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Left-leaning think-tank beats feds to releasing a 2015 budget

While the political watchers in Ottawa await the federal government’s announcement of a 2015 budget date, a left-leaning think-tank has beat the feds to the punch by releasing their own federal budget.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives puts together what the organization calls an Alternative Federal Budget every year to counter the federal government’s annual plans on taxation and spending.

A CCPA press release says the feds have a “continued obsession with austerity and balancing” and that “the budget comes at the cost of higher household debt, fewer services, and weakened job growth.”

Regardless of what’s in either budget, there’s still the big question of when the actual one is coming.

Many would expect that Finance Minister Joe Oliver to have announced, at the very least, a date he plans to table the federal budget. So far, mum has been the word on when exactly that will happen.

Last year’s budget, what the federal government has taken to calling an Economic Action Plan, was delivered on Feb. 13. The year before, it was tabled on Mar. 21.

The government has promised billions of dollars in spending cuts and tax breaks, and to balance the books this year, but plummeting oil prices have forced the feds to re-jig their plans. Back in January, Oliver said he wouldn’t table a budget until at least mid-spring.

“Given the current market instability, I will not bring forward our budget earlier than April,” Oliver said.

“We need all the information we can obtain before finalizing our decisions.”

More recently than his January announcement, Oliver said Canada is in a steady position to weather its financial storms, doubling down on the commitment to balance the country’s financial books. Doing so, he said, will encourage investors and consumers alike.

“If we were in difficult financial circumstances, that precipitous decline in oil prices would really have put us in a very difficult position,” Oliver said in early March, at the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa.

“But because we’re fiscally strong, we’re able to deal with it. I mean, there’s a hit, but it’s a hit we can cope with,” he said.

The CCPA’s alternative budget is an exercise in hypotheticals. It’s an outline of what a budget could look like — a “progressive economic plan” — if the feds focused on tackling big social, economic and environmental concerns.

The document states that when economic growth is weak, it’s not a good idea “to add to the problem” by continuing with federal cuts.

“If anything,” the document says, “the federal government should be running a deficit to boost employment and economic growth, which is the approach taken in by the Alternative Federal Budget this year.”

David Macdonald, the CCPA’s senior economist, said in a press release that the Canadian labour market has seen little recovery since the recession and that next year’s economic growth is projected to be at its lowest since 2009.

“Federal spending cuts, in the midst of these trends, have further impaired Canada’s recovery,” Macdonald said.

"Governments should be helping citizens during these uncertain times by pushing against weak growth, not cutting access to services.”