{"id":64927,"date":"2017-01-27T22:10:02","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T22:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/federal-government-in-the-red-for-12-7b-in-first-eight-months-of-2016-17-fiscal-year.html"},"modified":"2017-01-27T22:10:02","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T22:10:02","slug":"federal-government-in-the-red-for-12-7b-in-first-eight-months-of-2016-17-fiscal-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/federal-government-in-the-red-for-12-7b-in-first-eight-months-of-2016-17-fiscal-year.html","title":{"rendered":"Federal government in the red for $12.7B in first eight months of 2016-17 fiscal year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The federal government ran a deficit of $12.7 billion over the first eight months of its 2016-17 fiscal year \u2014 compared with a $1-billion surplus during the same period a year earlier.<\/p>\n<p>The shortfall was due to a $14-billion surge in expenses, including a $7.1-billion increase in direct program costs to the treasury, the Finance Department latest monthly fiscal monitor showed Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The double-digit deficit figure wasn&#8217;t a surprise since the Trudeau government has pledged to run deficits over the coming years as it tries to boost the economy through infrastructure investments and larger child benefits.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/decades-deficits-morneau-1.3923060\">Decades of deficits possible, federal analysis warns<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/parliamentary-budget-office-infrastructure-1.3929074\"><span class=\"scayt-misspell-word\">Stimulus from infrastructure spending likely delayed: PBO<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The fiscal monitor said the April-to-November spike in expenses included multibillion-dollar increases in payments for child and seniors benefits as well as bigger transfers to other levels of government.<\/p>\n<p>Over the same period, the government said its revenues were down $1.1 billion compared with the year before, a decline due to the one-time gain in 2015 from Ottawa&#8217;s $2.1-billion sale of its holdings in General Motors.<\/p>\n<p>For November alone, the report said Ottawa&#8217;s books showed a $3.3-billion deficit \u2014 down from a $400-million surplus in November 2015. Overall revenues, it added, decreased by $1.7 billion in November 2016, mainly due to declines in personal and corporate tax revenues.<\/p>\n<p>Finance Minister Bill Morneau&#8217;s fall economic and fiscal statement projected a deficit of $25.1 billion this year, followed by annual shortfalls that are expected to shrink over the coming years to $14.6 billion in 2021-22.<\/p>\n<p>The government has not provided a timeline to balance the books.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberals won the 2015 election on a platform that promised annual deficits of no more than $10 billion over the next couple of years. The Liberals had also pledged to eliminate the deficit by 2019-20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The federal government ran a deficit of $12.7 billion over the first eight months of its 2016-17 fiscal year \u2014 compared with a $1-billion surplus during the same period a year earlier. The shortfall was due to a $14-billion surge in expenses, including a $7.1-billion increase in direct program costs to the treasury, the Finance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-64927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}