Reality check. The U.S. deficit represents 13.6 per cent of that country's gross domestic product (GDP); Japan's deficit, 9.9; Britain,9.8; France, 6.2; and Germany, 4.7 per cent.

So just how bad is Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's unwelcome news that Canada's deficit has flared to $50 billion?

Bad enough, apparently, that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff wants Flaherty fired - as does NDP Leader Jack Layton - and is threatening to bring down the Tory government and plunge us into a federal election.

So - once again - just how bad is it?

Well, that $50 billion, admittedly a pile of money, represents a meagre 3.3 per cent of Canada's GDP, roughly one-quarter of the deficit currently being chalked up by U.S. President Barrack Obama, apparently - to some at least - the greatest political leader in the history of the world if not the universe.

In other words, the opposition blather over the deficit is just that - much partisan blather signifying nothing.

It gets worse. Just a few months ago, the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois were on the verge of overturning the election results and forming an unholy coalition. Why? Because - wait for it - Prime Minister Stephen Harper was refusing to spend ENOUGH money to bail out all those Canadians caught in the current economic downturn. Throw the bum out, they screamed!

Then, when Harper unveiled his budget - and, to be fair, Flaherty didn't exactly come clean on his deficit predictions at the time - these same politicians yelled that the Tories were spending too much of your money and couldn't be counted on to run the economy. Off with their heads, they shouted! Ever since, the opposition parties- outraged at the lack of Tory spending - have continued to hammer the Tories for the apparent sin- and no, I'm not making this up - of not spending even more on a whole series of programs which the opposition thinks are necessary.

This is a double standard even by political practices.

Of particular note here is Ignatieff's ongoing, coastto coast campaign to force the Tories into pouring untold hundreds of millions into Employment Insurance, an issue so vital - according to Ignatieff - that it too could spark a later summer or early fall election.

But wait. Doesn't that mean even more spending and, with government revenues dropping because of the current economic situation - not to mention the billion dollar-plus bailouts of the auto industry - wouldn't that mean even higher deficits?

Not so, says Ignatieff. Why not, you may ask? Because Ignatieff says his EI plan is only temporary, not permanent, just until the economy gets up and rolling again.

Even if that were true - and what politician would beef up EI only to cut it down the road - the fact is that for whatever period it covered, given the size of the expense, it would mean even higher deficits. There's no getting away from that. None.

This is not to argue that the Tories are faultless in their handling of the economy. For me, it's a huge mistake to attempt to buy our way out of an economic mess. It never works. It just prolongs the pain.

But given the difficulties of trying to keep a minority government afloat - and Harper's penchant for big-time spending to boot - it was simply inevitable that Flaherty would have to listen to opposition threats and spend more of your dollars than he would like to spend.

Critics will say that the Tories are also at fault for cutting taxes before the recession, particularly cutting two percentage points off the GST. Nonsense. You can look it up. It may strike you as counter-intuitive, but cutting personal taxes historically means more government revenue, not less.

People have more money in their pockets so they spend it and governments reap the benefits. That's not what brought government revenue down. It's things like the precipitous collapse of major industries. That's something that no government could stop.

As for Ignatieff's increasingly hysterical threats about changing the EI structure, well, he must know that the current system - which has different standards for different parts of the country, depending upon their historical employment rates - was not the brainchild of a Tory government.

No, no. It was written and adapted by a previous Liberal government.

So while Ignatieff whines about negative Tory ads - and refuses to comment on just why, during his decades of working in the U.S. he constantly referred to his fellow Americans as "we" instead of "they" - he continues to attack the government for a)-profligate spending and b) miserly spending.

And they wonder why people shake their collective heads at politicians.