Trudeau wasn’t honest when he made his election promises and he isn’t honest now in describing them. The Liberal fiscal plan released in September 2016 said that: “With the Liberal plan, the federal government will have a modest short-term deficit of less than $10 billion in each of the next two fiscal years… After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019/20.” Nothing about how it could be much larger in a weak economy here. Also, there is no evidence that a weakened economy contributed a huge amount to the 2016-17 deficit. The Liberals based their estimates for their September 2016 document on a July PBO report that showed a $0.6B surplus in 2016-17 under the Conservative plan. In November 2016, the month Trudeau took office, the PBO did its own unconstrained re-estimate of a $3.0B deficit. That’s only a $3.6B difference.