Tag Archives: big government

Trudeau government’s unbridled spending fails Canadians today, and indebts our children and grandchildren

The Niagara Independent, March 31, 2023 – Federal finance minister Chrystia Freeland delivered the 2023 Federal Budget this week. Some refer to it as a NDP budget, introducing billions of dollars of new programs with no regard for the bottom line. The 2023 budget might prove to be the Trudeau government’s worst attempt at providing the country with a fiscal and economic plan. The government is increasing spending and promising more spending.

The news headlines captured the disappointed reaction from Canada’s business and financial leaders.

  • Budget 2023: Canada Firmly in the Red
  • Budget 2023: The Liberals’ reckless deficit of choice
  • Canada Can’t Afford Ottawa’s 2023 Budget
  • Freeland’s bloated, gratuitous plan that will make Canadians worse off
  • If the government wanted to strangle economic growth, this is the budget it would produce

The Globe and Mail’s lead editorial had the most pointed headline: “The Trudeau Liberals build a budget on a cloud, and collective amnesia.” The editors summed up the Liberal’s effort in this way: “That is all a fiscal fantasy: the Liberal budget is built on a cloud of sleight-of-hand projections and the hope that Canadians are suffering from collective amnesia… Sustaining the fantasy of Liberal prudence depends on Canadians acting like memory-challenged goldfish, forever surprised by each turn of the fiscal cycle.”

“Canadians and businesses should be concerned about these projections for endless deficits,” states Craig Alexander, who served as chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada, Deloitte Canada and TD Bank. Alexander explains, “The accumulation of federal government debt matters. It poses economic risks and is a burden on future generations.”

Alexander’s opinion piece, published in the Globe and Mail, makes this important point when discussing Canadians’ debt load. Chrystia Freeland and the Liberals’ script in talking about federal debt is to tell Canadians that our country is comparatively better than all the other G7 Nations. But this is an inappropriate comparison as it is the aggregate federal-provincial government debt that is the truer measure, a number that now tops a staggering $2 trillion. The federal-provincial debt load has doubled since 2007 and its debt-to-GDP ratio is now around the 75 per cent mark (much higher than the 40 per cent “fiscal anchor” figure Freeland likes to cite).

Finance Minister Freeland has consistently expressed (even after she made her address on Tuesday) that with this budget effort the Liberals’ objective was to “exercise fiscal restraint.” In responding to that assertion, the Fraser Institute stated: “More government intervention, spending and debt are not the keys to success for Canada’s fiscal future. Layering new spending on top of old and expanding the size of government will not drive down inflation or grow the economy. This year’s budget simply continues a reckless approach to federal finances.”

The budget provided Canadians with updated numbers on the size of our fiscal deficit and national debt:

  • The deficit will be $43 billion this fiscal year (ending today).
  • In the 2023-24 fiscal year the deficit is projected to be $40.1 billion.
  • In the next five years, the projected deficits are billions of dollars larger than previously estimated by this government.
  • In the forecasted future, there is no projected balanced budget.
  • This fiscal year Canadians are paying $43.9 billion in interest charges to carry the national debt.

Year over year deficits driven by unbridled government spending will add up. Servicing the national debt costs Canadians big money that could otherwise go to programs and services. On this point, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre factored, “We now spend more on interest for debt than we spend on our military, more than we spend on child-care benefits, more than we spend on transfers for education and social services to the provinces, almost as much as we spend on health care.”

Clearly the Trudeau Liberals do not know the meaning of fiscal restraint. This government has become synonymous with “spending” and “big government.” Consider that in 2020, the last pre-pandemic budget, the government spent a total of $373.5 billion. This fiscal year’s government is spending a third more, projected at $496.6 billion.

The Fraser Institute claims, “These deficits are not necessary: emergency COVID programs have wound down or expired, and revenues are much higher than what was anticipated a year ago. If the government had simply returned spending to 2019 per-capita levels, Ottawa would be in a surplus position next year!”

Yet, Freeland defends the new spending by arguing “If you are making investments that increase the economic capacity of the country, that is fiscally responsible.” In other words, her increased spending is responsible. (This sounds similar to the Liberals’ belief that “the budget will balance itself.”)

The finance minister’s rationale has been rejected by most business and financial leaders. Again, the Fraser Institute shot back, “Since persistent deficits increase the likelihood of future tax hikes to pay back debt or cover debt interest payments, the fiscal plan will create more uncertainty for entrepreneurs, investors and businesses. Such an unpredictable business environment will make it harder to attract investment to Canada.”

The president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Perrin Beatty stated, “Our country cannot borrow its way to prosperity.” Beatty also commented in a BNN Bloomberg interview that the Trudeau government was “writing cheques on a bank account that’s already overdrawn.”

Derek Holt, Scotiabank vice president and head of capital markets economics observed, “Governments did a fantastic job in the early days of the pandemic. The problem is that they are now addicted to high spending and delivering divisive jabs at certain interests. Nothing is being done about productivity and competitiveness pressures that are mounting year by year.”

“Big spending, big deficits, big debt, high taxes, high inflation and bond market challenges are not the path to prosperity,” Holt assessed.

The Conservatives have already indicated they will be voting against the 2023 Federal Budget with Poilievre calling the Liberal fiscal plan “a full-frontal attack” on Canadians. He stated: “It equals $4,200 per family in new government spending. That’s more inflation, more taxes, and more costs for everyday people… She (finance minister Freeland) rolls out a bonanza of $43 billion of new inflation, debt and taxes that will be on the backs of everyday, hardworking Canadians.”

