The biggest elephant in the room is the concept of "universality", and for governments to have any hope of reducing the cost of operations there is going to have to be a massive shift in the public's perception and expectations of what government should do for us.
There is no business or philosophical case to be made for shutting down private health plans that cover well rounded dental and drug coverage and replacing it with a universal public plan that reduces coverage and creates a new bureaucracy that is destined to morph into an unwieldy mess. And yet the NDP sold their souls to the Trudeau Liberals to get started on "free" dental and drug benefits.
Why are business professionals in households earning two hundred thousand dollar salaries hogging $10/day daycare spots?
Why do politicians continue to pretend that private investment in healthcare services is evil, and that a better option is to starve sick people for access to proper and timely care? I suppose that the universal principles of equal pain and misery for all is something to be proud of.
Universality is a concept of an earlier time when the government footprint on society was small and the bill was a small part of the gdp. The bill is getting out of hand and is being propped up by deficit spending. Some political courage is required.
Toss in the CPP and that bureaucratic scam too! The CPP should be seperate from the government in an untouchable account that I can direct the management of. Maybe with a list of approved blue chip companies one can own. And the money would be all mine and when I die my survivors get all of it Instead it's a ponzi scheme that benefits it's bureaucrats.
The broader topic of pensions and benefits in the public service vs. private sector is another topic that is need of an adult conversation.
The defined pension plans are a pipe dream for average working people as are many perks of public service employment. The gap is widening and is not only unsustainable in a general sense but also socially disruptive in an era when so much focus is being placed on "equity".
The current workforce ecosystem of working from home is the newest disrupter in societal cohesion, with public service unions up in arms over their membership being called back into the office. There is ample evidence that some who are reluctant to go back into offices have preschoolers underfoot and are dodging daycare costs while working at home. Is that an unfunded perk? Is an employee able to focus on work when a toddler is underfoot all day?
You are so right on. But governments will always be against private investment in services. If everyone looked after themselves there would be less need for government . The sound of clients begging for alms is music to government’s ears. 😡
The reason for the obsession on universality is cultural. There is a perception that services are better if the "rich" have to live with them as well. There is also the "line up with everyone else" classism of "making the rich wait with everyone else." (Nevermind how naive that is). Egalité means everyone prospers or suffers together, whether they like it or not.
The problem for these folks in a multicultural country like Canada is that most immigrants come from a culture where this line of thinking is foreign. After all, why should my family suffer so that a "lazy, spendthrift stranger" theoretically receives free care?
This cultural thinking falls in line with Emmanuel Todd's thinking of family dynamics, etc.
As for CPP and what Alberta thinks it wants, the current system and the proposed system in Alberta (and Quebec's system) all suck for business people, the self employed and anyone with a lick of financial sense and discipline. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. What the system pays out pales in comparison to what one could do on their own with a robo advisor in 2025.
Alberta should just import the Australian system verbatim, make it mandatory but also have it self managed if you want.
That horrifies a huge number of people because they would then have to worry about being productive and earning money to pay for more things, rather than doing nothing all day, collecting benefits, and hitting up the doctor's office every week to pad their file for their 5 km/h car accident litigation claim justifying why they can't work ever again.
We've taken the English sense of equality and fair play and blended it with the French expectations of positive rights and strong government looking out for common people. It's an ideal situation for petty fraudsters.
Very much enjoyed this article. A morning laugh is always appreciated!
Canadians will tolerate deficit spending, not due to some thoughtful reason but because we believe government is there to look after us and because we, as a nation, don't much understand economics and are, at our core, socialists. The only way we resist a deficit is if it threatens to take away our entitlements.
History really shouldn't be kind to Justin Trudeau at all, and I hope when he tries his inevitable sly rehabilitation public relations program, the people and the scholars both push back hard. If not for his spendthrift ways over the last 10 years, Carney would have still had a deficit, but it would have been a lot more modest one (and on a smaller pile of debt, too).
