. That's great news.

Jeez! doesn't this seem to mean that the tax take of FEDs sort of matches the programme and pork barrel spending....?

Just think, if we can weed out the PORK, the government would still be over taxing us!

More proof we need FoxNews Canada.

Actually, it's proof we need more people like Kate and Allan.

Just think if the CBC was gone it would be 1.8

Just think, without that bs stimulus package which will not create any jobs, how much more money could have been in our pockets. I'd rather not think about it actually.

Just think if we took this as good news,without all the BS comments eh northernlight.It just doesn,t matter how good this government performs,you would prefer the stealing,lying,scandals of the Libs.What a loser you are.

No, the surplus exists because the 'shovel ready' infrastructure projects aren't quite ready for shovels.

That, and the government can't get the money out the door.

It's the bureacracy that's holding up the deficit, not the politicians.

Your 'gotcha' Kate ain't a gotcha, google news for 'canadian budget surplus', there's 270+ hits.

Why, here's one...."The minister said Wednesday that as the economy revives, he expects the federal government to return to a surplus "three to four" years from now...."

Y'all have no idea what's coming down the pipe, do you?

hardboiled - you have no idea either what's happening in the future. But one thing we all know for sure, you will continue to hate Harper and the Conservatives. At least - that's one certainty we have.

I dislike big spending government, metastasizing bureaucracy, and lying politicians.

That covers a whole lot more ground than just the Cons lady.

A surplus beats a deficit anyday. I'll take the surpluses when I can.

Canada still seems to be in the best position of any G-20 country, although I gather hardboiled would rather choke on his words than give any credit to the leadership on this country.

That is not bad number

we recommanded to get
government pirates ship for fun time also to take
balance from peopel who pass our border or see lake shore border and enter illegally

immigration and charge people
if enter illegally and put them in jail and ask tehir government to pay for canada jail time expense too

that may work and we can get more surplus
who knows idea of somalia pirates may work some times

or any other execuse to take our banalce sheet to no more
http://blindkat.hegewisch.net/pirates/diff.html

advertise we seat in gold and nobody allow to come to this land simply and see all smart and rich love to come here for investment use magic of bluffing and attract empty heart people

of not talk so mcuh about our good for sales and keep good for Canadian to sale act more with secret than American style in contrast

let me think let me think
No I can not think of any other way
----
let's be serious
On second thought

government need to see
what area gave them weak number and what area more and increase more encourage toward that
area to increase more PLUS and reduce minus sign

government need to investe money out of Canada to and inside for better saving and made some potential investment such as education or reaserach to let FOR EXAMPLE Canada be best place people come for seek health care
while we are not in that high standard but we can

What I'd like to see at the end of the fiscal year ie at the end of April, is that expenses were controlled on the annual ‘spend it before you lose it' shopping spree by the bureaucracy.

It's not the freakin' bureaucracy that's not shovelling the money out the door fast enough that's the problem ... it's the fact they can shovel it out pretty good in April that usually caused other problems.

I fully expect that the feds will declare a small deficit for the year at this time next month ... much less than the daily whining during Question Period.

For now, the Conservatives have enough ammo to blast back across the aisle and should not shift the counterattack to ‘why does Ignatieff want higher taxes when Canada has been in a surplus position for the past 11 months?'

I expect they'll be coming out with a bunch of yeahbuts on the Newman and Power Play shows today.

Bottom-line, it's the opposition's job to hold the government accountable based on the facts. Fact is, this government is doing as good a job as can be expected given the circumstances handed them by the irresponsible US Congress.

Posted by: Texas Canuck at April 24, 2009 4:42 PM

"Canada still seems to be in the best position of any G-20 country".

Yes, it is. That's a good thing. But any monkey could've run a country that pulled $38 billion in cumulative surplus out of it in the preceding 3 years. Moreso, the regulations preventing banks from accumulating the dogpoo on their balance sheets has always been in place here.

The word 'leadership' implies actually doing something, not passive governance. Which is precisely what Harper and the leprechaun have done fiscally in this nation.

