I'm laughing derisively because prior to the pandemic, two Conservative regimes were responsible for most of the federal debt.
Mulroney ran up $450 billion. Harper ran up $160 billion.
In fact, Harper inherited surplus budgets from the Liberals, and promptly flipped them into a string of huge deficits. And he didn't even have a pandemic to deal with.
Trudeau's spending to support the economy during the pandemic has resulted in a number of accomplishments.
Lowest Covid death rate in the first world (~1/3rd US and UK rate).
Record low unemployment. Highest workforce participation rate ever. Really great GDP growth compared to rest of G7.
I don't know exactly why conservatives are so often wrong. Maybe they just believe whatever they're told. Or maybe they enjoy being wrong.
Either way, it's why I rarely take them seriously.
While the liberals in the 1990s live off the success of 7% GST from Mulroney. The Liberals cut government spending so much, some called it the "decade of darkness" especially for gov departments that traditionally liberals didn't like, eg Dept of National Defence. Then the Liberals made a brilliant move; they cut the GST to 5%. Why, because they knew time was up and it was gonna be a conservative government, and it fucked them so bad.
The Harper government based its fruit on oil. Why, oil is a commodity, that was gonna be harder to find, and with diminishing oil reserves, oil prices were going to get higher. But the US started fracking and it dropped oil prices from over 100.00/barrel down to 40.00/barrel.
Seems like each successive government change only resulted in fucking over the next government and so on and so on.....
Imagine if Canadian governments worked for the Canadian people instead of playing politics and fucking over the Canadian population time and time again.
Canada is a resource country. Imagine if Canada passed a law that 70% of resources had to be refined in Canada. Imagine the manufacturing industry getting stronger. Canada needs to create a society that invents, does research etc. But instead we are just consumers of other high tech countries.
Lets get rid of the transfer payments. (Used to be Ontario, AB, BC were the have provinces). But it was Quebec who got the best from the deal. Actually the transfer payment existed to help maintain the population in Quebec (by creating incentives to stay in Quebec, instead of going to the boom places in Canada). This is because all seats in the parliament are based on the number of Quebec seats, based on population.
Canada needs to do 4 to 5 major construction projects, to keep the economy going. Pipelines, transportation (roads, train tracks for cargo and high speed passenger trains). Need to finance this in Canada only.
Need to do what the US does. Ships (from other countries) only allowed into 1 port. This only allows Canadian ships, to ship things by ships from the great lakes to Atlantic provinces or vise versa. Internal ships have to have a Canadian flag.
Break up monopolies like banks, resource companies etc. Create competition.
Take from the rich and make them pay more taxes....Go on a set tax rate, that get higher with income.
Go on a website in the US using a VPN. Google price of anything. Take into account dollars exchange, some shipping cost and the price is always way higher in Canada due to 1. Authorized dealer 2. Middle man companies jacking prices up (eg Amazon), 3. Its a patented item and therefore very expensive eg gortex.
please note that places that don't have patented items are mostly countries that don't have paten laws. namely Muslim countries and China.
