Getting the Government One Voted For

It's not their money that they are wasting.

It's yours:

Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge says the central bank has a year to 18 months to get inflation under control or risk a return to the “pretty awful era” between the mid-1970s and ’80s characterized by a lack of pricing predictability and social upheaval.

 

Who does that remind me of?

Oh, yes!:

Pierre Trudeau inherited a strong, growing and diversified Canadian economy.

When Trudeau at last left office for good in 1984, Canadians were still feeling the effects of Canada’s worst recession since the Great Depression. Eight years later, the country would tumble into another and even worse recession.

The two recessions 1981-82 and 1992-93 can both fairly be laid at Trudeau’s door.

Pierre Trudeau took office at a moment when commodity prices were rising worldwide. Then as now, rising commodity prices buoyed the Canadian economy. Good policymakers recognize that commodity prices fall as well as rise. A wise government does not make permanent commitments based on temporary revenues. Yet between 1969 and 1979 – through two majority governments and one minority – Trudeau tripled federal spending.

Nemesis followed hubris. Commodity prices dropped. Predictably, Canada tumbled into recession and the worst federal budget deficits in peacetime history.

Trudeau’s Conservative successor Brian Mulroney balanced Canada’s operating budget after 1984. But to squeeze out Trudeau-era inflation, the Bank of Canada had raised real interest rates very high. Mulroney could not keep up with the debt payments. The debt compounded, the deficits grew, the Bank hiked rates again – and Canada toppled into an even worse recession in 1992. By 1993, default on Trudeau’s debt loomed as a real possibility. Trudeau’s next successors, Liberals this time, squeezed even tighter, raising taxes, and leaving Canadians through the 1990s working harder and harder with no real increase in their standard of living.

Do Canadians understand how many of their difficulties of the 1990s originated in the 1970s? They should.

 

 

Remember - this is YOUR money that is being wasted:

Cabinet had no choice but to spend billions on a Volkswagen battery plant in Ontario, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday. Her remarks followed a Budget Office report warning the venture will cost taxpayers almost 20 percent more than estimated: “Canada had to be at the table.”

 

Yes there is a choice.

That choice is never to buy into this damn deal in the first place.

A government mouthpiece is always worth its weight in taxpayer money:

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez yesterday defended millions in federal subsidies for TV corporations despite cutbacks at the network with the largest audience, BCE Incorporated. Television broadcasters received more than $100 million in direct federal grants through the pandemic: “What’s not working?”

 

 

"Shut up!" they explained:

New Democrat and Liberal MPs yesterday sought to censure Conservative finance critic MP Jasraj Singh Hallan (Calgary Forest Lawn) in apparent retribution for a 37-day budget filibuster. “You want to get rid of me?” Hallan told the Commons finance committee: “I am not here to make friends.”

"How could this all happen?" one asks.

Well:

People have “limited levels of macroeconomic literacy,” the Bank of Canada said yesterday. The Bank complained people often failed to “understand and correctly interpret information” about deficits, inflation and central banking: “Scores are rather low.”