In watching Chrystia Freeland explain away the Liberals‘ spending as “fiscal restraint,” the often quoted quip of Benjamin Franklin comes to mind: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Assuredly, the Liberals’ spending will result in greater taxes. More to the point, their fiscal plan suggests a great number of Canadians will not see another balanced budget in their lifetime. So, the debt will be passed along and become taxes paid by our children and grandchildren.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK:  https://niagaraindependent.ca/trudeau-governments-unbridled-spending-fails-canadians-today-and-indebts-our-children-and-grandchildren/

Canada’s unaccountable federal government

The Niagara Independent, February 11, 2022 – It has become all too commonplace in Ottawa for governing politicians and federal bureaucrats to purposefully obfuscate and prolong public disclosure of government expenditures on programs and contracts. With the return of MPs to parliament, Canada’s leading parliamentary watchdogs have sounded alarm bells about the government’s lack of transparency regarding its expenditures. It is increasingly difficult for anyone – elected officials, media, and concerned citizens – to accurately assess the government’s fiscal record. To attempt to do so is much akin to playing whack-a-mole with a blindfold on.

Democracy Watch is a national non-profit, non-partisan organization that bills itself as “Canada’s leading citizen group advocating democratic reform, government accountability and corporate responsibility.” This organization is concerned about the federal government’s lack of accountability. It is calling on the federal government – specifically “the Liberals” – to make immediate, necessary changes in law that will curb secret lobbying and sole-sourcing contracts, secret investments by politicians, their staff and Cabinet appointees, as well as strengthen whistleblower protection.

Duff Conacher, cofounder of Democracy Watch, suggests the lack of information coming out of Ottawa these days is by design. Conacher says, “The Trudeau government usually misleads in their initial response, and then when it’s pointed out that they’re lying to voters, they then come up with lame excuses for delaying action or solving whatever the problem is. And then [they] just don’t do anything again until the media highlights, again, that the problem still exists and hasn’t been solved. And that’s the pattern since they were elected in 2015.”

Yves Giroux, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), points to the routine delay in reporting government spending and program operations. This avoidance tactic hampers and, in some cases disables MPs’ ability to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities. Giroux is calling for legislation that will require the government’s public accounts to be published in a timely manner.

It annoys the PBO that the government has played games in releasing last year’s public accounts and, in doing so, frustrates MPs ability to consider a full accounting of over $600 billion spent in the 2020-21 fiscal year. Treasury Board waited until figuratively the eleventh hour to table the public accounts – December 14, 2021, a day before MPs recessed for a seven week Christmas break and the very day  Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented an economic and fiscal update to Parliament. MPs had no time to absorb the minister’s fiscal plans when they were just been informed of the government’s official deficit and national debt numbers. After their break, MPs had no opportunity to review the public account documents before they were expected to participate in the Finance Minister’s pre-budget consultations.

This lack of accountability also draws into question the government’s planned expenditures. For example, the PBO has identified that a third of the scheduled $541.9 billion allocated for new spending for unspecified pandemic-related activities over the next five years is not part of the government’s formal COVID-19 response plan. In other words, the public is left in the dark as to how $541.9 billion is to be spent.

In the past few weeks there have been a number of news items revealing questionable government spending. Many of these details are sure to surprise Canadians as these expenditures went largely unreported in mainstream media.

In a recent House of Commons exchange, Treasury Board President Mona Fortier could not explain a line item totaling $81.9 million that was to promote vaccinations in the public service. A freedom of information request for this information was returned unanswered with an explanation that there was no record on how this money was spent. Only after an embarrassing news release in Blacklock’s Reporter did the minister’s staff reveal that the millions was spent on additional staff and resources, as well as bureaucrats’ potential overtime costs within the departments. (Perhaps questions on this line item should have gone unanswered.)

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has not offered any details of a $150 million contract to SNC-Lavalin Group for mobile hospitals that were never used. There is no record of how this 2020 sole-sourced contract came about, nor few details of the contract terms and oversight, or of the millions of dollars currently being billed to warehouse the hospital materials.

MPs were informed that the Department of Public Works has unilaterally raised the cost of renovating Parliament’s Centre Block by 66 per cent. Without any parliamentary review the initially approved ten-year project costing $3.04 billion has morphed into a 12 year project costing taxpayers $5 billion.

MPs recently learned that Attorney General David Lametti spent $123,000 in legal fees to hide government documents relating to the Winnipeg Microbiology Laboratory and the firing and disappearance of the two Chinese researchers who were working on virus experiments and in contact with the Wuhan Laboratory. The Trudeau cabinet has gone to unprecedented lengths and continues to find new ways to keep this information sealed and buried.

It has just revealed that the sole-sourced $126 million Noravax vaccine plant in Montreal sits idle and still has no schedule to begin producing vaccines. The delay is that the Noravax vaccine is yet to be approved for use by Health Canada. This sad affair is a repeat of the sole-sourced contracts awarded to former Liberal MP Frank Baylis. His Montreal company was given a $237 million contract to make 10,000 pandemic ventilators even though Health Canada had not approved them. It is still unknown whether his company has delivered the ventilators.

The Globe and Mail investigated federal contracts to Liberal-friendly consulting firm McKinsey that “rose from nearly zero prior to 2015 to $17.2 million during the 2020-21 fiscal year.” McKinsey just signed a sole-sourced contract to fix the infamous Phoenix payroll system for $27.7 million, which is more than a five time increase over the original contract figure of $4.9 million. Having been made aware of the McKinsey contracts through the media, MPs are now calling on the Auditor-General to investigate.

The Globe and Mail also reports that since Liberals formed government in 2015, federal spending on outsourced contracts “professional and special services” has increased more than 40 per cent, and last year totaled $11.8 billion. (This spending is in addition to a remarkable 24 per cent increase in the size of the federal public service since 2015!)