Tangentially, the Harper government does have some responsibility for low military spending, bottoming out at 1%, but at least they had a balanced budget by 2015 (and for those who quibble about selling GM stock but refuse to subtract the purchase from the 2008 deficit, there was a clear improvement in the budget position every year from 2009 on, so a theoretical 2016 Harper budget definitely would have been in surplus). The only reason Trudeau has a higher military spending, besides lumping in more programs into military spending, is he had such profligate spending (topping out at 18% of GDP versus Harper's 14%) that some of his 'drunken as a sailor' spending landed on actual sailors too.
"Stop spending away our children's future...". The rallying call behind balancing the budgets in the nineties. Climbing out of that debt hole was painful and the government is supposed to have corporate memory. That cannot be expected of those who had yet to be born.
Deficit spending will, of course, be painted as investing in our future, but incentivizing private industry and removing trade barriers within the country, and without, would be far more beneficial. But that would not allow the LPC to take credit. The real goal. An own goal.
Yeah, this is what I would also say in response to the writer's observations. Wouldn't it be nice if our leaders did what was right whether or not there was political gain to be had...
The best way for the government to incentivize private industry is for the government to buy lots of stuff from private industry. That also creates lots of labour demand that benefits "our children".
Government 'efficiency' is always the target that never seems to be hit in terms of improvement. It basically means 'same output' for 'less input' - six clever civil servants instead of ten slackers. Conceptually easy enough but accomplishing this seems to be an impossibility.
The issue, it seems to me, is the thorny issue of transfers to individuals and other levels of government. Might as well toss in debt interest payments. This is where the big money is and adjusting these areas is difficult to understate matters. For me, starting 'universal' day care, 'universal' pharma care and 'universal' dental care are three 'entitlements that we cannot afford and need to be dropped. The population staggered on without them in the past and can do so in the future. None of these Liberal/NDP 'triumphs' are remotely universal and none of them can be afforded particularly now that we're in the land of 'guns' not 'butter'. Provincial social services are available, no doubt woefully inadequate but that is each province's challenge, not the federal government's, and be can addressed, or should be addressed, to help the truly needy in terms of all three areas. Everyone else, sort it out as done in past dark days.
Healthcare and Equilisation likely need a look, big ticket items to be sure, but seem sacrosanct. And that is the trouble. Every. single. programme. is. sacrosanct. for. someone. We don't have the wealth to provide services that some want government to provide so I think we need to draw in our horns and focus on doing better and reduce expectations.
This is not, of course, happy news and we live in a world of happy news only. I wish Carney all the luck in the world.
OAS is the biggest problem that needs to be fixed. Everything else is an order of magnitude or two less in terms of dollars. My parents have assets in the eight figures and yet receive both. That's madness, even if some is clawed back. OAS is something like 80 billion a year today, and will be 135 billion or so by 2035: https://globalnews.ca/news/11329727/old-age-security-changes/
Even minor tweaks shake out billions; major reform it's in the tens of billions. And it's political suicide to touch it. Let's see if Carney has the balls to do what is necessary.
Totally agree - we have the technology to target those who need these programmes far more than others who get them due to 'universality'. We can't afford universality. So, the whole concept needs tackling.
I am nervous about growing our deficit but I accept the need for short-term pain. My grandkids will have to shoulder that burden. That bothers me. I think the Achilles heel for this government is news reports of graft, enriching buddies, fraud and non-competitive contracts. Those things will kill Carney’s government in a flash.
Every Canadian politician, from PM to local councillor, promises cake and no heartburn. The reality, to avoid dumping a financial burden on our children & grandchildren (gens X & Alpha), is we must ask our governments to stop paying for some things. Dental, pharma & childcare are top of the list. We did without them only 5 years ago. Business subsidies should also go along with lower income limits on OAS.
Real government expense reduction plus some tax increases (income & sales) are needed to actually run surpluses that will allow paying off our debt.
