National Post


Ministre des Finances:  Jim Flaherty
Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Over the years we’ve grown used to seeing finance ministers shuffle spending forward and back in time, or claim that a spending program is really a tax cut, or re-announce old programs as if they were new. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a budget quite so opaque as this one.

It isn’t just the many significant details it omits — for example, the content of the government’s spending plans. It’s that what is included is so maddeningly misleading, not to say vexingly vague.

Here, then, are some of the subtler cryptograms in the budget, together with their probable meanings:

Extraits:

• The new Building Canada plan provides approximately $53.5-billion in new and existing funding for provincial, territorial and municipal infrastructure.

If you blinked, you’d miss it: $53.5-billion in new and existing funding. The “new” plan is in fact an extension of the old plan. About $6-billion of the total is in funds that were already committed. That eye-popping total, moreover, is achieved only by summing over 10 years: provinces and cities will receive about the same amount per year under the “new” plan as they do now.

• Modernizing Canada’s General Preferential Tariff Regime for Developing Countries.

Chances are you heard about the tariff cut on imported sporting equipment and baby clothes: estimated to save consumers a cool $76-million a year. Chances are you didn’t hear about this: an increase in tariffs on imports from 72 countries, mostly in emerging economies, some of whom have grown quite wealthy. Previously they were eligible for a special lower tariff, as a form of aid. Now they’ll be charged — that is to say, you’ll pay — the regular rate. Estimated revenue yield: $333-million, nearly five times what you’ll save on skates.