Mike Moffatt | An economist's advice to politicians campaigning on budgets

In an interview with CBC Radio, Assistant Professor Mike Moffatt argued that the Canadian government needs to embrace deficits rather than cut spending in order to reach an arbitrary target. Moffatt stressed that pulling money out of the economy while the economy is weak is self-perpetuating.

With the federal election slated for this fall, Moffatt also emphasized the imminent debate among parties around how well the economy is performing.

“It’s going to be an interesting debate,” said Moffatt. “And it will be interesting to see how long it’s going to take each of those parties to blink and say ‘the situation has gotten bad enough that we think stimulus is appropriate.’”