As remarkable as the fact that the federal civil service grew more than 10,000 jobs during the last year of the pandemic, it is hard to reason that more than 312,000 federal employees received pay raises when so many Canadians were without work. Statistics Canada reports on Canadian unemployment each month. The Bank of Canada and other agencies report inflation figures and cost of living data. However, if it were not for investigative journalists’ work, the facts about additional federal hires and the pay increases would not be known.

That is the rub. It is the siren cry about accountability and transparency from Duff Conacher and Yves Giroux. The Trudeau government should be obligated to table its public accounts documents so that MPs and the public can appropriately review federal expenditures and contracts. Canadians have a right to know just how their money is being spent.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/canadas-unaccountable-federal-government/

Photo credit: The Canadian Press/Sean KilpatrickFinance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivers the federal budget as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks it over in the House of Commons, Apr. 19, 2021.

We’re failing “the COVID test”

The three opinion columns below are must-reads to understand Canadians and the country we live in, as it is, today. Collectively (due to the vast majority), we are miserably failing “the COVID test.” 

Your expectations are a problem

We are not owed any particular future, and are not guaranteed more of what we’ve already had.

Matt Gurney / The Line / December 3, 2021

https://theline.substack.com/p/matt-gurney-your-expectations-are

Your expectations are a problem, my friends.

Let’s get a few caveats out of the way: I don’t mean you, personally and exclusively (though someone will undoubtedly take this as a direct insult). This is very much a comment on Canada and the Western world broadly. And I also don’t mean expectations in the sense of what you, as a person, are owed by anyone else, like an employer or a partner — aim for the stars, my friends!

But your expectations are still a problem, as are mine, in this critical and broadly shared way: our understanding of the facts on the ground, the world we live in — how we expect it to be — may be wrong, or at least increasingly outdated. And the longer it takes us to realize this, the more danger we will face.

Some version of this column has been rattling around in my skull for some time, and the overall thesis is certainly in line with much of my work over the years, where I’ve warned of the costs of our complacency, often in the area of national defence. But this one is different — it’s not about a specific problem, per se, so much as it is an attempt to understand a series of problems at their roots. It has not proven an easy one to write. The thesis — that Canadians’ fundamental expectations are increasingly out of step with the current reality — is hard to prove or even investigate. There’s no poll or survey, no collection of data sets, that will make this case.

But there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence, and it simply, on a gut level, feels right. Canadians and the citizens of other comparable countries alive today are, in the main, products of an economic, military, political and public-health winning streak that has continued unabated since the end of the Second World War.

There have been periods of time or incidents that would seem to contradict it — the U.S. lost in Vietnam, for instance, and we’ve had economic slumps and epidemics along the way. But overall, a typical Canadian and many others across the West, born after 1945 or so, has lived in an era where their country was militarily secure, economically prosperous, politically stable and nestled comfortably inside a confident, triumphant liberal-democratic international consensus.

Along the way, we have experienced medical breakthroughs that have continuously both lengthened and improved our time on this earth. Consider my late grandfather as a representative example of the progress contained in a single lifetime: in his youth, he nearly perished of an infection because antibiotics were not yet available; when he did die in his early 80s, stricken by Alzheimer’s, he had two separate forms of cancer, both of which were manageable, chronic conditions due to new drugs and laser surgeries. It’s remarkable. From near-death-from-sepsis-in-childhood to blasting tumours with light in one man’s lifespan.

This is true for all of us, in some way or another. Entire lives have been lived, and entire generations raised, during this multi-generational winning streak — and even though the benefits of it haven’t been shared equally by all our citizens (a sad understatement, alas), it’s been true enough for so many for so long that we have come to accept as normal — to expect — something that is actually quite rare. We are living in the best moment of history, in terms of our security, health and prosperity — or at least we were until early 2020. This winning streak lasted, I fear, just long enough for a critical mass of us to lose perspective on how rare and precious the last few generations have been in the West. We’ve lost the ability to realize that, maybe, we had not embarked on a brave new era of exponential human progress. Rather, perhaps we’ve taken for granted a historical fluke.

What finally brought this column forth was two incidents that, though unrelated, happened within moments of each other earlier in the week. The first was simply a chat with a friend; we were catching up on life when she mentioned that the news about Omicron had hit her hard, because it felt like yet another delay to the return to “normal.” The second was some typically overheated Twitter reaction my Line colleague Jen Gerson received when she noted — entirely correctly — that COVID-19, though devastating, wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, nor as nasty as some plagues throughout history.

Consider my friend’s dread about a delayed return to normal. I expect a return to something functionally comparable to our old normal; my own life is basically there already (with the irritating but tolerable exception of wearing of a mask in many indoor settings). But I have never taken a return to normal as a given. A functional return to a pre-pandemic normal still strikes me as the most likely outcome by a wide margin, but there are a lot of plausible scenarios where our lives remain permanently, negatively changed. This isn’t a prediction. But if you don’t at least grant the possibility that it could be otherwise, you’re kidding yourself. Your expectations of a return to the comfortable old familiar are blinding you to the reality that life can change in ways that are never undone. This has happened to people before, and there is absolutely nothing stopping it from happening to you, or all of us.

And the reaction to Jen’s tweet (which she expanded into a full column on Thursday) was awfully revealing of just how far removed from some harsh realities Canadians have become. COVID-19 might have been the worst shared global experience you’ve ever experienced. That’s true of me, too. But there’s a massive gulf between “worst thing I’ve lived through” and “the worst thing that could plausibly happen.” We don’t even need to ponder hypotheticals. Read about 1918, which, as Jen noted in her column, was vastly more deadly in terms of overall deaths — and it’s not even close.

