At a time when all are still digesting the impact of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first federal budget, it’s time to reflect on what a budget might look like if the interests of regular folks, like you and me, were actually prioritized.

What would a budget look like if it were not feeding the profit margins of the military industrial complex through billions in defence spending?

What would a budget look like if governments were not purposely underfunding and sabotaging universal health care and actually paving the way for private corporations to take over the public system?

What would a budget look like if it ensured that the less fortunate actually had a living wage? Or if full employment were actually a doable target and not a forgotten phrase of decades gone by? And what if seniors had decent pensions? And what If universities were fully-funded and tuition free to those interested in studying… And what if the goal of a budget were to increase the number of family farmers across the country rather than facilitating the corporate concentration of the land base through speculative investors such as pension funds and others?

…And what if the federal budget recognized that on a small planet the plight of our international neighbours eventually becomes the plight of our local neighbourhoods if we do not support and share in funding international development goals…

… so many what ifs…

Enter the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) – a reflective budget which has grown through the engagement of hundreds of people and organizations since its inception in 1994. Several organizations have been reporting on aspects of the Alternative Federal Budget since its release in October, including trade unions, peace organizations, health organizations and more.

As for the Carney budget, it has also been covered by many columns related to the environment, military spending,  and its impact on issues such as pay equity, and more. There is also concern over regulatory changes hidden within the budget’s small print in annexed documents outlining legislative changes – for example, eliminating cyclical reviews of pesticides.

While the Carney budget barely passed the recent House of Commons vote, there is no time like the present to revisit the AFB and the policy alternatives and explanations it provides. Might we see some of these proposals in action one day? We can only hope… but first it is important to understand the proposals it details.

Reviewing the history of the........

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