When I slid through Vancouver airport on Sunday morning, I was sure that’s how the Alamo felt before the Mexicans attacked.  There were, literally, armies of security staff ready for what was expected to be the worst one-day onslaught in Canadian aviation history. Forty thousand  passengers, nine hundred flights, hours of delays and even a special terminal built to be used – if you can believe it – for just one day.

Yeah, The Olympics were cool, even when a business traveller like me ran headlong into them on two separate trips. But what I saw and heard suggests the cost will also be Olympian – six billion, with a billion alone for security. And how much did it cost to cover a mountainside with snow carried in by helicopter?

But this is not about the games. It’s about government. And us.

BC will be paying for this for a long time, as the province’s budget this week will suggest. It’s widely expected people will be seeing more schools close, more essential services curtailed, user fees go up and, of course, the HST arrive.

Like Ontario and Alberta, BC will be mired in deficits for years to come. In fact, add in Quebec (where debt now accounts for 94% of the entire economy), and the picture is brutal. It means higher provincial taxes and less spending. Meanwhile on Thursday we get a federal budget that will formally announce the greatest budget deficit in national history, as the country slides towards a $600 billion debt.

Here’s why this stuff matters: Add in the aging population and the crappy global economy, along with America’s worrisome decline, and you have a recipe for semi-permanent deficits in Canada. In fact, if we stay on this path, within thirty years our debt will equal over 300% of the economy. At that point nobody will lend us money, our currency will be used on board games and we’ll have Detroit-style house prices.

So, obviously, that won’t happen. Instead, governments will raise taxes and slash spending, while at the same time they pray for an economic boom (which won’t come). These things are now totally inevitable. The GST is going back up. There will probably be a new surtax on the ‘rich’ (starting at around 100K income). There may be a spec tax on houses. Plus new land transfer levies. RRSP contributions will go from being deductions to credits. The costs of a passport will soar along with user fees for air travellers and drivers.

As for spending, the inevitable result of cuts will include higher university tuition, a two-tiered medical system and no more free garbage pick-up.

This will all take some time, of course. For example, there will be no GST increase until after the next federal election – which will be waged on the promise of no tax hikes. But it’s best to start preparing now.

The world we are moving into will be one of reduced government services, and less disposable income. Even if interest rates are kept below market levels for a while, higher taxes and fees and the inflation they’ll breed will blow a hole in family budgets. Simply stated, there will be no room for a real estate bubble, and no fuel to keep it inflated. The insanity of the last 10 months will become apparent – a time in which young people without money bought better homes than their parents ever owned, using 95% leverage at the very top of the market, backed by the government.

It’s a recipe for negative equity, as it is for consumer shock.

The games are over, dude. This is budget season. The suits have taken the torch from the latex.

And it sure as hell is a good time to exit Vancouver.