‘We will have to do less of some of the things that we want to do,’ Carney says
[…]
“The upcoming budget will balance the operating deficit in three years by reducing wasteful government spending and doing more with less,” Carney said. “But the fact is, even with such efficiencies and with better management, we will have to do less of some of the things that we want to do, so we can do more of what we must do to build a bigger and better Canada.”
It remains unclear exactly what those sacrifices will be or how they will be distributed.
I’m all for reducing the deficit responsibly but what’s with the neoliberal obsession of balancing budgets? This isn’t a business, you’re caring for a nation.
Exactly. Everyone always yammering on about how Canada Post isn’t profitable. Are police forces profitable? Is road infrastructure profitable??Those questions are never asked.
Right??? Our geography dictates that there is no way to both be profitable and ensure that all areas of the country have access to mail service, which remains how much government correspondence is handled.
All physical government correspondence should go through Canada Post/Expresspost. Amazon/UPS anything American should be banned from all levels of Canadian government.
Agreed. By much correspondence, I was referring to how there are still some services that have not migrated to digital alternatives.
Mail should be considered a utility like electricity and access to potable water. It shouldn’t be restricted to profitable areas.
Demanding more of the rich is a sin under the church of capitalism.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
They aren’t balancing the budget, just jettisoning stuff they didn’t like and running a deficit.
Um, because NOT balancing a budget means massive amounts spent on the national debt. Currently Canada has to pay 1 BILLION A WEEK on interest alone. Thats your and my hard earned tax money being spent just to pay interest, not even paying down the actual debt.
Now imagine if we had a balanced budge AND we could pay off our debt, like the way any financially responsible, prudent person runs their household. What could 1 BILLION dollars a week buy Canada? Imagine spending that on building roads, hospitals, schools, and properly funding all our social programs. We could offer free university tuition to any Canadian who wants it. Hell, we could actually build up a decent Heritage Fund like Norway has, and provide security for the entire country even with a maniacal partner threatening us.
When AB paid off its provincial debt years ago under Klein, we still funded our programs and every AB citizen got a $400 cheque because we were in a surplus. Yes, it took austerity, but we weren’t wasting money on interest.
But instead our federal gov blows our tax money on interest payments. Just not logical.
Debt to do what. That’s the key. If we pay 1B/w to finance debt that was used to invest on stuff that is generating 1.1B/w, we have a net positive ROI. It’s the ROI that matters, not the financing cost.
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Well, 10 years ago when the Liberals took control our national debt was 692 billion. Today its 1.46 trillion.
So we’ve doubled the debt under the Liberals and is there ANY metric that says Canada is doing better now with our ROI than 10 years ago? Are we getting a good ROI on doubling our ‘investment’ under their strategy?
The Liberals honestly believe that we can spend our way to prosperity. With our tax dollars.
Thats not working.
I wonder what was going on in the world between 2020 and 2022…
src: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/canada/national-government-debt
Several things.
The gov was giving away 54 billion dollars with virtually no accountability in wage subsidies. AFTER the fact they tried to claw it back from the many who claim it illegitimately with very little success.
In total they gave out 360 billion which would be lovely if it actually went to where it was supposed to go, but we’ll never know because there was very little accountability when the cheques started rolling. There are plenty of scams when they gov even pretends to care about our dollars but during covid, they just printed money for anyone who stuck out their hand.
They were also giving out money hand over fist for things like the ArriveScam app. 60 million disappeared for nothing.
They also give out 323 million for a pharmaceutical plant in Quebec that never even broke ground.
They also spent 1 billion on vaccines that went to waste, not used or expired.
They also spent 807 million on 27000 ventilators and only 500 of them were actually used, the rest were scrapped still in their packaging.
They were giving contracts to people like Randy Boissenault, who was a sitting MP who was grifting the gov with his ‘not arms length’ medical supply company run by ‘the other Randy’
And while that was all going one, to top it off they were shoveling money out the door with the Green Slush Fund, for which the Auditor General found about $123 million in inappropriate contracts, $59 million in ineligible projects, and over $330 million in potential conflicts of interest. That’s YOUR tax dollar going to the Liberals friends for “development” of nothing in particular. When Parliament ordered the Liberals to open the books and show us where the money went, they prorogued and shut down the House. Nothing suspicious about that.
To say that this government is incredibly wasteful and sloppy with our money is an understatement.
But somehow, magically, this is all going to turn around now that Carney’s PM. Ok then, pardon me for not believing that. .
Everyone knows Libs caused COVID.
Jokes aside it’s very easy to criticize any decision during COVID after the fact, but it’s much harder to make the case you could have done it better with the facts at the time.
The Poilievre far right wing of the Conservatives would have let people die or have their lives destroyed. Blood for the
BloodEconomy God. I mean we are talking about the people who were cheering on the Convoy assholes.And now please stop imagining such nonsense and remember that a national budget is in no way comparable to that of a household.
Not directly comparable, but there are shared principles. The main one being “If you put everything on a credit card and just keep making those minimum payments, it eventually catches up with you and something catastrophic happens. If you don’t deal with it your kids will”
When we’re near the bottom of the barrel for GDP in such a resource rich country, there’s obviously something very wrong.