Photo: Reuters

There are two entirely different articles in the media today, which are essentially about the same thing. The Financial Post has a somewhat optimistic article about how Ottawa’s budget shortfall has shrunk, while the CBC is reporting quite the opposite. The CBC says that the federal deficit has grown $300-million in January. But in the Financial Post, it reports that the deficit for January is only $265-million.

The confusion is in the difference between the focus on reporting. The CBC is focusing on the fact that Ottawa added $300-million in overall debt to the fiscal deficit, while the actual budget shortfall for January is only $265-million.

Then the Financial Post compares the $265-million deficit from this year to the small $118-million surplus from a year ago. But if you flip to the CBC article, they report “Ottawa was running a $500-million surplus at this time last year.” So which is it? Were they running a $118-million surplus at this time last year, or a half billion dollar surplus?

The CBC also says that the September projection of a $56 billion deficit has been “little changed” by the March budget that announced a deficit of $53.8 billion. But the Financial Post focuses on the fact that with two months left to go in fiscal 2009-10, the deficit is $39.6-billion. If we posted a $265-million deficit for January, it stands to reason that we could finish at least $12-billion under the projected deficit by the budget. That’s an entirely different story than we’re being told by the CBC.

At the end of the the CBC article, they report that Ottawa has lost $17.7 billion in revenues compared with the previous year, with corporate tax receipts accounting for about one-third of the drop-off. But the Financial Post reports tax receipts climbed to $17.6-billion, or 12.4% in January on a year-over-year basis. This is the first such increase since the recession began its effects in October of 2008. The Financial Post reports that revenue from personal income taxes climbed 0.9%, while corporate tax receipts were up by 73%.

But where the Financial Post points to the 73% increase in corporate tax receipts, the CBC uses the less impressive figure of a $1.7-billion increase, and attributes it as a temporary gain “due to year-end settlements.”

The only parts that are exactly the same is the admission that roughly $17-billion of the deficit is attributed to the government’s 2-year, $48-billion economic stimulus plan.

For Employment Insurance, the CBC reports that EI payouts alone have increased by $5.1 billion or 41.4% in the first 10 months of the fiscal year. The Financial Post, on the other hand, finds a silver lining here. The payout of EI increased in January by 15.4%, but is the smallest increase in a while, with the three months previous ranging from 20% to 57%.

Across Canada, the number of beneficiaries on Employment Insurance notched a fourth month of decline in January, with 698,800 EI beneficiaries, down 47,700, or 6.4 per cent, from December.

There are a lot of numbers being thrown around, but how those numbers are used seems to greatly affect the way the economic situation is being presented to Canadians.