On March 21, 2013, Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled the Conservative government’s new budget entitled Economic Action Plan 2013. As expected, the key themes are job creation, skills development, infrastructure spending, support for Canadian manufacturers, and the government’s latest road-map to balanced budgets by 2015-16. While the federal budget avoids any major policy changes by continuing to implement the main tenets of the Economic Action Plan, the consistency reflects the government’s growing concerns with sluggish economic growth, lower tax revenues, unemployment, and an unpredictable and increasingly competitive global economy.

Budget by the Numbers:

- Program spending is projected to decrease from $80.5 billion in 2012-13 to $74.0 billion in 2014-15, then rising to $77.8 billion in 2017-18.

- Projected surplus of $0.8 billion in 2015-16 and surplus of $5.1 billion in 2017-18.

- Debt ratio is projected to fall to 28.1 per cent in 2017-18.

Please see full Newsletter below for more information.