
Will Finance really stick to its deficit prediction for 2015?

The January Fiscal Monitor was released along with the budget, and the Department of Finance is still sticking to its story for the 2014-15 budget balance. (See here, here and here for earlier analysis.) Although the budget balance over the first 10 months of the fiscal year (April 2015-January 2016) is a surplus of $4.3 billion, and even though Finance anticipates another surplus for February, the budget is calling for a deficit of $5.4 billion dollars for fiscal year 2014-15. The government usually runs a deficit in March as year-end bills come due, but a $10 billion swing would be exceptional; the March 2015 deficit was only $3 billion.
Stephen Gordon is an economics professor at l’Université Laval in Quebec City. He started the blog Worthwhile Canadian Initiative in 2005 and has been blogging about economics ever since.
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