One has to feel just a bit of sympathy for federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, he don’t get no respect.

A blue-ribbon advisory panel of private-sector economists may have publicly concluded that it is possible, as Flaherty claims, to get rid of a $55-billion deficit by letting future economic growth take care of it.

But two days later, in early February, a former deputy minister of finance, Scott Clark, declared that not only it wasn’t possible but that it was misleading to say that such a goal could be achieved.

In fact, Clark, deputy finance minister from 1997 to 2000, said the current government’s talk took him back to 1983, when the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau also talked of growing its way out of an alarmingly large deficit.

Clark also said the March 4 budget just won’t be credible if the government sticks with its current fiscal policy, which of course includes a promise by Flaherty not to raise taxes or cut transfer payments.

With the Tories’ popularity slipping in the polls because of the recent prorogation mistake, it is highly unlikely the government will go back on its promises now. Hence, we are very likely to have a federal budget that will be dead on arrival to anyone looking for action against the deficit.

There was a time, not too long ago, when talk from a retired deputy minister about the government being misleading or not credible would have sparked a scandal in Ottawa. The Opposition would have howled for the finance minister’s resignation, prorogation or not.

But the presiding rule in Ottawa these days is that there are no rules.

Clark’s remarks created barely a ripple in the media. This is probably due to the upcoming budget, which is already being written off by many as a holding exercise until the real action against the deficit can begin.

In addition, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has succeeded so much in centralizing his power that the finance minister is now seen as being just another minister.

Just another budget tabled by just another minister. This is hardly what a country facing a $114-billion deficit by 2014 needs. As Parliamentary budget officer Stephen Page pointed out at the same speaking engagement as Clark, Ottawa is unlikely to tame a chronic deficit without a tough fiscal timetable that includes deficit targets it will honour.

Clark believes that a small part of the current deficit can be considered structural at this point. Action now against the structural portion of the deficit would indeed allow future economic growth to take care of most of the cyclical portion.

So far, in the pre-budget leaks coming from the government, there are no signs of firm action against the deficit. That’s because the Tories simply can’t afford it, from a political perspective.

Instead, we seem to be getting signs that the Tories will be using the 2008 report chaired by Bay Street guru Red Wilson on Canada’s competitiveness as a theme in the throne speech, which is to be delivered the day before the budget. Just as the Liberals, for so many years, liked to talk left and govern right, the Tories seem to be trying to cloak themselves as the party of free enterprise while presiding over a budget that is growing at a monstrous rate.

What seems certain is that the debate about what should be done about the deficit will resume almost as soon as this budget is tabled on March 4. We are likely to hear far more than we are now from groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which were so vocal in the days before the balanced budget of 1997.

Now that there seems to be consensus that proroguing Parliament on Dec. 30 was a bad idea, there will be a lesson that political strategists and tacticians of all stripes will be taking very seriously in the future: Internet-based opposition is a force to be reckoned with.

While it may be clear that the national outrage about prorogation cannot entirely be attributed to a Facebook group started by a graduate student in Edmonton, that group’s 220,000 members gave the issue enough traction to make it a popular cause in the traditional media.

More important, this wasn’t the first time such a thing has happened.

@page_break@The prime minister’s advisors probably wish they had taken a closer look at a similar use of Facebook in 2008 that followed the Ontario government’s plan to introduce draconian regulations affecting young drivers. That Facebook group only had 155,000 members. But that was more than enough to prompt the Ontario government to withdraw the proposed measures.

It is clear that digital advocacy has the ability to make abstract policy issues very tangible and real to ordinary people. In future, it won’t be as easy for governments to slide complicated matters past an indifferent public.

The federal Tories are likely to recover from the prorogation affair. But political strategists and tacticians probably won’t count on voter indifference again. We may be witnessing the beginning of a digital revolution in politics. IE