The third and fourth paragraphs from the Post’s write-up of an interview with the Finance Minister.
The third and fourth paragraphs from the Post’s write-up of an interview with the Finance Minister.
The budget, tabled on Jan. 27, was “to create or maintain close to 190,000 Canadian jobs.”
“We were very careful when we set the budget,” Mr. Flaherty said in an interview with Canwest News Service and Global National. “We did not say that the budget would create 190,000 new jobs in Canada. We were much more realistic and pragmatic. I’m comfortable with standing by what we said.”
Indeed, within the budget, Flaherty’s department did promise, at several points, to either create or maintain 190,000 jobs. And, in the interests of full disclosure, it warned that projections of this sort are difficult to make.
Of course, having said that, it also noted that its own estimates were less realistic than quite pessimistic. From Page 230: “the impact estimates in this annex are based on prudent assumptions; the actual economic impact of the Economic Action Plan is likely to exceed the estimates shown here.”