It may be that Greg is right and that talk of selling off the CBC and VIA Rail is just that: talk designed to placate the base. But as Paul Wells reminds us (his emphasis):
The feds are not only airily mulling an asset sale in the abstract, they've booked revenue from it in this budget year, and in succeeding years, to the tune of many billions of dollars in total sales.
And as one of the comments to that post reminds us, booking revenue based on deals that might happen for amounts of money that haven't been established yet isn't the way most organizations maintain their accounts. "Cooking the books" is indeed the right way to refer to it and that commenter is correct when he points out that Flaherty pulled the same nonsense here in Ontario. He was an incompetent hack then and he's an incompetent hack now. (Have I said that before?)
I've avoided making any criticism of Flaherty based strictly on the size of the deficit because I don't want to leave the impression that I think running a deficit is wrong in any circumstances and I'd like a deficit when appropriate to remain a politically acceptable tool in the government's toolbox. But this is yet another reminder that forecasts coming from Flaherty don't mean much. Since his projected deficit includes sales that haven't happened of assets that haven't been identified, even his latest projection is science fiction.
Science Fiction? Perhaps you don't know this government very well... I'd say it is either creation science or ... nah... couldn't be intelligent design...
I was in Alberta when Flattery was in government here in Ontario and I simply could not believe any serious government would put him in place after that (even filtered through the local press). At the time I was naive and thought the point of government was to... you know... govern in an attempt to support the entire population, and move towards the future, etc, etc, etc.... maybe something about planning or something...
My mistake.
Flattery? I thought it was Flamery. As in Flim Flamery.