Carney said this time, things are different. What he's proposing won't fix the problem.
So making dental, pharma, and childcare more expensive is not burdensome for our children and grandchildren? Shutting down businesses and firing civil servants is good for our children and grandchildren's incomes?
Remember that the federal deficit is the private sector's surplus. Running a government surplus takes money out of the private sector.
I'll be honest--I was attempting to be provocative in order to make a point about entitlements.
People seem willing to volunteer others' "go to" entitlements for shrinkage or cancellation, but when THEIR "go to" entitlements are threatened, the same people feel quite threatened.
For the record, I'm in my mid-60s, but I'm deeply concerned that successive governments in Canada have been far too quick to favour "the oldsters" (to secure their votes), while essentially ignoring the needs of young adult Canadians who face soooo many expenses that my generation didn't have to contend with.
I don't think it's necessary to be punitive to seniors. We should mandate that pension funds put 100% of their investment in Canada. It's crazy that we let them send a couple trillion to other countries. That would be a massive boost to business investment and incomes to support workers and young families.
I get where you're coming from, but invest in what, exactly?
There's very sound reasons why private capital has fled this country.
Do 'we' (I assume you mean the government) really want to mandate that our pension funds be invested in our corrupt, inefficient, lazy, oligopolistic, rent-seeking Canadian firms?
That'll not only drive more investment out of Canada, but it'll drive anyone with a brain and a minimum of financial acumen out of this country as well.
Better to invest in our own oligopolies than in someone else's....
There's a chicken and egg situation. Innovative companies go to the US because that's where the money is. If we didn't let pension funds drain trillions out of the Canadian economy, there would be a whole lot more money here to fund new ventures.
And there's government debt. Municipalities are chronically under-invested, as is the military and transportation and energy and housing, etc etc etc. One could easily make a trillion dollar list of needs.
When a politician says he is going to “invest” it scares me. “Investment” decisions inevitably get bogged down in political considerations to the point that vast sums are invested unproductively (battery plants?; Bombardier?; Trans Mountain?).
I would much prefer that the Prime Minister and his energy minister make an appointment with the ceo of Trans Canada Pipeline (for starters, then other energy companies, mining companies, etc.) and say “What do I have to do to make Canada a place that you would want to invest billions in”? “Deal with politically oriented veto’s (provincial or aboriginal as examples)? Deal with regulation that strangles new initiatives?”. “Just give us a list of what is holding you up and we will work tirelessly to remove obstacles”.
Wouldn’t that be a much better approach than wasting public capital letting cloistered dorks in Ottawa make such important decisions like “investment”?
Canadians voted in the same bunch of incompetent, inept, ineffective liberal MP’s… there is no perception of incompetence, there is real incompetence. Carney is just lucky Canadians are so gullible, uninformed and apathetic.
Why Carney can get away with big deficits is simply because he is PM and there is no one who can stop him. As a greenology zealot and a Trudeau-whisperer, his aim is to destroy Canada anyway.
PM Mark Carney, the extremely overrated paper mouse.
One more thing going for Carney is that Canadian deficits of ~1.5% GDP are going to look pretty good compared with US deficits that are 6.5% and rising. Canadians always measure themselves relative to Americans, and the fiscal incontinence of America since 2020 is going to make Canadians feel superior.
The rule of holes remains unchanged. When in a hole, stop digging.
We are already smug and, compared with our potential, European trade partners, in great shape. Britain's debt is almost 100% of its GDP. France is an economic basket case, with Mr. Macron musing about IMF debt protection. Germany's GDP shrank for two years straight with projections of third time unlucky.
Canada's GDP per capita is that of Alabama's, so wipe that smirk off your face, y'all.