Don’t believe me? Canada’s COVID-19 death toll is currently a bit under 30,000. We lost 50,000 to Spanish Flu, out of a population of eight million. An equally deadly pandemic this time would have killed almost a quarter million of us. That’s every COVID death, plus 200,000-some-odd more.

Consider what would have happened if COVID-19 had been even modestly more contagious or deadly, or consider my nightmare scenario: it attacked the young, the very young, not the old. This could have been so much worse. It could still become so.

This seems lost on many, including some very smart people who ought to know better. I have a very clear memory of chatting with a colleague in the summer of 2020, and mentioning that I was glad the first wave hadn’t proven worse. He was aghast — genuinely confused and shocked. “How could it be worse?” he asked. His question left me equally shocked and confused. I had to ask him if he was being serious. He was.

And many would agree with him: they can’t imagine it having been harder. To them, I say only this: if your imagination can’t conceive of anything worse than the last 20 months, and if your grasp of history is so weak that you think that the last 20 months have been some unprecedented catastrophe, that’s a comment on your imagination and historical literacy, not on the last 20 months. It’s not nice to look back on this pandemic and realize that we were lucky to dodge something worse, but if you truly think it couldn’t have been much nastier, I hope you never have the experience of being proven wrong.

Some of these failures in comprehension, understanding and imagination are on the individual level, some are on the institutional level, and I’m not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg. It’s too easy to simply blame government leaders and officials for these problems — I’m afraid that our politics, on this score, is simply downstream of our collective societal cluelessness about just how fragile and precious our way of life has become.

But here’s the rub, folks: we are not owed any particular future, and are not guaranteed more of what we’ve already had. This is not a defeatist declaration — I believe we can continue to thrive. As a father of young children, I am forced to be an optimist — I have to believe the world will be good for them. But we’re going to have to work for that world, and that starts with understanding that none of what we’ve enjoyed is the natural state of human affairs.

This will be hard for Canadians to grasp. For our entire history, we have been under the protection of the preeminent global power — we had the incredible fortune of sliding out from under the British umbrella right into the protective cover of the American one without getting hit by a single drop of rain. Basic assumptions about our physical security are hardwired into our national concept of everything — but is that concept changing? Are the Americans still a reliable ally? Can we take their own political stability for granted? We expect America to be stable and friendly — but should we? Is the Western alliance system and the “rules-based international order” we hear so much about things that actually still exist, or are they slogans?

Or take health care. The long-understood bargain in Canada has been that we’d tolerate substandard service in many areas, such as long wait times for non-essential procedures, because we had faith the system would be there for us if our lives were really on the line. Health systems across Canada have been overwhelmed by the pandemic. We now have massive backlogs of urgently necessary tests and procedures, and these delays are going to cost lives — they have already cost lives. What we expect from the health-care system, it is no longer able to consistently provide.

Take a gander at B.C. Can we expect the same weather patterns we’ve built our infrastructure around, there and elsewhere? How many of you made a big financial decision in recent years on the expectation that, after a 40-year absence, inflation would continue to remain stable and modest? And Putin isn’t going to really invade Ukraine, is he? Is he?

I could go on. The point is not to descend into panic. I’m not panicked. But I am increasingly convinced that you can explain a lot of Canadian dysfunction — the lack of “state capacity” we are increasingly hearing about — by simply understanding that we have built our government, our entire political class and a horrifying degree of our national collective psychology around a series of deeply held and extremely cheerful assumptions about the world, our safety, our prosperity, our health and the ascendancy of our values that no longer hold true. Our tools are not suited to the jobs newly at hand.

Before we can even begin to respond to these challenges, we have to perceive them, truly see them and accept their reality, and that’s going to require a process of overcoming denial that may take longer than we have.

Because we have about 75 years’ worth of “givens” we need to start interrogating anew, and asking if they still hold, and there’s going to be a massive temptation to reassure ourselves that they do, because to admit otherwise is going to compel a lot of action, a lot of spending and some long, sleepless nights. But we don’t have a choice. We need to do this. Because our expectations have become a problem that we need to start solving.

On COVID restrictions, our governments keep firing up the gaslights and shifting the goalposts

If you give the government an inch on your rights, they will go for the mile every time

Allan Richarz / CBC Opinion / December 3, 2021

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-covid-measures-gaslighting-shifting-goalposts-1.6268380

Listen closely and one might be able to discern the unmistakable sounds of our elected and unelected officials frantically firing up the gaslights and moving the goalposts on COVID restrictions and vaccinations.

It was a precipitous but inevitable shift from “two weeks to flatten the curve” to get the jab or lose your job, and unsurprisingly, there is still more to come.

Met the provincial vaccination targets? Great; but now it’s time for a booster. Ready for the “temporary” vaccine passport system to expire? Sorry, we need to extend it through spring; proving once again that if you give the government an inch on your rights, they will go for the mile every time.

Less than a year ago, government and public health officials touted vaccination as a panacea to end the pandemic. It’s safe, effective and will allow the country to put COVID behind us, we were told. To that end, citizens were encouraged, prodded and eventually threatened to get their shots, with holdouts demonized by politicians at all levels. Yet, in Ontario, even as the province exceeded by weeks its vaccination and case number targets of the government’s phased reopening plan, citizens were offered only breadcrumbs in return: moving up Phase 3 reopening by just a few days, with no plans at the time for a complete reopening.

Goalposts shift again

And now, with new case numbers in Ontario essentially split evenly between the unvaccinated and fully vaccinated and questions about waning vaccine efficacy, the goalposts shift again with the rollout of booster shots elsewhere in the country and calls for expanded eligibility.

