Stephen Harper, writing in the Toronto Star, Oct. 14. “We’ll never go back into deficit.”
Stephen Harper, writing in the Toronto Star, Oct. 14. “We’ll never go back into deficit.”
Stephen Harper, answering a reporter’s question, today. “I obviously am not in a position to deliver a fiscal update to the Premiers any more quickly than Minister Flaherty plans to do that to Parliament in the next few weeks. But obviously they understand that our position is that while we are in surplus now, that situation is very uncertain going into the future. I think most of them are in exactly the same boat. Positions aren’t all identical but most provinces have had a surplus. At the same time most provinces know that, you know, given the slowing rate of growth of the economy and the great uncertainty around economic predictions right now, that we simply don’t know whether we will be able to maintain surpluses like that into the future. I think that what we will all want to do is to make sure we avoid structural deficits and that we don’t undertake, you know … we’re all going to do, I’m sure, reasonable cost saving measures where we can, but we’re not going to undertake radical cuts that would hurt the economy or hurt other levels of government.”