A federal budget has just come out that will reduce unemployment to 6 per cent, close tax loopholes, repair cities and institute a forward-looking green strategy.
It is not Jim Flaherty's budget. We will only get that on March 29.
This one is the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) and it comes from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The CCPA has been in the alternative budget business for 17 years now.
The Centre undertakes this detailed, labour-intensive exercise in an effort to show, each year, that Canadians have evidence-based fiscal policy options.
There is nothing inevitable -- ordained by the infallible logic of economic science -- about the government of the day's prescriptions or forecasts.