This is the latest of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. The
first six posts were on health, education, the coalition’s first hundred days, welfare, the Civil Service, and the New Zealand experience.
Canada
In a forward to Reform’s alternative 2010 Budget, Rt Hon Paul Martin,
Canadian Finance Minister from 1993 to 2002 and Prime Minister from 2003 to 2006, noted that when a new Liberal government was elected in Canada at the end of November 1993 the deficit and
debt-to-GDP ratios were, with the sole exception of Italy, by far the worst of the G7. In 1998, just 4 years later, Canada’s deficit was no more, the debt ratio was dropping like a stone and
the financial record was second to none. Rt Hon Paul Martin explained how this was achieved:
— First we commissioned a new range of revenue projections that would enable us to realistically estimate the size of the fiscal gap that we had to deal with.
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