Once upon a time, back before social media made politics all about image and  spin, fall economic updates were all about numbers and projections—all nicely charted on graphs that could be easily read and evaluated.

Not anymore.

Anyone listening to federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau's update last week would likely come away thinking that everything was tickedy-boo with our nation's economy when nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth, in fact, is pretty ugly.

The truth is that the Trudeau Liberals have worsened our economic future by inflicting us with higher than promised deficits. They promised us a deficit ceiling of no more than $10 billion but left us this year with one of $19 billion.

Yet they expect us to believe they are prudent.

Right now our economy is booming, which is an opening for any fiscally-responsible government to take advantage of the good times to start paying down the debt and deficit, lower the debt-to-GDP ratio, and put the country on the track to a balanced budget.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may think that budgets balance themselves but they don't.

They take a lot of hard work.

Image and spin cannot change reality.

They will not change the fact that the Liberals' promise to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio to 27% by 2019 has it sitting today at 31.4% and growing.

Image and spin, and talk about “sunny ways,” will not change the fact that unwieldy debt reduces a government's ability to fund the programs that mean the most to Canadians.

No one can spend their way to prosperity no more than Visa or MasterCard will forgive any debt accumulated in order to put an extravagant number of gifts under this year's Christmas trees.

But credit-card managers do love their huge interest rates, just as do the international  brokerages who loan money to federal and provincial governments.

They can't lose.

The only losers are the taxpayers who bought into the image and the spin inherent in a social-media world and, in the case of Canadians, elected the Trudeau Liberals in the belief they'd be both honest and fiscally competent.

That'll teach us.