Interesting changes in the air PR
Budget 2007 - Sympatico / MSN Finance - Backroom budgeting: "Backroom budgeting
The budget process is increasingly political and increasingly irrelevant too.
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By Deirdre McMurdy
February 08, 2007
For a great many years now, there’s been a Holiday Inn rule in place between Ottawa and Bay Street: No surprises.
The Finance Department had learned to respect the need of financial markets to avoid jolts, sudden changes of direction or measures that might cause scrambling. That implicit partnership in maintaining an even keel worked well and along with it, came an elaborate system of pre-budget consultations that allowed everyone with a vested interest in the outcome of a budget to come forward and make their case.
That relative transparency effectively de-politicized the budget process. And the assurance that there’d be no surprises on the day of its formal delivery, meant that currency, bond and stock markets weren’t buffeted about. Predictability engendered a degree of mutual trust between private and public sectors.
That’s no longer the case – something that anyone who watched the changes to the tax status of income trusts go down last October can attest."
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