It's budget season everywhere, and it's all about debt and deficits and the elusive quest to balance the beast, which can only be done, it is said, by cutting services or raising taxes.

The burden of interest charges -- on the same scale as health or education in most provincial budgets -- doesn't get questioned because interest is fixed by the gods according to divine law, retribution from which we can only escape through harsher and harsher penance.

Or is it? Let's chew on a couple of startling points.

Canada's financial system emerged from the global crisis in better shape than in many other countries. Canadian banks avoided the all-out panic that struck some jurisdictions. It's a myth that Canadian banks stood on their own two feet right through the crisis; they received important and timely liquidity assistance from government agencies during the worst months of the meltdown (through a C$200-billion "Extraordinary Financing Framework"). But no bank failed or was taken over by the state. This relative (imperfect) stability has been important to Canada's partial economic recovery since the crisis.

For novelty value if nothing else, Mark Carney's appearance at the CAW convention last week was bound to spark lots of attention. After all, we could find no other historical example of a Bank of Canada Governor ever speaking to a union convention. That says something in and of itself, of course. Central bankers speak to audiences of financial leaders and business leaders all the time. (To be fair, Mr. Carney and his predecessors have met regularly with labour reps in private sessions.) Sitting next to Mr.