One does not need to look hard to guess what the next step will be across Canada. In Israel and France, the definition of fully vaccinated was changed to include boosters; those six months out from their second dose, or first booster, are now considered unvaccinated, and their vaccine passport privileges suspended.

There is, of course, the popular rebuttal that these goalpost shifts are entirely above-board as the “science evolves.” But that exposes the flaw inherent in governments’ COVID response: for nearly two years, debate and dissent from burdensome COVID restrictions has been short-circuited with demands that citizens “trust the science“; a modern take on debate-defusing exhortations to “support our troops” during the War on Terror. Every infringement on citizens’ privacy, mobility, autonomy and conscience rights has been justified by officials in the name of the infallible technocratic might of “the science.”

But when proven wrong – or more importantly, unpopular at the polls – that formerly rock-solid science on which officials acted is simply dismissed out of hand. Policymakers, however, cannot on one hand demand unyielding adherence to science, and then down the road simply hand-wave away their previous demands on the grounds that their knowledge or political fortunes have evolved.

It is for this precise reason that checks and balances exist in governance: to prevent rule through unaccountable technocratic appeals to authority. Debate and dissent in the age of COVID, however, have become four-letter words.

Our public health officials and elected politicians should not at this point expect any benefit of the doubt. Considering that we are still taking our shoes off and binning bottles of water at airport security 20 years after 9/11, that government officials and their unelected mandarins are unwilling to cede their newfound power in an age of COVID should not come as any surprise.

Indeed, officials have shown they are not above apparent falsehoods to further their aims. Last week, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Kieran Moore justified the immunization of children between the ages of five and 11 by claiming hospitalization and case counts for that age group were increasing. Yet, according to Ontario’s own data, there had been zero hospitalizations in that age group in the past two weeks at the time of Moore’s statement.

Always another threat

As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) once knew, “There will always be a new disease, always the threat of a new pandemic.” Accordingly, the number of boosters, or the percentage of fully-vaccinated citizens, needed for a return to normal will always be n+1. Meet one metric, and be met with two more. As the ACLU continues, “If [fear of disease] justifies the suspension of liberties and the institution of an emergency state, then freedom and the rule of law will be permanently suspended.”

Already we see public health officials priming the pump for the next goalpost shift. Even if vaccine uptake is high among five to 11-year-olds, it will still not be good enough. According to Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, toddlers under the age of four will be next to need the shots, claiming with an absolute lack of shame that – unlike all the other times we were promised an end to the pandemic – vaccinating that group will be a “turning point.”

The government, of course, will never walk back its emergency powers of its own volition. And why would they? After two years of fomenting terror and division among the population, they have cultivated a solid base of support that combines the post-9/11 see-something-say-something paranoia of a middle-class yuppie with the unctuous 1980s Moral Majority sense of superiority.

Until public opinion turns sharply against government overreach, we will continue to live in an artificially prolonged state of emergency, beholden to the whims of bureaucrats and elected officials.

After 21 months, our leaders are still flying blind through the pandemic

We find ourselves looking towards Christmas 2021, with more imperative edicts as to how we might be allowed to celebrate it

Rex Murphy / The National Post / December 3, 2021

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-after-21-months-our-leaders-are-still-flying-blind-through-the-pandemic

Are governments managing COVID, or is COVID managing governments? I’m going with the latter.

It is almost a feat of memory to recall the early days of the pandemic when the call went out to tolerate restrictions for just “two weeks to flatten the curve.” When two weeks proved insufficient, the lockdowns continued.

Still, in those early days, most people were willing to take the hit, to circumscribe normal interactions, shut their businesses, leave their elderly relatives cloistered and unvisited, and comply with the harsher protocols. Hard it was, but Canadians are sensible and obliging.

Well, a couple of months swelled to several, then to a year, and now here we are 21 months later. What’s changed? More to the point: what’s improved? Well, we now have COVID passports, imperfect vaccines, a flurry of follies on when and where to wear a mask, and absolutely no idea what is next.

We find ourselves looking towards Christmas 2021, with more imperative edicts as to how we might be allowed to celebrate it: how many at the festive table, a face shield on baby Jesus in the creche and double-thick masks if plum pudding is to be served.

Every month brings a new “variant.” Are the variants limitless? Are the variants worse than the original? I sometimes wonder, when they run out of letters from the Greek alphabet, will they jump to Cyrillic? It’s hard to pronounce, but as an emphatic typography, it has the stern look our overseeing managers will appreciate.

Even the most obliging citizens continue to respect the advice of municipal, provincial and federal governments, but in private conversation rattle off doubts and frustrations about the policies and pronouncements of health and political authorities.

They don’t believe COVID is under control, or even understood in any fundamental sense, and they certainly do not believe that those in authority have a handle on it. They go along. But the going along is tepid, unconvinced, resentful and certainly not spined with any belief that the maskings and the mandates, the on and off lockdowns, and the waning vaccines are taming COVID.

I’m not speaking of those who go to protests, who reflexively resist government authority or the even more demented faction who talk to trees and expect a reply. I’m talking about average folks — mothers, clerks, taxi drivers and students — who are going along, but in a deeply subdued way.

We must ask some questions. Do our authorities really have an understanding of the problem? Or are they continuing to improvise as they go? If such is the case, governments should say so. Do not give false hope. Will any authority, in health or politics, make a definitive statement about when or how this COVID crisis will end?

What is the end game? Is there one? Will politicians declare the set of conditions that must be present for life to return to normal? What is the current projected timeline? Are we looking at another year? Two? Is this a permanent state of affairs? Is the extremely imperfect COVID “cure” worse than the disease? That is the question.

