Except that not everything is quite as bad as Mike believes.
Clocking in at an impressive $55.6 billion, the Harper government has single-handedly managed to inflate the size of the Federal government since taking office in 2006, by approximately 50%.I don't mean to nitpick, but that number seems wrong to me. The Federal Budget since 2006 has run in the 200 to 300 billion dollar range. Actually, based on the numbers I have the federal spending ran at 223 billion in 2006. The last numbers I saw for projections of 2009 to 2010 fiscal year was 271.4 billion (based on a 54.8 billion dollar deficit). So really this increase is closer to 22 %. Still bad. Just not THAT bad.
The next thing that should let Mike's blood pressure drop a bit (or raise it) is comparing Stephen Harper's new found spend crazy ways to those of US President Obama.
Harper's 56 billion dollar deficit equates to about 3.7% of our GDP.
Obama's 1.6 trillion dollar deficit equates to 11% of their GDP. That's almost 3 times bigger comparatively.
Also Trudea's increases in spending over his tenure works out to 69% in his first stint, followed by 12% in his second.