The most important paragraphs in Budget 2009

The Budget Plan is a 360-page document that contains everything you need to know about Budget 2009, tabled Jan. 27 by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in the the House of Commons. The Plan contains all the background, rationale and details on how the government intends to collect and spend more than $200 billion between April 1, 2009 and April 1, 2010.

And while there are lots of important paragraphs in that document, I'm going to suggest that, politically at least, these paragraphs, found on page 10 of the hard-copy version, and found here on line, are now the most important:

Budget 2009 reflects a strong consensus among Canadians that the Government must deliver a potent economic stimulus to encourage growth and restore confidence in our economy. The Economic Action Plan is based on three guiding principles—that stimulus should be timely, targeted and temporary.

Timely. Canada is in recession today. Measures to support the economy must begin within the next 120 days to be most effective.

Targeted. Measures that target Canadian businesses and families most in need will trigger the largest increase in Canadian jobs and output.

Temporary. The stimulus plan should be phased out when the economy recovers to avoid long-term structural deficits.

The Government’s Economic Action Plan will provide almost $30 billion in support to the Canadian economy, or 1.9 per cent of our gross domestic product.

It will create or maintain close to 190,000 Canadian jobs.

These paragraphs contain a lot of the benchmarks that the opposition Liberals will hold Flaherty and the government to as the government presents its quarterly reports. The next quarterly report, as I report today, could be out as early as next week. So let's check in:

On the issue of timely: This document was tabled on January 27, 2009. That would be 120 days ago. Conservatives hve already tried to convince me that they really meant 120 days from April 1, the beginning of the budget year, but I see no such qualifier in the budget document.

On the issue of targeted. Liberals argue making it easier for more “families most in need” to qualify for EI is best.

On the issue of temporary. Liberals — and man Bay Street market watchers — would like some more explanation about how Flaherty gets us to deficit of $50 billion this year and then would like to hear some details on how he thinks this could be temporary.

The last point is also crucial: This is the line in which government commits to a certain job creation figure. The government gives itself an out when its says “create or maintain” but, still, Liberals will keep circling that number and will want to see progress on job creation.