Canadians don’t need to look at relative deficits to feel superior. Just ask Doug Ford - or any Ottawa civil servant or Cabinet minister 😆😆😆. As the song goes….It’s hard to be humble when…
It's so funny to listen to people complain about how messed up Canada is and oh how expensive things are and incomes are so low and look at how much better things are in the US with their big cheap homes and big paycheques, and they never seem to connect that the US is prosperous BECAUSE of their huge deficit and Canada is stagnating BECAUSE of our low deficit. We should be embarrassed to have such tiny government debt.
70% don't think we need deficits....but what are they prepared to give up to balance? I've heard "government efficiencies" as the solution to budget issues for 50 years. They aren't there to be found.
'Over the longer term, though, ongoing deficits are likely to reinforce views that the government is either inefficient or incompetent.'
Either? Why not both inefficient AND incompetent?
This current Liberal regime (which is largely the same as the one under Trudeau) has demonstrated neither competence nor efficiency since being elected. Their 'predecessors' under the 'leadership' of PMJT, on the other hand, produced reams of factual data over the course of that clearly demonstrate their inefficiency AND incompetence on nearly all government files.
This is not perception, it's reality. Even the folks duped into voting for this continuing clown show knew that - they just didn't want to vote for the Conservatives and especially their leader.
I've nothing personally against Mr. Carney - he may be honest and sincere (though I'm doubtful of that as well) in wanting to improve management of Canadian finances under his tenure.
I just don't believe he can pull it off with his supporting cast, and how far that gang has buried us under the Canadian outhouse and its contents over the past decade.
Nothing stops the government deficit train. Not here. In England. In America, Germany, France. Everywhere in the west. We will continue to crowd out productive investments in favor of government subsidies for preferred programs. Increased spending will continue to run smack into the wall of diminishing returns. The governments diminishing ability to wring out what people want from it's use of our capital combined with the desire of the population to avoid the inevitable pain means increasing spending today will ensure perpetually increasing deficits and a dismal future. Until sometime down the road everything breaks. The past 10 years have shown that truth to the youth in this country. It is not better now, that is why people want to have the government spend and spend. For now, nothing stops this train.
Nah, the bond market is waking up. Long term rates are starting to rise for more than a few developed countries, and it doesn't take much more for things to get uncomfortable. Hence why Carney has already dropped the "A" word. He knows what's coming. I think Canada's pretty far down the list for likelihood of a crisis. Something has to give with Japan sooner or later, you'd think.
Governments, Japan included, can’t stop spending in the west. People won’t let them. Glad you see Canada is on the list. Carney gets to Christmas in my books. So far not a great start.
The biggest elephant in the room is the concept of "universality", and for governments to have any hope of reducing the cost of operations there is going to have to be a massive shift in the public's perception and expectations of what government should do for us.
There is no business or philosophical case to be made for shutting down private health plans that cover well rounded dental and drug coverage and replacing it with a universal public plan that reduces coverage and creates a new bureaucracy that is destined to morph into an unwieldy mess. And yet the NDP sold their souls to the Trudeau Liberals to get started on "free" dental and drug benefits.
Why are business professionals in households earning two hundred thousand dollar salaries hogging $10/day daycare spots?
Why do politicians continue to pretend that private investment in healthcare services is evil, and that a better option is to starve sick people for access to proper and timely care? I suppose that the universal principles of equal pain and misery for all is something to be proud of.
Universality is a concept of an earlier time when the government footprint on society was small and the bill was a small part of the gdp. The bill is getting out of hand and is being propped up by deficit spending. Some political courage is required.
Toss in the CPP and that bureaucratic scam too! The CPP should be seperate from the government in an untouchable account that I can direct the management of. Maybe with a list of approved blue chip companies one can own. And the money would be all mine and when I die my survivors get all of it Instead it's a ponzi scheme that benefits it's bureaucrats.
The broader topic of pensions and benefits in the public service vs. private sector is another topic that is need of an adult conversation.
The defined pension plans are a pipe dream for average working people as are many perks of public service employment. The gap is widening and is not only unsustainable in a general sense but also socially disruptive in an era when so much focus is being placed on "equity".
