So CTV News today was presenting a story about a protectionist “Buy American” bill that the US Congress has suddenly passed. And some MP (not sure the party) suggested that Canada should pass its own “Buy Canada”, to which I found myself replying, “Protectionism doesn’t really help stimulate the economy” only to find Stockwell Day, on TV, saying virtually the same thing, at the same time.

Dah!

Anyway. I can’t seem to bring myself into a lather over this budget and the projected deficit. It does seem a rather large deficit, but then again, an awful lot of opinion out there that stimulus is needed and deficits must be tolerated. Those opinions could be wrong, but I sure don’t have the knowledge to dispute it.

But greatly amused this morning when maverick CBC economics report Michael Helinka (not in favor of deficit spending, by the way) express pure amazement that host Matt Galloway actually believed that Conservative governments try to avoid deficits. “That is simply not true. Republicans, Conservatives—they do not balance bugets. Liberals and Democrats do. Conservative governments have that reputation, but it’s simply not borne out by the facts.”

Yes, I know, I’ve said it before, but it’s hard to let go of: Stimulus package or no, we would have been in deficit anyway, because the Conservatives frittered away the surplus with stupidly timed tax cuts and silly one-time expenditures. That’s what Conservatives do.

So I don’t know what I means that I agreed with Stockwell Day.

And, I suppose it doesn’t speak well of me that I also agree with faux Michael Ignatieff in this clip from 22 Minutes. Why don’t Canadians spend some time educating themselves about how the Parliamentary system in this country works? (Not to mention which parties are best at managing economies.) That way Conservatives could stop so easily manipulating their ignorance.