There weren't many surprises in the Federal Budget announced last week for MP for Battle River-Crowfoot Damien Kurek, because everything had already been said.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland delivered the budget on Tuesday, April 16. The Budget focused on building affordable homes, reducing the cost of living and growing the economy.
“All of the details, at least the big selling points were kind of announced across the country in the couple of weeks preceding its release,” he said.
He adds the budget was overshadowed by many other things going on in the capital including the controversy around the ArriveCan app, and the contractor behind the program being admonished by the House of Commons.
"It is almost like it got lost in the mix. From the perspective of the official opposition, it was an interesting place to be because we looked at the budget, listened to the speech, and saw some concerns with it. We sort of knew what some of the themes were before, but then it seemed the government was not focused on, or not willing to spend much time focusing on their budget in the midst of everything else," said Kurek.
One concern always from the CPC is debt.
“The debt-serving cost we knew would be large, and I think it was proven to be so,” he said.
Another aspect of the budget they were focused on was the Canada Disability benefit.
“It was long lauded as something essential and actually saw cross-partisan support, but when the details were announced, it ended up being significantly less than expected. Hearing from some of the pundits and even former Finance Minister Bill Morneau and former NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, there seemed to be a unanimous chorus outside of the Liberal benches, that were saying this is not a good budget.”
He says there are many promises in the budget, but judging by the track record of the government there hasn't been much delivery. What has changed in the last couple of years is housing has become front and center.
“What was very interesting is there seemed to be both from the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minster, an acknowledgement that what they have been doing hasn’t helped and in some cases, has even exacerbated the problem. So now they are throwing money at it and trying to do a few different things, but it seems at this point, the tale will yet to be told if they have any success with that, but it seems like just making announcements saying you are going to do it after nine years, it seems they have lost the credibility to make the claims they can solve the problems.”
