opinion
In last week’s federal budget, Jean ChrŽtien’s Liberals at long last revealed their true colors – a muddy mishmash of just about everything. A good comparison might be a homeowner who couldn’t make up his mind what color to paint his house, so just mixed together everything that was available.
In an era when government deficits and crippling debt are threatening to wreck social programs and undercut Canada’s influence in world trade relations, Ottawa is actually planning to incur $57 billion in additional deficits during the next two fiscal years.
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That’s on top of a deficit of $38 billion in the current fiscal year, and a national debt that reached $548 billion last year.
In per capita terms, that’s about the same as a free-spending family of five finding itself $100,000 in debt, and then drawing up a financial plan that would see them go $10,000 further in debt over the next two years.
No responsible banker would approve such a financial plan. No responsible voter should either.
In his budget speech, finance minister Paul Martin declared bravely:
“There are times in the progress of a people when fundamental challenges must be faced, fundamental choices made and a new course charted. … We can take the path – too well-trodden – of minimal change, of least resistance, of leadership lost. Or we can set out on a new road of fundamental reform, of renewal – of hope restored.”
Contrary to the way he described his choice, the Liberal government has – behind its smokescreen of well-publicized spending cuts – taken the path “of leadership lost.” It has not made the tough cuts and structural reforms needed for a radical change in its obscene deficits.
Deficits are not just academic concerns – they drive up interest costs for everyone, and create debts that rob resources from future generations.
In its attempt to appear all things to all people, however, the Liberals did make a show of substantial cuts in various programs – notably agriculture, where over the past few years farm families have done more belt-tightening and restructuring than federal Liberals can dream of. Loss of the Crow transportation subsidy will have particularly great impact on Prairie farmers.
But, as Toronto Globe and Mail writers perceptively suggested, the federal Liberals seem to feel that massive cuts in Western Canada’s key programs were necessary so that Quebec separatists would have less ability to complain about more moderate cuts in programs important to Quebec.
It’s nice to know farmers will be suffering for a good cause.
