OTTAWA—Just days before the Conservatives reintroduce the 2011 budget, the parliamentary watchdog says Canada’s economy will grow at a weaker pace and unemployment will remain higher than predicted by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.
Kevin Page, the independent budget officer, also says in a new report that the chances that Ottawa can balance its books by 2014, as promised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper during the election campaign, are very slim.
The Conservatives, who are running a $30-billion deficit this year, said in the March 22 budget that they could erase the deficit by 2015. But Harper pledged during the campaign to wipe it out a year earlier.
Given current economic conditions and government budget plans, this is not likely to happen, Page says.
“The likelihood of realizing budgetary balance or better in 2014-15 is approximately 20 per cent and approximately 35 per cent in 2015-16,” he said in Wednesday’s study.
The parliamentary budget office forecasts annual budget deficits between now and 2015 totalling $128 billion, significantly higher than the cumulative deficits of $93 billion for the same period predicted by Flaherty in the March 22 budget.
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