Joe Oliver kept with the quirky finance minister tradition of buying new shoes for Budget Day, selecting a rather on-the-nose brand to reflect an anticipated balanced budget.
Oliver bought a pair of New Balance brand sneakers at a Shoe Company store in North York, Ont. Monday, the day before he tables the budget in the House of Commons.
The choice makes Oliver the first federal finance minister on record to buy running shoes for budget day.
Canadian finance ministers traditionally buy a new pair of shoes ahead of tabling a budget. The origins of the tradition are unclear, but it dates back at least as far as the 1960s.
The first official record of the tradition goes back to Donald Fleming, who served as finance minister in John Diefenbaker's government from 1957 to 1962. A newspaper report from March 31, 1960 indicates Fleming bought new shoes before tabling the budget that day.
British finance ministers have a long history of bringing their own despatch box to Westminster on budget days, but the Parliament of Canada website says that practice has nothing to do with Canada's shoe tradition.
Oliver's predecessor, the late Jim Flaherty, had a colourful track record with the tradition. He bucked the trend and bought ice skates for his son in 2007, had his old shoes re-soled in 2008 and 2011, and splashed out $271 on a pair of fancy ECCOs in 2010.
Dress shoes are the most common purchase for finance ministers who follow the tradition, but there have been some oddities over the years.
In 1979, John Crosbie wore used mukluks for his one and only budget under Joe Clark.
Paul Martin only wore new footwear once during his tenure as finance minister under Jean Chretien. Chretien gave Martin a pair of new work boots for his first budget day, in 1994. Martin didn't carry on the tradition for any of his subsequent six budgets.
The tradition also exists in many provincial legislatures. Dress shoes are the norm, but there have been some memorable exceptions.
Stockwell Day wore inline skates to introduce a budget surplus when he was Alberta's treasurer, P.E.I. treasurer Pat Mella accepted a pair of sandals on budget day in 2002, and Nunavut finance minister Kelvin Ng wore caribou-skin boots to deliver the territory's first-ever budget in 1999.
