OTTAWA–The Conservatives have delivered a fixer-upper budget meant to rebuild the economy and get Canadians working, spending $35 billion over two years on everything from income tax cuts and help for home renovations to increased jobless benefits and money for urban reconstruction.
But Canadians will have to wait until today to see if the Conservatives' economic safety net is enough to earn the support of Liberals, who hold the key to the fate of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff initially offered only a mixed review but said he would announce this morning whether to vote down the budget – and defeat the government.
Harper's chicken-in-every-pot budget opened the taps in a flurry of spending aimed at preserving jobs and restoring confidence in the face of a global recession.
The Conservatives also offered across-the-board tax cuts.
It was the most anticipated budget in recent memory, not only because it was designed to try to pull Canadians from the economic gloom felt worldwide, but because it included the drama of a government trying to resurrect itself from a near-death experience last month when an opposition coalition was poised to defeat it.
A government that recently was boasting of budgetary surpluses is now forecasting five years of deficits totalling almost $85 billion.
Ignatieff said the budget's big-ticket spending and new assistance for the jobless was a "positive" response to "the combined pressure of the opposition parties," which have threatened to topple the Harper government if it failed to produce an adequate economic rescue package.
But "we're very preoccupied and worried that unemployment is going to rise sharply," the Liberal leader said, questioning whether Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has done enough to improve employment insurance (EI) benefits.