And give them credit for what? '3 to 4 years of deficits?' An (estimated) $85 billion dollar debt?

19 percent growth in government spending in the first three years of governance?

Good thing it wasn't the Libranos - they would have spent $90 billion with a 1% handling fee :-)

set you free It's March when the gov't empties the coffers before the new budget April 1. They have to have some in the piggy bank in case something blows up quickly ie bird flu. Once they have met their committments it is party time. Fiscal responsibility at that time is not encouraged because a surplus could mean you have too much left over and lead to cuts. I would like to see a credit for future capital purchases.
A good piece of hardware can cost up to 2 million and some surpluses are used for stuff like that and some aren't.

Speedy:

Yeah. The figures are from April 2008 through February 2009.

March figures will tell the tale, since they do not reflect the annual shopping spree to save future budget levels.

I'm guessing somebody already has a pretty good idea on what the acutal deficit will be as of the end of March.

We need Canadian RAND style of book but same goals
to improve government policy for us to share and use it not dedicated for small group and ignore the rest of Canadian right we need Candian formula
not American formula for Canada and Canadian needs
----
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND

RAND Corporation is the original non-profit think tank helping to improve policy and decision making through objective research and analysis.

The RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development) is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4870933885859313904

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xKGZMwaIG8

Good news, now if they cold just get it to $0... Government should be a break even proposition.

Ah Kate, I thought the Feb. fiscal monitor was going to be released monday, beat me to it!

It's interesting how in liberal times("good times") fiscal monitor numbers were everywhere in the press.

A few months ago, we had a substantial monthly deficit. The G&M reported this as a conservative problem, because the liberals never ever reported a negative monthly deficit.

Which of course is absolute hogwash, and I pointed that out in their comments section with links to about 6-8 months of deficits under the liberals. Within minutes, the offending paragraph was removed. Editing on the fly.

Of course they should've pointed out that even during the "best of times" (I use that term loosely) we had multi-billion dollar monthly deficits.

It's also interesting how the media is portraying we're in a heavy deficit position now, when it's only projected(09-10 fiscal year). Many things can change.

$800,000,000 surplus?

I feel a song coming on.... "we're in the money..."

Of course if it had been a .8 billion deficit then it would be a lead story with all the usual negative overtones we've come to expect.

Found a story on CTV website.

Last of five stories under BUSINESS. Have fun trying to find it.

Headline: Ottawa's corporate tax take falls by $2.5 billion.

The fact there's a surplus in the first 11 months of the year in finally mentioned in the fourth paragraph.

Thank you Mr Harper. You made the Liberal party pay for all the Canucks that starved to death this year. Merci buckets! Now that is truly Conservative compassion for us little taxpayers!

FlimFlam:

Do you have any figures on how many Canadians starved to death this year?

I like the way that the Conservatives were forced into a huge money spending binge, due to external as well as internal political pressures. Yet, they don't seem to have followed through very zealously.:-) Yeah!

Mind you, a surplus still means the robber governments is taking too much of our money .. grrr.

Off Topic:
Poll at CBC on the return of Khadr to Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/04/24/khadr-appeal.html

These imposters of news deserve whats coming to them.

oh sure, top o' the news:
'Conservative government arm-twisted into spending massive amounts on infrastructure, while showing a budgetary surplus in the middle of the worst world economy since the GREAT DEPRESSION.'
/sarc
No bleeding, no leading.
/schmeigel stream media

All you idiots who didn,t want the stimulus package would be on FN welfare right now ,so STFU and let someone with brains run the country.

Ah yes the "we can't take care of ourselves" attitude.

Get your head out of your ass, it's up to US to end this recession, not some hair brained scheme from Ottawa.

Once again, I'm stunned at the basic innumeracy here. (Not that it's better at the lefties' sites - it's worse, but that's beside the point.) In the context of $250+ billion in government expenditures, $1.8 billion is a round-off error. (Figure it out - on a population of 33 million, for 11 months, $1.8 billion works out to less than 17 cents per person per day; big whoop.) Anyone with the slightest exposure to accounting knows that there are decisions that can be made to recognize revenues early, postpone expenses (such as depreciation especially), etc., and generally fiddle with the numbers to get a desired result. See, for example, the enormous profits posted by Citibank, Lehman, etc. in 2007.