The normal rhythms of daily life are shot; commerce is desperately ailing; industries are failing; inflation is back and it will cut very deeply in the months ahead; energy supplies are in jeopardy; the supply chain is broken; the health of a multitude of citizens is not being attended to, doctors are on phone lines, surgeries delayed, emergencies rooms have turned into vast waiting halls; young people have lost out on their education; loved ones have been separated; travel is either a pain or a joke; the psychological injuries imposed by COVID regimes are not, and perhaps cannot, be measured. But they are massive and extreme.

And most emphatically: the civil liberties of citizens have been pushed aside, abandoned, violated with scarcely a whimper from parliamentarians and the news media. Our once-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms is shown to be a platitudinous vapour, a shield of fog and foam, most insouciantly violated when it is most needed.

We may accede to the conditions and regulations being laid down for us. But I would ask readers these questions: Do you think our various authorities, medical and political, are competently managing COVID and have a clear plan for a return to normalcy? Do you believe that our politicians — municipal, provincial and federal — really know what they are doing?

And the last one: are you feeling better now, more confident today, than you felt two years ago, when our leaders, so solicitously, asked for your help, just for two weeks mind you, to “flatten the curve?”

 

Have an opinion on where we find ourselves in Canada today? Write and share it: chrisg.goerge@gmail.com

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

Rush Limbaugh Bons Mots

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

The truth does not require a majority to prevail, ladies and gentlemen. The truth is its own power. The truth will out. Never forget that.

There’s nobody who cares more about you than you, and there’s nobody better equipped to take care of you than you.

The American dream has now morphed into an expectation. And if it isn’t provided, or if it doesn’t happen, then people feel cheated.

There’s such cultural rot taking place, such a disintegration throughout our culture. Values, morality, you name it. Standards have been relaxed, and people are not being held to them. People’s intentions, if they’re said to be good and honorable, that’s all that matters.

The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It’s not change, and it’s not hope.

Real prosperity comes from everybody in the country working together in a growth mode. Real prosperity comes as a result of people’s own initiative and efforts and so forth. Prosperity, if it comes from the government, is not prosperity. It’s an existence or a subsistence or whatever, but it isn’t prosperity.

Everything about the left is perception, manipulation, and lies. Everything. Everything is ‘Wag the Dog.’ Everything is a structured deception.

The truth of anything doesn’t matter anymore. What’s right doesn’t matter. What makes economic common sense doesn’t matter. I’m blue in the face over it.

Liberals are some of the most arrogant, condescending smart alecks, but they’re just pure ignorant, and they fit the bill of people who have no love and no respect for the founding of this country.

Journalists are simply leftists disguised as reporters. They’re political activists disguised as reporters.

I live in Realville, and my problem is that I’m governed by logic. And some of the claims that are made by people on the left just don’t hold up.

No nation ever taxed itself into prosperity.

Racist — a person who wins an argument with a liberal.

If you commit a crime, you’re guilty.

Compassion is no substitute for justice.

Poverty is not the root cause of crime.

Charity is willingly given from the heart.

End results that work that don’t involve government threaten liberals.

Liberals get credit for good intentions, and that’s about it, because everything they do fails.

Liberal Democrats are inexorably opposed to tax cuts, because tax cuts give people more power, and take away from the role of government.

I used to have a phrase: Liberalism is spreading misery equally. And now the ruling class throughout Washington seems to have adopted this.

That’s what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it’s fair, because people would be the best if they weren’t discriminated against.

Liberalism is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. It assigns sameness to everybody. And wherever I find it, I oppose it.

R.I.P. Rush 

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

The Trudeau Government’s Extraordinary Christmas Present

The Niagara Independent, December 4, 2020  – On Monday, Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented Canadians with a Christmas present, the Government’s economic statement entitled “Supporting Canadians and Fighting COVID-19.” The 237-page document was wonderfully wrapped in recycled, biodegradable paper, sealed with red tape and ribbons, and adorned with an oversized crimson bow. With her usual exuberance, Freeland explained she would provide details of the gift’s contents sometime in the future – and in so many words alluded to the idea that, in such troubled times, Canadians should be thankful for such a thoughtfully wrapped gift.

There were a few specifics revealed in the Finance Minister’s statement. The Liberal government is prepared to spend up to $100 billion over three years to kick start the economy, spending “whatever it takes” to help Canadians and businesses stay safe and solvent. Freeland reported a deficit projection for the fiscal year ending in March 2021 of more than $381 billion (and possibly ballooning to over $400 billion).

Freeland made none of the anticipated major structural spending announcements, only offering “down-payments” on the Liberal promises of national child care, job training and green initiatives. She threw money at new federal secretariat bureaucracies: $4.3 million for national child care and another $15 million for Indigenous early learning and childcare. She pledged $447.5 million to implement a youth job program that will deliver 40,000 summer jobs for students (presumably not administered by the WE charity). And there were the Liberal’s hallmark green promises restated by Freeland: the $3.6 billion tree planting initiative that will plant saplings at $1.50 + per tree; and, another $1.5 billion on top of the billions already spent in the last five years to go towards clean tap water in First Nations communities.

With this economic statement the Trudeau Government also introduced a new “free form approach” of “fiscal guardrails” to guide its stimulus spending through the post-COVID economic recovery. These guardrails were not clearly defined but mention was made of assessing labour market indicators such as the employment rate, the unemployment rate, and total hours worked. Kevin Page, Canada’s former parliamentary budget officer commented, “I think the minister is breaking new ground.” In an interview with iPolitics, Alexandre Laurin of the C.D. Howe Institute warned, “… they’re not credible because they haven’t been described… We do not know what those fiscal rules are. We don’t even know the precise indicators they are following or what level would trigger anything.”

