The 7 billion is for the first 11 months of fiscal 2016 (ie up to the end of February of the fiscal year ending on March 31 2016).
Well it certainly shows they were, either, lying or grossly incompetent on the campaign trail when the continually said the tories were lying about being in surplus...the tories just did not know how big their modest surplus was
.......and it seems our fiscal position was able to sustain itself on a 70 cent dollar and $30 oil.
The PBO looked at the accounting in the Liberal budget and came to the same conclusion as many others, myself included, which is to say, they padded the deficit quite a bit.
There are two clear ways in which they did this, one was upping the 'contingency' to $6B the other was low-balling economic growth to well below 'consensus estimates'.
Those two measures alone, excluding any under-spending, suggest a current deficit closer to 18B (2016-2017). That also doesn't take into account a modest interest
savings from debt that will not have been incurred when last years numbers come in better than projected.
Now, I can't speak to their reasoning with any certainty.
But it would be my guess that there are three things at work.
The first is genuine uncertainty, particularly where the price of oil and other commodities is concerned.
The second is political, both from the point of view of 'blame the last guy' for anything bad; but also from the point of view that
you always want to show at the next election that you under promised and over delivered rather than the other way around.
Finally, I would suggest that one of the Liberals (potentially) most costly promises was a new Health Accord with the provinces.
So far as I can tell, the budget does not have a specific marker for those costs.
So they may be leaving themselves fiscal room for a commitment could easily run $3B per year or more.
