This is what the annual ritual of the budget has become in Canada. It is not, as you might think, a time to place before the public a full and accurate account of the government's financial situation, together with an outline of the tax and spending measures it intends to introduce in the coming year. It is to hide what one cannot misrepresent, to fudge what one cannot conceal.

It used to be that finance ministers tried to make the books look better than they were. Now the game is "hide the surplus," presenting the public with figures the minister knows to be false in hopes that financial markets will see through the deception.

If it passes, barely, as fiscal policy, it fails utterly as democratic government.

The whole budget, in fact, is one long, slow, smirking wink. The Finance minister, having originally forecast deficits of $24-billion in 1996-97 (actual figure: $9-billion) and $17-billion in 1997-98 (actual figure: zero, if not a small surplus), asks us to believe that he will precisely balance the budget in each of the next two fiscal years: that is, to make not even the most tentative foray into surplus territory. If this were true, it would be the worst sort of foolishness.

A country in the later innings of an economy cycle, with a secession crisis on the near horizon and an aging population clouding the country's fiscal prospects for the longer term, a policy of maintaining a constant $583-billion public debt, ad infinitum, is simply not credible.

But of course, the minister has no intention of doing any such thing. It isn't only the $3-billion contingency reserve Martin keeps in his pocket each year that would be set against the debt. Hidden within the budget is a "whoops" factor of between $6-billion and $9-billion per year, thanks to a set of economic assumptions that are, to say the least, cautious in the extreme.

Revenues, having bounded ahead by more than 8 per cent in 1996-97, suddenly slow to a trot: less than 5 per cent growth in the fiscal year just ending and barely 3 percent in each of the next two years, even before the budget's tax cuts. Debt service charges, which rode falling interest rates to a decline of $3-billion over the last two years, are mysteriously forecast to rise more than $3.5-billion over the next two.

Must we play these silly games? By any reasonable forecast, the government is likely to retire at least $15-billion of the debt by the end of fiscal 1999 -- more than it plans to raise spending or cut taxes, combined. The Finance minister, following recent practice, will issue an "update" each October in which he will profess himself shocked -- shocked -- to discover that the books for the previous year, far from balancing as he had predicted, were in fact in substantial surplus.

Now, I might argue that the government should pay down the debt faster.

Others might prefer a slower schedule. But all of us, whatever our views, are entitled to be told just what our government actually intends to do.

Maybe the minister prefers to conceal the size of the impending surplus, to ward off irresponsible demands for more spending or deeper tax cuts. But that is no more than to practice government by lies.

It is not only in its projections for the future that the budget misstates the public's finances. Recent budgets have loaded so many social benefits onto the revenue side of the ledger, packaging as "tax cuts" what are in fact spending increases -- the current installment adds a caregiver tax credit, on top of an education savings tax credit and an enriched child tax benefit -- that it is difficult to say with any certainty how much the government spends or taxes even now, or where the line should be drawn between the two.

I don't say this is bad policy -- the tax system is a highly efficient delivery vehicle -- but it does rather cloud the debate. If we are to know the true size and reach of government, then either these tax credits should be counted as spending, or the budget should include some figure for gross revenues, before any rebates -- that is, the total amount of money that passes through the state's hands, and over which it exercises control.

On top of all this, the budget casts a curtain across the year 1999. As before, we are allowed to peer no more than one year into the future. There is no long-term fiscal plan, no goals or benchmarks, just those rolling two-year targets. If the minister has any such vision himself, he is not prepared to share it with the public.

So we stumble along in our blindfolds, democracy in the dark, while the minister winks to the markets.