OTTAWA—All governments live by a clock. It typically starts ticking loudly in the third year of a majority mandate, when there is still time to put in place the structural elements of a re-election platform. The next-to-last Liberal budget of the current Parliament begins to lift the veil on the ruling party’s pre-election mindset.As a fiscal blueprint, Tuesday’s installment mostly lives up to its advance billing of a placeholder document.It sticks to the government’s pro-deficit-financing creed, paying little more than lip service to the return to balanced federal books in some post-2019 election future.Read more:Free-spending federal budget contains measures to boost women in the workforce, Indigenous services and science funding‘We start with women’: 2018 budget unveils new equal-pay lawBudget boosts science research, grant fundingHaving successfully broken the taboo on running deficits in the last campaign, the party comes across as more comfortable than ever with the notion of doing so again in next year’s election.Overall, this is not a budget that reads as if it was written with the objective of endearing the current government or finance minister Bill Morneau to corporate Canada. Nor does Donald Trump’s shadow loom large over its fine print.One would be hard-pressed to find in the minister’s third budget evidence that potential and actual policy developments south of the border have, so far, changed the government’s outlook on the way forward.The possible demise of NAFTA, the lowering of the U.S. corporate tax rate and the latest American barriers to Canada’s softwood exports are all mentioned, but essentially as an aside from the main themes.One of the shortest chapters in the budget is the one that deals with trade.As advertised, Trudeau’s mantra of gender parity is woven throughout the document. Until recently, the NDP has traditionally been the party most identified with the adva ...
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