Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River MP Gary Vidal believes the federal budget falls short of delivering an economic recovery plan to Canadians. (Submitted photo/Office of Gary Vidal)

By Elliott Knopp

Vidal Budget

MP Vidal: ‘Federal budget is a political document, not an economic one’

Apr 21, 2021 | 1:45 PM

Following the release of the 2021 federal budget, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River MP Gary Vidal believes the financial blueprint falls short of delivering a viable solution regarding Canada’s economic recovery through the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year’s budget is the first financial screenshot released by the Canadian government since the federal Liberal party was re-elected in 2019. This also marks the first federal budget Vidal has seen since taking office that same year. Vidal explained not having updates on the country’s finances for an extended period of time made the national deficit ‘hard to fathom.’

“This is a political document, not an economic one. There’s very little economic planning here, the spending is over the top,” Vidal said. “When I was on the campaign trail in 2019, I remember being very stressed about the fact that we were talking about $10-billion deficits. In the meantime, we’ve just gotten to a place where they’re just under $400-billion in that same period. To me, that’s just a little bit of an overwhelming amount of dollars that we’re talking about.”

With significant funding being required for economic relief programs like the Canadian Economic Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, Vidal said he understands the need for spending in these areas. At the same time, he is displeased with the handling of government finances because he believes the public health crisis could already be behind the country if things were done differently.

“You can have a level of grace for the spending and making sure we help people through a difficult time, but that difficult time should be over if we followed the lessons of many countries around the world,” Vidal said.

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“If the government had done their job in securing and protecting vaccines, we wouldn’t be having the issues we’re having in the healthcare spending. You have to take accountability for your actions and be responsible for the decisions you make, and we just don’t see that from this government. It’s not about creating jobs, it’s not about getting people back to work, it’s just partisan Liberal promises that are made, and as we’ve seen so many times, there’s a history here of promises and announcements being made and very little in the form of outcomes and results.”

Included in the budget are proposals to invest $30-million over the next five years into early learning and child care as well as Indigenous early learning and child care. There is also a plan to drop fees for pre-school daycare by 50 per cent and make daycare more affordable at an average of $10 per day by 2026.

In an interview with paNOW, Prince Albert MP Randy Hoback stated he supports any plans to get women back into the workforce, but added Conservative Party plans in the past would provide families with more freedom. He also mentioned the idea of $10-a-day childcare has been floated around for many years with no actual progress on that front.

With an economic recovery plan seemingly near the top of his list of issues to address, Vidal stated he plans to hold the federal government accountable for its spending and press other officials for a detailed plan that he believes is necessary to help bring the country back up to speed.

“We need to get a handle on it and actually have a reason to be doing things beyond just political partisan purposes. I get people are going to push back and say a lot of the spending was because of COVID, and that’s fair, but what has to be understood is we’re looking at extending COVID programs and stuff, but that’s because the government failed miserably to get the vaccines and be at the same place of the rest of the world.”

“[We need] fiscal responsibility and making sure we have a plan to end this pandemic and get people back to work. I’m going to champion for the fact that we need to get people back to their day-to-day lives. We need the economy to get rolling because when people are working, so many issues take care of themselves. When we make sure people have good jobs and they have lives where they are confident in the ability to take care of themselves.”

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With files from paNOW

elliott.knopp@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @ElliottKnopp