Despite its best efforts to hide the fact, the federal government recorded a budget surplus of more than $4 billion during the last fiscal year.
Finance department figures published last week showed revenues exceeded spending by $4.2 billion during the year ended March 31.
It was the first budget surplus in 28 years and it came despite $43.7 billion in debt servicing charges.
In fact, 1997-98 marked the first year in close to three decades that the federal public debt declined rather than grew.
The major reason was a $10 billion increase in tax revenues, boosted by solid economic growth, which produced higher goods and services tax revenues, bolstered by increased business and personal tax payments.
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The Liberal government also reduced program spending by close to $3 billion, bringing the total in government payments down to less than $100 billion for the first time in years.
Agriculture did its share.
Spending on agriculture subsidies and transfers fell close to $100 million (10.6 percent) to $804 million.
The federal books also benefited from close to $2.7 billion in cuts from health and welfare transfers to the provinces from Ottawa.
But despite the recorded surplus, the Liberal government insists federal books will end the year in balance rather than in surplus.
The reason is that the Liberals insist on keeping their books in what opposition critics call creative accounting.
Over the objections of the auditor general, finance minister Paul Martin insists he will add to the 1997-98 expenditure claims any spending announced during the year, even if the money has not been shipped out.
The largest item is the several billion dollars the government plans to spend on a millennium scholarship fund, which will be created next year.
Reform critics accuse the government of deliberately avoiding the surplus to put off for at least one more year the political pressure to lower taxes.
And the auditor general has refused to give federal books his stamp of approval because he says it is unorthodox to count spending years before it actually happens.
Martin insists he is being responsible and “transparent” by counting spending the year it is announced. It means the first official surplus since the late 1960s will not be proclaimed until spring, 1999.
