For years, the prime minister had a ready excuse whenever a voice would rise up from the citizenry and plaintively cry: “Please, sir, I want some more.”

No need was so pressing that it couldn’t be instantly swatted aside by the prime minister simply mouthing the magic word: Deficit.

That word struck fear into the hearts of Canadians, leaving us constantly lowering our expectations of what government could provide.

We were told that pretty much everything we might want was subject to the approval of the deficit god. And, as we were constantly reminded, he was an angry, miserly god, and he enjoyed the full backing of vengeful international financial markets.

That’s why, when Ottawa’s deficits finally disappeared seven years ago, the federal government came up with a new strategy for keeping our aspirations in check: Lying.

The Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson described the strategy last week: “The federal government must lie to the Canadian people about the size of the annual surplus.”

Ibbitson supports the government’s lying. “It has no choice,” he wrote. Otherwise the people would know how much money there was in the federal treasury. “Such candour …” noted Ibbitson, “would be ruinous. Provincial governments, interest groups and caucus members would demand that the money be diverted to social programs and other contemporary needs.”

Gadzooks. One can only imagine the disaster that would unfold if the government were obliged to spend the public’s money on the public’s contemporary needs.

Of course, the government has to admit the true size of the surplus at the end of the year. So, for instance, it admitted last week that last year’s surplus was actually $7.2 billion bigger than it had told us at the outset of the year.

But then, faster than you can say, “Wow, that certainly changes things,” the extra vats of money are wheeled off-stage and immediately put toward reducing the national debt, which is the accumulation of all past annual deficits.

Since 1997, some $50 billion of our money has disappeared this way, without us ever having a chance to consider what else we might like to do with it.

The government wants us to believe that this obsessive debt reduction is necessary.

But we could, instead, follow the sensible practice when we were left with an enormous national debt after World War II. We didn’t worry about paying it down. Instead, we focused on economic growth. So the economy grew, and the debt stayed the same size. Within a few decades, the debt became a tiny burden, compared with the huge new economy.

We could do that again today. In fact, our debt burden is already low by international standards. As long as we don’t add to it by running new deficits, it will continue to diminish as a burden over time.

Bay Street economists know this, but they also know that paying down the debt serves another function they consider vital — keeping the lid on social spending. As long as those vats of money are visible, the public is going to have big dreams, for things like good health care, well-equipped schools, public transit systems …

The obfuscation about the surplus is actually part of a larger obfuscation about the real possibilities before us.

Here’s a simple test: Would Canadians like to have free day care, free dental care for their children, free university tuition, extended home care and parental leaves, retraining programs for the unemployed, five weeks paid vacation, with two weeks extra “holiday” pay?

My guess would be yes. But while we may want these things, we believe we can’t possibly have them, that if we were to gain such benefits, we’d lose our ability to compete in the global economy. Which brings us to another bit of economic news.

Buried inside the business sections of our newspapers last week was the annual global competitiveness ranking by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum. One had to get all the way to page 22 of the Globe’s business section to see that at the top of the chart, for the second year in a row, was Finland, a country that offers all the above-mentioned benefits.

In case that sounds like some sort of fluke, the chart also showed that three other Scandinavian countries — Norway, Sweden and Denmark, which all boast extensive social programs — also rank in the top six of global competitiveness. The United States ranks second, Canada, 15th.

The simple truth is that countries can have extremely generous social programs and be extremely globally competitive.

But Canadians are unlikely to become aware of their true options as long as the Liberals keep up their surplus-hiding tricks and the stunning success of the Scandinavian countries is buried in the business section.

Such candour, after all, could be ruinous.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...