This budget won't lead Canada out of a recession...

James Laxer: This Budget Won’t Lead Canada Out of Recession: Ignatieff Should Defeat It

Depending on how you interpret the budget, the government is committing itself to direct new spending of about $10 billion to $12 billion, on infrastructure and housing, over the next two years. Some of this depends on matching provincial and municipal funds, which may never materialize. Much of it depends on how much the government actually spends, a crucial matter since the Harper government has left most of the previous infrastructure money it promised in earlier budgets unspent. At most, the new direct spending by the government amounts to about $6 billion a year.

These numbers may sound big. In fact, they are puny. The Canadian Gross Domestic Product totals about $1.5 trillion a year. Six billion dollars a year amounts to just over one half of one per cent of our country’s GDP. Economic announcements and forecasts tell us that Canada is on track to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next six months. The Conservative government’s planned spending would create, at most, about sixty thousand short-term jobs.

The various tax measures in the budget will be equally ineffectual in stimulating the economy.