Budget day has finally arrived, after a wilder ride than the Conservatives expected.
The government has finagled its way to rein in spending to offset a decline in revenues, amid tanking oil prices and a tough economic climate that caused the government to delay releasing the budget by about a month.
The exact budget projection for 2015 remains unknown. But when oil prices started diving in November, Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced the budget surplus would be just $1.9 billion, much lower than the $6.4 billion the Tories had projected during the 2014 budget.
There was a time earlier this year, when the prospect of presenting their long promised pre-election budget — the first without a deficit in eight years — looked bleak. But the Conservatives have apparently found a way to cut spending and maintain balance all while offering some goodies to taxpayers that they can campaign on.
In the weeks leading up to today’s budget, the government took a number of measures to boost revenue to help get their projections out of the red, including netting an estimated $3 billion for the sale of its remaining stock in General Motors and privatizing the former Canadian Wheat Board.
Take a look at the graph below to see how the loonie and oil prices factored into the government’s budget plans and how we got here:
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