With Monday’s ministerial statement and the subsequent debates in the House of Commons through the week, Canadians have learned more about the country’s economic standing.

  • The government’s projected deficit has grown from $19 billion to $381 billion for this current 2020-21 fiscal year.
  • In just three months (April-June 2020), the federal government recorded a $120 billion deficit. In this same period, Canada’s economy shrank an unparalleled 38 percent.
  • Canada’s overall economy is expected to shrink 6.8 percent this year, the sharpest drop since the Great Depression. There is a dismal 1.4 percent economic growth projected each year through to 2025-26.
  • Canadian companies’ investments have fallen by around $40 billion this year.
  • In response to the pandemic, the federal government has spent the most per person than any other government in the world; and, today, Canada leads all countries in COVID-19 related debt, which is projected to top $600 billion before the pandemic threat has passed.
  • Government records show $54 billion was spent to compensate Canadians for $21 billion in lost income. The Globe and Mail reports “the government effectively gave households nearly $7 for each dollar of lost private-sector income.”
  • The unemployment rate is projected to be 9.8 percent in 2020 and 7.8 percent in 2021, which is the highest unemployment rate of the G-7 countries. C.D. Howe Institute reports there will be 1.3 million workers unemployed through the second wave of the virus.

Given the flood of red ink and uncertain times, the Trudeau Government’s fiscal approach has been met with dismay and a feeling of loss. Canadian Taxpayers Federation Federal Director Aaron Wudrick lamented Canada’s debt will hit $1 trillion within weeks. Wudrick stated, “Alarmingly, there are no fiscal targets, and the government actually pledged to add another $100 billion in debt after the pandemic ends, effectively committing to spend money before it even knows what to spend it on. There doesn’t seem to be any place where the Trudeau government has even tried to save money and there’s no tax relief. A pandemic isn’t a free pass to cynically increase spending on everything, especially when taxpayers are struggling.”

John Ivison of the National Post captured the sentiments expressed by many financial analysts and political pundits with his sobering observation about the fragile state of the Canadian economy. Ivison wrote, “The sad truth is, Canada is no longer where you want to be, if you are going for gold. We are consuming more than we are producing; we are swimming in debt and even companies based here prefer to invest somewhere else. The government’s fall-back is that interest rates are rising more slowly than the economy is growing, so we can keep expanding programs without having to pay for them.”

In the wake of Freeland’s Monday performance there came an announcement on Tuesday that reverberated through Ottawa’s corridors. Finance Canada Deputy Minister Paul Rochon tendered his resignation offering no reason for his hasty departure. Rochon provided no comment on his political bosses through the past six year – and perhaps his silence speaks volumes. In the last four months, the Trudeau Government has lost both its Finance Minister and Deputy Minister and a new finance brain trust is left to chart a course clear of the pandemic and debt pressures.

PM Trudeau followed-up this bombshell resignation by serving notice that the economic statement will be subject to a confidence vote in the House of Commons. Insisting he is not wanting an election anytime soon, the PM said he felt his pandemic relief measures should have Parliamentary approval. So, MPs will be forced to accept the Liberal fiscal plan unwrapped lest force a federal election in the cold of January. And as Tim Powers suggests in his Hill Times column, weary Canadians are sure to accept the Liberals’ generosity for “there is a chicken for every pot.” Therefore, we can expect in the coming weeks that Liberal politics will trump any sense of fiscal reality.

It appears the PM and his chief financial elf, Finance Minister Freeland, have delivered an extraordinary Christmas present.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/the-trudeau-governments-extraordinary-christmas-present/

Photo Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS / Sean Kilpatrick

Federal Government will need to introduce a list of new tax measures

The Niagara Independent, October 9, 2020  – Next week the Trudeau Government will set a record for having gone the longest in Canadian Parliamentary history without presenting a federal budget (on Friday it will be 316 days). When asked just after the Throne Speech whether there would be a budget before the fiscal year-end March 31, 2021, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland simply dismissed the question. It appears neither PM Justin Trudeau nor Minister Freeland wish to account for the money spent or the new taxes that will be levied by this Government.

Recall in July, former Finance Minister Bill Morneau released a “fiscal snapshot” that reported a government operational deficit of $343 billion for this fiscal year. Since July, PM Trudeau has made a litany of program announcements totaling tens of billions of dollars in additional spending. For the fiscal year 2020-21 economists expect the government deficit to be approaching $400 billion and Canada’s national debt to have climbed beyond $1 trillion.

This is a dubious record for the Trudeau Liberals: the total federal government program spending is more than all previous federal government fiscal deficits combined through Canada’s history. For a country with a population of less than 38 million, these numbers are huge. The Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux warns that it is an imperative for the government to rein in its spending in the next two years or the country’s debt load will be “unsustainable.”

So the question is: How do Canadians pay for this? Short answer: With increased taxes.

In a Toronto Star feature this week, financial expert Gordon Pape listed the various new taxes the Trudeau Government will need to introduce to begin to pay for its unbridled spending since 2015 and its unprecedented pandemic spending through the last six months. Pape observes, “None of this is going to happen immediately. Imposing new taxes on a staggering economy would drive the country into a depression that could last for years. But a year or two from now, when the pandemic is under control and the economy is in recovery mode, watch out. Someone has to pay the bill, and it’s going to be us.”

Here is the checklist of new taxes Canadians should expect in future federal budgets.

Hike the GST rate to six or seven per cent.  This consumption tax collects $7 billion in additional revenue for every percentage point and Pape views it as “very tempting for any cash-strapped government.” The Liberals have repeatedly expressed concern over wealth inequity so a tax on consumer spending is fairest. Wealthier Canadians spend more and will be taxed more with their spending.

