It’s everybody’s favourite time in Ottawa: BUDGET WEEK! Yay!
Ok, so maybe it’s not that exciting. For our throwback this week I went digging for interesting tidbits in really old budgets, but those also turned out to be not so exciting! Who knew.
What I did come across though, was a strange tradition that the Minister of Finance would wear new shoes when presenting the new budget to the House. A little further searching as to the origins of this revealed that the Library of Parliament did their own thorough investigation into this tradition, and summarized it into a beautiful chart that I could not possibly hope to outdo. As it turns out, Donald Fleming was the first confirmed minister to wear new shoes, for the budget day in 1960, and it’s unknown where or how this custom came about.
Nevertheless Bill Morneau has again followed suit this year, sporting a $250 pair from the Edmonton company Poppy Barley.