The current workforce ecosystem of working from home is the newest disrupter in societal cohesion, with public service unions up in arms over their membership being called back into the office. There is ample evidence that some who are reluctant to go back into offices have preschoolers underfoot and are dodging daycare costs while working at home. Is that an unfunded perk? Is an employee able to focus on work when a toddler is underfoot all day?
You are so right on. But governments will always be against private investment in services. If everyone looked after themselves there would be less need for government . The sound of clients begging for alms is music to government’s ears. 😡
The reason for the obsession on universality is cultural. There is a perception that services are better if the "rich" have to live with them as well. There is also the "line up with everyone else" classism of "making the rich wait with everyone else." (Nevermind how naive that is). Egalité means everyone prospers or suffers together, whether they like it or not.
The problem for these folks in a multicultural country like Canada is that most immigrants come from a culture where this line of thinking is foreign. After all, why should my family suffer so that a "lazy, spendthrift stranger" theoretically receives free care?
This cultural thinking falls in line with Emmanuel Todd's thinking of family dynamics, etc.
As for CPP and what Alberta thinks it wants, the current system and the proposed system in Alberta (and Quebec's system) all suck for business people, the self employed and anyone with a lick of financial sense and discipline. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. What the system pays out pales in comparison to what one could do on their own with a robo advisor in 2025.
Alberta should just import the Australian system verbatim, make it mandatory but also have it self managed if you want.
That horrifies a huge number of people because they would then have to worry about being productive and earning money to pay for more things, rather than doing nothing all day, collecting benefits, and hitting up the doctor's office every week to pad their file for their 5 km/h car accident litigation claim justifying why they can't work ever again.
The Canadian dream. Get paid out and move to the cottage to go out to pasture.
We've made profiting from helplessness the ideal outcome in almost every situation.
We've taken the English sense of equality and fair play and blended it with the French expectations of positive rights and strong government looking out for common people. It's an ideal situation for petty fraudsters.
Very much enjoyed this article. A morning laugh is always appreciated!
Canadians will tolerate deficit spending, not due to some thoughtful reason but because we believe government is there to look after us and because we, as a nation, don't much understand economics and are, at our core, socialists. The only way we resist a deficit is if it threatens to take away our entitlements.
So yeah! Thanks for the laugh!
Voters can be relied on to vote to protect their entitlements.
If people get even a whiff of risk to those, they get their elbows all the way up.
Debt is for someone else's kids to pay... right?
We are socialists because we are cheap. Of course we love having someone else take care of our grown up responsibilities.
😆😆😆🙏🙏👍👍
History really shouldn't be kind to Justin Trudeau at all, and I hope when he tries his inevitable sly rehabilitation public relations program, the people and the scholars both push back hard. If not for his spendthrift ways over the last 10 years, Carney would have still had a deficit, but it would have been a lot more modest one (and on a smaller pile of debt, too).
Tangentially, the Harper government does have some responsibility for low military spending, bottoming out at 1%, but at least they had a balanced budget by 2015 (and for those who quibble about selling GM stock but refuse to subtract the purchase from the 2008 deficit, there was a clear improvement in the budget position every year from 2009 on, so a theoretical 2016 Harper budget definitely would have been in surplus). The only reason Trudeau has a higher military spending, besides lumping in more programs into military spending, is he had such profligate spending (topping out at 18% of GDP versus Harper's 14%) that some of his 'drunken as a sailor' spending landed on actual sailors too.
Trudeau's inevitable rehab PR campaign will not be sly.
Like his father, his will be shameless, and peddled endlessly by the usual suspects.
I still have nightmares of the endless television loops of Trudeau I paddling his canoe.
"Stop spending away our children's future...". The rallying call behind balancing the budgets in the nineties. Climbing out of that debt hole was painful and the government is supposed to have corporate memory. That cannot be expected of those who had yet to be born.
