CBC Thursday, September 27, 2007
A booming Canadian economy generated such big tax revenues this past year that the federal budget surplus approached $14 billion, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.The final surplus for the 2006-07 fiscal year came in at $13.8 billion, Harper said at a Toronto news conference. That was far more than the $9.2 billion forecast in the Conservatives' March budget.The surplus will be used to pay down the federal government's accumulated debt, which stood at $467.3 billion as of March 31, 2007. Since 1996, the debt has been paid down by $95.6 billion.Harper called the announcement "good news for taxpayers," saying the $14-billion debt reduction would save $750 million in annual interest payments — savings that he said would be passed along to taxpayers through continued cuts to personal income taxes.The budget surplus for the 2007-08 fiscal year is also heading for the stratosphere. In August, the Finance Department acknowledged that the surplus would top its original $3-billion projection. For just the first three months of the new fiscal year, Ottawa has already pegged the surplus at $6.4 billion.
When in opposition, the Conservatives sharply criticized the Liberals for reporting hefty budget surpluses that were much higher than their forecasts.But Harper said his government wasn't guilty of the same thing."We were very critical of budget estimates that we thought were flagrantly untrue, deliberately underestimated," he said."That's not been the case with this government. We have worked carefully to produce the best estimates possible."
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