Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau came out with his fiscal update this week.

He says deficit spending will be down thanks to a growing economy.

Not surprisingly Foothills MP John Barlow questioned Morneau's math skills.

"Their one victory here is their deficit has gone from $30 billion to $20 billion. And if you want to say that's a good news update, I think how you gauge victory is certainly different than how a regular Canadian would gauge a win."

Barlow says one area the budget update failed was in the hundreds of millions of dollars the Feds want to spend to legalize marijuana next July.

Barlow says much of the work for regulating and selling it will be downloaded onto local government.

"Municipalities will be the one's who are going to be burdened with trying to implement these marijuana laws, they're going to be the ones who have to decide where it's sold, how it's sold, how it's distributed, who can sell it. So the Federal Government is really saying, we're going to legalize marijuana, now it's up to the municipalities and the Province's to figure out how to do it."

$526 million over five years will be spent in enforcement issues around legalizing marijuana, while another $150 million will go towards devising and implementing new laws against drug impaired driving.

 

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