Deficit spending will, of course, be painted as investing in our future, but incentivizing private industry and removing trade barriers within the country, and without, would be far more beneficial. But that would not allow the LPC to take credit. The real goal. An own goal.
Yeah, this is what I would also say in response to the writer's observations. Wouldn't it be nice if our leaders did what was right whether or not there was political gain to be had...
Dreaming in colour.
For sure
The best way for the government to incentivize private industry is for the government to buy lots of stuff from private industry. That also creates lots of labour demand that benefits "our children".
Government 'efficiency' is always the target that never seems to be hit in terms of improvement. It basically means 'same output' for 'less input' - six clever civil servants instead of ten slackers. Conceptually easy enough but accomplishing this seems to be an impossibility.
The issue, it seems to me, is the thorny issue of transfers to individuals and other levels of government. Might as well toss in debt interest payments. This is where the big money is and adjusting these areas is difficult to understate matters. For me, starting 'universal' day care, 'universal' pharma care and 'universal' dental care are three 'entitlements that we cannot afford and need to be dropped. The population staggered on without them in the past and can do so in the future. None of these Liberal/NDP 'triumphs' are remotely universal and none of them can be afforded particularly now that we're in the land of 'guns' not 'butter'. Provincial social services are available, no doubt woefully inadequate but that is each province's challenge, not the federal government's, and be can addressed, or should be addressed, to help the truly needy in terms of all three areas. Everyone else, sort it out as done in past dark days.
Healthcare and Equilisation likely need a look, big ticket items to be sure, but seem sacrosanct. And that is the trouble. Every. single. programme. is. sacrosanct. for. someone. We don't have the wealth to provide services that some want government to provide so I think we need to draw in our horns and focus on doing better and reduce expectations.
This is not, of course, happy news and we live in a world of happy news only. I wish Carney all the luck in the world.
OAS is the biggest problem that needs to be fixed. Everything else is an order of magnitude or two less in terms of dollars. My parents have assets in the eight figures and yet receive both. That's madness, even if some is clawed back. OAS is something like 80 billion a year today, and will be 135 billion or so by 2035: https://globalnews.ca/news/11329727/old-age-security-changes/
Even minor tweaks shake out billions; major reform it's in the tens of billions. And it's political suicide to touch it. Let's see if Carney has the balls to do what is necessary.
Totally agree - we have the technology to target those who need these programmes far more than others who get them due to 'universality'. We can't afford universality. So, the whole concept needs tackling.
I am nervous about growing our deficit but I accept the need for short-term pain. My grandkids will have to shoulder that burden. That bothers me. I think the Achilles heel for this government is news reports of graft, enriching buddies, fraud and non-competitive contracts. Those things will kill Carney’s government in a flash.
Complete cop out. It's either right or wrong. Not I'm nervous but for now it's good for me so...
Adults understand that there is a time for deficits. The problem is not addressing those deficits when the economy is strong and tax revenues are up.
Maybe I'm wrong and party leaders no longer have their teflon coatings, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Grandkids don’t vote. So of course they will pay. But it’ll be the grandkids of people now living in Somalia or some other country in similar straits.
Every Canadian politician, from PM to local councillor, promises cake and no heartburn. The reality, to avoid dumping a financial burden on our children & grandchildren (gens X & Alpha), is we must ask our governments to stop paying for some things. Dental, pharma & childcare are top of the list. We did without them only 5 years ago. Business subsidies should also go along with lower income limits on OAS.
Real government expense reduction plus some tax increases (income & sales) are needed to actually run surpluses that will allow paying off our debt.
Carney said this time, things are different. What he's proposing won't fix the problem.
So making dental, pharma, and childcare more expensive is not burdensome for our children and grandchildren? Shutting down businesses and firing civil servants is good for our children and grandchildren's incomes?
Remember that the federal deficit is the private sector's surplus. Running a government surplus takes money out of the private sector.
Rather than cutting programs that benefit working Canadians, how about:
Freezing pension increases for three years, then resume with annual increases to pace the prevailing rate-of-inflation.
