“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he spend $60 billion or only 50?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement and stimulus I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an overtaxed country with a half trillion dollars in debt already and growing, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, taxpayers?”

That’s not a direct quote from Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, but it’s close enough. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) certainly doesn’t feel lucky about our prospects as a country if current spending continues unabated. While we already owe a massive sum to our bankers: $500 billion in accumulated debt, the new debt being added via the deficit announced in the last budget, will amount to more than $10,200 per taxpayer between now and 2014. That figure will continue to balloon as interest on the debt begins to compound. Canada is adding more debt right now than was added during both World Wars combined, even after adjusting for inflation. You can see our national debt rack up in real time at www.debtclock.ca.

For those not feeling so lucky, the CTF has produced a Zero in Three Deficit Action Plan to balance the budget in three years. This can be done through a combination of spending freezes, trimming of department budgets and where necessary, reductions. Politicians may excuse themselves from any spending cuts in claiming that a recovery in revenues will balance the budget, but quite simply, they’re wrong. Program spending has skyrocketed by more than 60 per cent in only six years – beginning long before so-call stimulus spending – and add to that the retirement of the baby boomers now beginning and Canada faces a structural deficit that will remain long after revenues recover.

The CTF’s plan would only reduce spending by 10 per cent, returning us to 2008 levels over three years finding a total of $35.8 billion in savings.  In addition to moderately trimming department budgets and accounting for already scheduled decreases in “stimulus,” the CTF plan would eliminate $5.5 billion in corporate welfare. This means turning off the taps to private corporations that subside on the taxpayer’s dime while at the same time resisting money-sucking schemes like Kyoto and Copenhagen that will create entire new bureaucracies and dependent faux-businesses.

Equalization eats up $14.8 billion every single year and has only served to make recipient provinces even poorer and more dependent. The CTF plan would convert this from a ‘federal welfare program’ to a program to help pay down provincial debts, and then reduce the amount provided by 10 per cent each year. That would provide cumulative savings of more than $1.4 billion every year while helping poorer provinces to become proudly self-sufficient again.

Since the creation of two new “regional development” agencies by the Harper government, every single area of the country now has a government agency designed to take money from one part of the country and redistribute it elsewhere. This nonsensical logic makes it low-hanging fruit for anyone serious about balancing the budget. Savings to the taxpayer: $1.2 billion every year.

Canada also has several crown corporations that eat up excessive amounts of money. While not all candidates made the list to be cut, those that did make the chopping block would save taxpayers at least $1.2 billion annually, not to mention one time reductions to our debt from the proceeds of selling them.

All told, there is an abundance of areas that the government can easily look to in order to get its finances under control. Even holding the line on spending – which it should have done when it come to power – won’t bring the books into black. Program spending was already at unsustainable levels when Prime Minister Harper came to power.

During the Trudeau and Mulroney years, the government books often showed the budget coming into balance without any cuts a few years down the road as revenues increased, yet they never did. The government today – with deficits on par with those prime ministers – is making precisely the same argument. They know, just as previous governments before, you can’t balance your budget by doing nothing.

The jig is up and we know what needs to be done, so come on Mr. Harper, make my day.

Program spending has increased by more than 60% in the last 6 years beginning long before there was any drop in revenue, a bailout of General Motors, or threat of Stéphane Dion becoming prime minster with Monsieurs Layton and Duceppe at the ready.  In 2013 we will begin to feel the pinch of the baby boomers retiring and the double whammy of increased CPP, GIS and health-care costs on the one hand, and a shrinking tax base on the other.

Anyone who has crunched the numbers will see that there has been a massive and permanent growth in the size of government beyond the so-called ‘Economic Action’ plan over the last six years and that the pressures of demographics will means that even holding the line on spending will be entirely insufficient to balance the budget.

The Trudeau and Muloney governments made the same claim that balancing the budget can be done by getting spending “growth” under control and allowing revenue growth to take care of the rest.  We all know the history and how well that worked.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has released a detailed plan to make reasonable cuts in spending coupled with freezes that will actually get the budget back in black within three years.

Conservatives should make it known within their party that this situation has a strong smell of the 1970s and 80s, and Liberals and New Democrats should get credible on this issue and hold the government to account, as is their job.

After considering the game in the bag after Montreal missed the field goal required to overcome it’s  2-point deficit, the Riders were defeated by a redo closer to the goal-line.  Why?  Because somebody failed to count and had an extra player on the field.  This tiny mishap cost the Riders a game that until then, they had deserved to win. Montreal won fair and square, but the nature of the win must make this a bitter pill to swallow for many on the praries right now.

A few decades ago, another Westerner – Joe Clark – failed to count how many MPs of each party were sitting in the House of Commons during a vote of no confidence in his government.  In this case it was too few men on the field, but history was just as cruel.  Montrealer Pierre Trudeau ended up winning – fair but perhaps bitterly square – the subsequent election.

Mistakes happen, as do other obnoxiously odorous substances.

Note: I promise all Saskatchewan fans that I will never compare their team with Joe Clark again.