There is an old adage about Canadian electioneering: if it moves, buy it a drink; if it doesn’t, pave it.

Well, the Department of Finance was not pouring drinks (at least, not for the voters) on Budget Day. But our tax dollars were flying in all directions for all sorts of infrastructure, whether Canada will need it in the future or not. Bricks and mortar in the knowledge economy.

So, the Tim Horton’s crowd, to whom the Harper government desperately wants to attach itself, did well with this “Great Stimulus Budget.” That’s assuming, of course, that most of them have will jobs in the coming year(s).

As everyone knew before Budget Day, Canada will rack up combined deficits of $64 billion in the coming two fiscal years, bringing a decade of federal surpluses to an end. According to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, these deficits are temporary. (Try saying that with a straight face).

And, as Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff noted, conspicuously absent was any sign of a specific strategy to eliminate the deficit within the five years that the government is promising for a return to balanced budgets.

But deficits and loose fiscal policy weren’t the only things noteworthy in this budget. This might be the first federal budget relatively free of big awkward economist words, such as productivity. Nagging issues such as productivity will just have to wait.

There was something else very telling: at the budget lockup for journalists in Ottawa, there were dozens of Department of Finance employees standing around with nothing to do because of a dearth of technical questions from the media. Then again, their minister probably feels more and more like the Maytag repair man, as more and more economic policy comes out of the Prime Minister’s Office.

This was a political budget, no doubt about it.

Another telling thing about this budget is that the finance minister decided not to wait for Statistics Canada to report two consecutive quarters of contraction before informing Canadians the country was indeed in recession. But reassurances about Canada’s economy are no longer in the government’s message book — even though they may be in the Bank of Canada’s.

Now get out there and renovate your home, buy a computer, fix your potholes and update your bridges, Canada. Minister Flaherty needs you in his war on recession.

Just one thing, however: will there be enough economic stimulus to warrant the pain Canadians are going to face in future years to restore the fiscal prudence that has given us so much growth in the past decade? Perhaps spending smart will be a theme for a future budget.

That includes figuring out if the money we spend is leading to the results we want. We are still a country that spends $30 billion a year on education without tracking where graduates are most likely to find jobs, or are most likely to find jobs in the future. In fact, there is no authoritative source that keeps track of how many students are in community colleges in a given year. The European Union has a central education authority to track spending and results. So, should we? Because a 1% gain in literacy translates into GDP growth of 2.5%.

Sure, there were token gestures in the direction of planning for the future. This budget contained $225 million to start the process of bringing broadband to rural Canada. There was another $500 million for Canada Health Infoway to bring us closer to the electronic health records and data we need to truly modernize our health-care system. As the minister said in concluding his budget speech: “In this extraordinary time in our history, [spending resources] is also one of our most urgent responsibilities.’’

Comparisons of the current economic slowdown with the recessions of the early 1990s and early 1980s, and even the big one of the 1930s, are increasingly common. But statistically, it is hard to make such comparisons when the national unemployment rate is still well within single digits — 6.6% for December — and inflation is low.

In addition, the Bank of Canada has just forecast economic growth in 2010 of 3.8% — and a very short recession. Of course, the chief difference between this economic crisis and others of recent times is that the cause was a collapse of the global credit market, instead of central bankers ratcheting up interest rates to tame inflation.

@page_break@Until banks feel comfortable enough to start lending widely again, it’s not easy to see how Canada can spend its way out of a downturn. Perhaps this is why the Harper government included several measures aimed at unclogging credit markets. These measures, which include $70 billion in new available credit, were not highlighted much by the government. But they may be the most important part of the budget.

Canada’s economy may be in far better shape than its U.S. counterpart. But for the sake of optics, the Harper government is compelled to be seen to be matching the stimulus anticipated from the Obama administration. The Harper government also feels compelled to stay in power in Canada’s currently dysfunctional minority Parliament.

In fairness, the budgetary promise of a Federal Securities Act by the end of this year puts this government well on track to be the administration that finally brings order to Canada’s capital markets. And extending deposit insurance to tax-free savings accounts is certainly a prudent move.

But this budget demonstrates there is more than one reason to be grateful that recessions roll around only every nine or 10 years. IE