And doing the same vis-à-vis CPP and the various federal and provincial public service pensions.
Discuss.
Don’t forget that many Canadians were working Canadians but now retired and they depend on these pensions you just wrote about.
Perhaps they shouldn't retire if they are healthy? 65 is just a construct from the 19th Century when that was actually old.
People shouldn't get to depend on the state to stop working if they are healthy.
I'll be honest--I was attempting to be provocative in order to make a point about entitlements.
People seem willing to volunteer others' "go to" entitlements for shrinkage or cancellation, but when THEIR "go to" entitlements are threatened, the same people feel quite threatened.
For the record, I'm in my mid-60s, but I'm deeply concerned that successive governments in Canada have been far too quick to favour "the oldsters" (to secure their votes), while essentially ignoring the needs of young adult Canadians who face soooo many expenses that my generation didn't have to contend with.
I don't think it's necessary to be punitive to seniors. We should mandate that pension funds put 100% of their investment in Canada. It's crazy that we let them send a couple trillion to other countries. That would be a massive boost to business investment and incomes to support workers and young families.
I get where you're coming from, but invest in what, exactly?
There's very sound reasons why private capital has fled this country.
Do 'we' (I assume you mean the government) really want to mandate that our pension funds be invested in our corrupt, inefficient, lazy, oligopolistic, rent-seeking Canadian firms?
That'll not only drive more investment out of Canada, but it'll drive anyone with a brain and a minimum of financial acumen out of this country as well.
Including me.
Better to invest in our own oligopolies than in someone else's....
There's a chicken and egg situation. Innovative companies go to the US because that's where the money is. If we didn't let pension funds drain trillions out of the Canadian economy, there would be a whole lot more money here to fund new ventures.
And there's government debt. Municipalities are chronically under-invested, as is the military and transportation and energy and housing, etc etc etc. One could easily make a trillion dollar list of needs.
When a politician says he is going to “invest” it scares me. “Investment” decisions inevitably get bogged down in political considerations to the point that vast sums are invested unproductively (battery plants?; Bombardier?; Trans Mountain?).
I would much prefer that the Prime Minister and his energy minister make an appointment with the ceo of Trans Canada Pipeline (for starters, then other energy companies, mining companies, etc.) and say “What do I have to do to make Canada a place that you would want to invest billions in”? “Deal with politically oriented veto’s (provincial or aboriginal as examples)? Deal with regulation that strangles new initiatives?”. “Just give us a list of what is holding you up and we will work tirelessly to remove obstacles”.
Wouldn’t that be a much better approach than wasting public capital letting cloistered dorks in Ottawa make such important decisions like “investment”?
Agree - 'invest' is arguably the worst Orwellian political euphamism ever conceived.
'Invest' in this context is the antonym of the actual word - in reality it means:
'to deprive, divert, divest, steal, take away, eliminate, remove, flush, destroy, burn, clear, strip, and/or empty.'
More to the point, big public-sector deficits make the cost of borrowing more dear for other economic actors.
I don’t think this government should count on “evergreen” good will and patience on the part of Canadians.
We are in the midst of very serious challenges (as the Prime Minister himself has frequently observed).
I, for one, will expect major program cuts and redundancies in the public sector. Canada cannot afford to put off this reckoning.
Canadians voted in the same bunch of incompetent, inept, ineffective liberal MP’s… there is no perception of incompetence, there is real incompetence. Carney is just lucky Canadians are so gullible, uninformed and apathetic.
Why Carney can get away with big deficits is simply because he is PM and there is no one who can stop him. As a greenology zealot and a Trudeau-whisperer, his aim is to destroy Canada anyway.
PM Mark Carney, the extremely overrated paper mouse.
I wonder what the a poll of the next generation, yet unborn, would say about them having to pay for our current government's deficit spending.
The next generation, yet unborn, would say nothing about them having to pay for it.
