Harper never balanced a budget in his life. The conservatives used fancy number crunching to make it appear as though they had balanced the budget. The conservative base bought it, but not the majority of Canadians. When the liberals took office, they found a 3 billion dollar discrepancy in the books. Harper gave tax cuts to corporations, but (as usual), it all went straight  into the pockets of wealthy executives and presidents. Not a single penny was spent to create jobs or improve wages. That is why the economy continued to struggle.