(This column originally appeared in The Toronto Sun)

When you’re bad at your job, but you’re hoping to hang onto it anyway, it helps if you can show you understand what you need to do to improve.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau hasn’t been very good at his job, as measured against his government’s own promises. He didn’t deliver a balanced budget in 2019; he ran a $26 billion deficit. He also failed to lower the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures the amount of debt the government is carrying relative to the size of the economy, to 27%.

But while he can’t erase his past failure to keep spending under control, Morneau can at least prevent himself from repeating the same mistake again. And that means laying out a realistic plan to finally balance the budget, and to actually stick to it this time. Unfortunately for Morneau, it will probably be a higher hill to climb than simply doing it right the first time.

Start first with the economy. When the Liberals came to power in late 2015, the Canadian economy was arguably soft, having just experienced its only two quarters of negative growth since 2009. But that turned out to be a blip: since 2015, there has only been a single negative quarter of growth, and tax revenues have consistently been higher than projected. This is the economic environment in which Morneau was running up deficits double and triple the size the Liberals promised.

It has now been 11 years since Canada experienced a bona fide recession, meaning it is only a question of time before the next one arrives. Showing some spending restraint today will cushion the blow of any drop in revenues, and prevent interest charges from pulling us down even further.

Climbing out of deficits is a lot harder than plunging into them, which probably explains why federal governments of all stripes have only run twelve surpluses out of the last fifty years. The Harper government ran a massive deficit following the 2008 recession, even though there’s a very strong case that doing so was totally unnecessary. Harper at least showed enough discipline to get back into balance by 2015.

Contrast that with Ontario’s government which went into deficit at the same time using the same justifications, but instead of clawing its way back to balance, it simply bled red ink for an entire decade, leaving the province in a fiscal mess that persists to this day.

So with his fifth budget coming within weeks, Morneau needs to do what he’s been putting off for the last four years: lay out a plan to get the budget balanced and show the discipline necessary to stick to it.

Canadians have already been saddled with tens of billions in extra debt thanks to his past failures. The least he can do is give them some hope that eventually we can stop living beyond our means, and start paying down the tab we’ve racked up.