Simultaneously, Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau was releasing his “fiscal snapshot,” a self-congratulatory effort that slapped his government on the back for its COVID-19 performance and offered no new details, beyond an eye-popping deficit forecast of $343.2 billion – a full $87 billion higher than the best guess by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
“We were guided by three key principles: speed, scale and simplicity. I think we delivered on all three,” Morneau said, modestly.
The likely cause of a deficit hike that has gone from mildly hallucinatory to mind-altering is the amount allocated to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. The new update sets aside $82.3 billion for CEWS, even though the take-up so far has been disappointing – 245,000 applicants, covering two million workers, at a cost of $17 billion (compared to eight million applicants at a cost of $53 billion for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.)
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