Am I happy that it's a nominal surplus rather than a nominal deficit? Sure. But in the long run, it's meaningless noise. Anyone who thinks that the imminent collapse of Chrysler and either bankruptcy or massive restructuring of GM isn't going to result in massive deficits and dislocations is whistling in the dark.

KevinB although you are correct I was reveling in the fact that we haven't as yet decended into utter fiscal chaos.

A small respite in an otherwise gloomy fiscal world that awaits catastrophe daily.

Please allow me a little Ignorant Bliss until the Markets re open Monday and the decent into chaos is renewed;)

KevinB:

Thanks for your yabut response.

I was expecting plenty of ‘the sky is falling' rhetoric from the Liberal and NDP panellists on Newman and Power Play Friday, but neither got much past Iggy, Iggy, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

You've restored my faith in the fact there are those human beings who look at positive news and look see the potential of more negative news.

Hey, I was totally surprised that Canada has reported a $1.8 billion surplus for the first 11 months of this year.

Enjoy the moment. There are rougher days ahead and then we'll get over it at some point.

See. Positive news, negative news, positive news, negative news.

The way it's always been, the way it always will be ... unless somebody is part of the cult that believes singing Kumbaya and the path to contentment involves shutting down your brain.

Are there games at the margin on accounting numbers...yes...

It matters whetehr or no there is wholesale fraud, are the numbers materially out. The answer is no.

Are we going to see a big whopping deficit in 2009-1010...big yes.

So what are the opposition left complaining about. That there wasnt enough revenue for them to spend more? That enough wasnt being spent? Or that there is a deficit?

Are revenues less than they would have been had the GST still been at 7%, sure....how much less and how much faster Canada would have entered recession is a good academic question.

Funny how one of the policy prescriptions the UK jumped on was to cut their version of the GST as a stimulus. Hmmm where did I hear that before?

All things being equal I would rather cut income taxes over sales taxes, but then again I will take a sales tax cut over no cut anyday.

Canada is in an enviable position and sadly our media and our opposition cant find a betterissue to criticize. Or more importantly, offer their own precription...well we kind of got that in Iggy saying tax increases will happen.

Tax increases are a funtion of how lng the recession goes and if the deficit is bigger than expected. Our tax levels produce moderate surpluses in moderate growth times. I would say tha means they are pretty well balanced for the current level of expenditures.

Like the last election, if the Liberals want new services they are going to have to raise taxes or run a deficit. That makes for clearer choices on the part of the electorate.

I will point to the UK as the logical end point of tax and spend. They have little tax capacity left putting their ability finance future deficits in doubt.

Stephen,

Thank you, you grasp my point. If the Finance Dept had wanted to post a small deficit of $1.8 billion instead of a surplus, they surely could have done so. My wife is director of finance for a chain of auto dealers. When she has to present numbers to their floor plan lender, she admits to me that she works "magic-magic" on the numbers to make them acceptable.

Jeff, I didn't mean to ruin your day. I'm happy that the numbers are close enough that we could post a nominal surplus, regardless of what the actual figures are. It shows we haven't descended into total destruction, yet. I agree with Allan that we're a tail being wagged by the US dog, and what happens down south is going to determine what happens to us. Unfortunately, that prescription does not fill me with confidence.

Ahh ... don't believe a word of it folks. You can't be giving the banks $290B then turn around and say you made profit. So who ya gonna believe, your common sense or some putz whose interest lies solely in getting himself re-elected?

Remember, these were the same geniuses who predicated smooth sailing for 2009 didn't they??

Ahh ... don't believe a word of it folks. You can't be shoveling out $290B to the banks, be paying 8% of the population unemployment, collect less in taxes, then turn around and say you made profit. Alberta isn't churning out the dole ... so who ya gonna believe, your common sense or some putz whose interest lies solely in getting himself re-elected?

Remember, these were the same geniuses who predicated smooth sailing for 2009.