They will be too busy scavenging for food and trying to find shelter.
One more thing going for Carney is that Canadian deficits of ~1.5% GDP are going to look pretty good compared with US deficits that are 6.5% and rising. Canadians always measure themselves relative to Americans, and the fiscal incontinence of America since 2020 is going to make Canadians feel superior.
The rule of holes remains unchanged. When in a hole, stop digging.
We are already smug and, compared with our potential, European trade partners, in great shape. Britain's debt is almost 100% of its GDP. France is an economic basket case, with Mr. Macron musing about IMF debt protection. Germany's GDP shrank for two years straight with projections of third time unlucky.
Canada's GDP per capita is that of Alabama's, so wipe that smirk off your face, y'all.
QUOTE
Canada's GDP per capita is that of Alabama's, so wipe that smirk off your face, y'all.
END QUOTE
Citing a methodologically questionable conclusion drawn by partisan political operators usually does not end well.
It might be helpful to read the analysis provided by a bona fide economic expert:
Jim Stanford, The perils of per capita GDP: No, Canada is not poorer than Alabama, 21 April 2025, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/04/canada-alabama/
Oh oh. A my 'pert is bigger than your 'pert challenge.
Please correct the G&M as it is the only MSM that could have been my source.
Take as a given Canalabama is not funny?
?
Canadians don’t need to look at relative deficits to feel superior. Just ask Doug Ford - or any Ottawa civil servant or Cabinet minister 😆😆😆. As the song goes….It’s hard to be humble when…
It's so funny to listen to people complain about how messed up Canada is and oh how expensive things are and incomes are so low and look at how much better things are in the US with their big cheap homes and big paycheques, and they never seem to connect that the US is prosperous BECAUSE of their huge deficit and Canada is stagnating BECAUSE of our low deficit. We should be embarrassed to have such tiny government debt.
70% don't think we need deficits....but what are they prepared to give up to balance? I've heard "government efficiencies" as the solution to budget issues for 50 years. They aren't there to be found.
Quote:
'Over the longer term, though, ongoing deficits are likely to reinforce views that the government is either inefficient or incompetent.'
Either? Why not both inefficient AND incompetent?
This current Liberal regime (which is largely the same as the one under Trudeau) has demonstrated neither competence nor efficiency since being elected. Their 'predecessors' under the 'leadership' of PMJT, on the other hand, produced reams of factual data over the course of that clearly demonstrate their inefficiency AND incompetence on nearly all government files.
This is not perception, it's reality. Even the folks duped into voting for this continuing clown show knew that - they just didn't want to vote for the Conservatives and especially their leader.
I've nothing personally against Mr. Carney - he may be honest and sincere (though I'm doubtful of that as well) in wanting to improve management of Canadian finances under his tenure.
I just don't believe he can pull it off with his supporting cast, and how far that gang has buried us under the Canadian outhouse and its contents over the past decade.
Nothing stops the government deficit train. Not here. In England. In America, Germany, France. Everywhere in the west. We will continue to crowd out productive investments in favor of government subsidies for preferred programs. Increased spending will continue to run smack into the wall of diminishing returns. The governments diminishing ability to wring out what people want from it's use of our capital combined with the desire of the population to avoid the inevitable pain means increasing spending today will ensure perpetually increasing deficits and a dismal future. Until sometime down the road everything breaks. The past 10 years have shown that truth to the youth in this country. It is not better now, that is why people want to have the government spend and spend. For now, nothing stops this train.
Nah, the bond market is waking up. Long term rates are starting to rise for more than a few developed countries, and it doesn't take much more for things to get uncomfortable. Hence why Carney has already dropped the "A" word. He knows what's coming. I think Canada's pretty far down the list for likelihood of a crisis. Something has to give with Japan sooner or later, you'd think.
Governments, Japan included, can’t stop spending in the west. People won’t let them. Glad you see Canada is on the list. Carney gets to Christmas in my books. So far not a great start.