The Cretien Liberals took over from the highest spending government ever and reversed our course.
It lasted until Harper took over.
Now we are back to growing.
Fron the halcyon days of 2012
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/rep...ssage-more-important-than-ever/article535380/
Headlines inform but don't necessarily reveal. Time reveals.
Based on headlines alone, most people would probably assume that Canada has a bigger federal government than it had 50 years ago. But we don't – not, at any rate, in relative terms. In fiscal 1962-1963, a half-century ago, the federal government spent 16.8 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, the same percentage it spent in 1920.
Yet in fiscal 2011-2012, Ottawa will spend only 14.4 per cent. By fiscal 2015-2016, it will spend only 12.9 per cent. For the most part, the headlines missed a most remarkable story: "Government shrinking fast."
When Liberal Jean Chrétien became prime minister in 1993, Ottawa was still spending 23.1 per cent of GDP. In its first 10 years, his government reduced that share to 16 per cent – back to the level it held during the politically frenzied days of prime ministers John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson.
The Chrétien government cut Ottawa's relative size by one-third, and didn't try to hide its strategic objective of deeper cuts ahead. Make no mistake: That government knew what it was doing. In 2000, in what Dalhousie University economist Lars Osberg presciently (though disapprovingly) spoke of as the government's "millennial vision," Ottawa publicly announced its formula for long-term downsizing "in the 21st century." In the future, it said, the government would limit spending growth to two benchmarks: inflation and population growth.
With firm economic management from his finance minister, Paul Martin, Mr. Chrétien finished his three terms in office with a unique accomplishment – a decade (1993-2003) in which Ottawa reduced spending, as a share of GDP, every year. (In contrast, Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau increased the size of government every year during his first eight years in office, expanding the federal state by 50 per cent, from 16 per cent of GDP to 24 per cent.)