Eliminate the capital gains tax exemption on principal residences. A new home equity tax would have the sale of your family home subject to a 50% capital gains tax that will rake in billions of dollars annually for the federal treasury. The government commissioned the University of British Columbia to research this home tax. In its report, UBC researchers identified homes as “tax shelters” and described homeowners as “lottery winners.” Liberals have been quick to distance themselves from the report, however the idea keeps resurfacing in their finance policy discussions.

Raise the inclusion rate for taxable capital gains. In the 2019 election, both Liberals and the NDP campaigned that the capital gains exemption is a tax break for the rich. There have been trial balloons floated to increase the current 50 per cent rate for taxable capital gains to 75 per cent, or the full 100 per cent. The government factors a 75 per cent rate will raise $8 billion in tax revenue annually. This measure is very likely to appear in the upcoming budget because the minority Liberals are certain to receive support from the NDP to “tax the rich.”

Increase the carbon tax and introduce new carbon taxes. On April 1st the federal carbon tax increased from $20 to $30 a tonne on emissions. For consumers, that costs us an extra 2.5 cents per litre of gasoline at the pumps. (The Canadian Government was the only government in the world to raise taxes during the height of the pandemic this Spring.) Next year the carbon tax is to rise again, and the following year it is to rise yet again. On top of these tax increases, National Post reporter John Ivison warns: “Get ready for the Liberals’ secret new carbon tax — as Canadians emerge from COVID-induced hibernation, the Liberal government is preparing a plan to make their lives more expensive to meet its climate targets.” The Trudeau Liberals are introducing a new Clean Fuel Standard Tax that will have Canadians paying an additional 11 cents per litre at the pump. These are the carbon tax measures scheduled; it is unknown what further taxes Canadians should expect with the Trudeau Liberals’ green agenda.

Introduce new wealth taxes. The recent Throne Speech announced the Government will introduce wealth taxes in the immediate future. No surprise here. The Liberals and NDP campaigned in 2015 and 2019 to introduce new taxes on individual and family net worth. The Liberals also proposed a 10 per cent luxury tax on the purchase of cars, boats and private aircraft and a new speculation tax on vacant residential property. The latter two taxes will raise an estimated $850 million annually for Ottawa (actually, less than what the Liberals were going to pay the Kielburger brothers and WE this year). Former Liberal Finance Minister John Manley commented that proposing a new wealth tax is “one of the dumbest things” in the Liberal agenda. Manley stated: “There’s a basic problem with it that there aren’t enough rich people, and secondly, if you tax them enough, they’ll leave.”

In his column Gordon Pape also mentions that the Liberals will need to consider when to introduce new corporate taxes on Canadian business owners; eliminate tax free savings accounts established for individuals’ retirement planning; and, raise personal income taxes.

There is another highly contentious tax measure that Pape does not address, which is currently being publicly mused about in Ottawa: the introduction of an inheritance tax. As recorded in Blacklock’s Reporter, Liberal MP Sean Fraser, who serves as Parliamentary Secretary to the Finance Minister, believes that an inheritance tax addresses a “plague” of income inequality in our country. At Finance Committee this week MP Fraser boldly stated of the new tax: “if it requires us to ask the wealthy to contribute a little bit more, we will not be afraid to make that demand.” To which Calgary-based, political blogger Cory Morgan quips: “Not content with indebting our children and grandchildren with record government deficits, the Trudeau government is now considering taking their inheritance too.”

In considering Gordon Pape’s list of likely tax measures, it is suffice to say that Canadians should brace for future federal budgets. In the coming years we will be tapped to pay for the Trudeau Government’s prolonged spending spree. They are sure to be taxing times.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/federal-government-will-need-to-introduce-a-list-of-new-tax-measures/

A Review of Key Issues in Ottawa

Canada’s Parliament resumes with a Throne Speech on September 23rd. Here’s a review of the key issues Canadians should follow as our MPs return to Ottawa and the business of the Nation.

What is to become of the unanswered questions?

Here are ten issues that PM Trudeau hopes and trusts Canadians will soon forget when enchanted by the exciting promises presented in his Throne Speech.

The consequential fiscal facts on Canada’s economy

Here are current fiscal facts that are certain to be consequential for the country’s economy and our future prosperity.

Trudeau and Freeland “Moving Canada towards full-blown Socialism”

Canadians are placed on notice: PM Trudeau and Finance Minister Freeland will advance “a bold, new progressive agenda.”

A primer on the Trudeau Liberals’ Green Energy Plan

With the pretext of jump-starting the national economy in the wake of the pandemic’s fallout, the Liberals are telling Canadians they are ready to “build back better” with a bold, progressive environmental agenda. Their new national Green Energy Plan is expected to be one of the cornerstones placed in the Government’s Throne Speech.

A Pivotal Week for the Trudeau Liberals’ Green Agenda

There now is Trudeau, Freeland and Carney (with a cast of supporting actors McKenna, Guilbeault and Wilkinson) all aligned to “build back better” by shifting Canada’s economy away from oil and gas and towards green energy, and introducing bigger, interventionist government to caretake national welfare, immigration, childcare and universal basic income programs.

Morneau will leave an unenviable record as Finance Minister

The federal Liberals, under the watch of Bill Morneau, are outspending all past federal governments, including those governments that had to respond to world wars and global recessions.

The Trudeau Government’s horrible week of scandalous stories

Warren Kinsella: “There’s a name for a government like Justin Trudeau’s – a government run by those who seek status and personal gain at the expense of the rest of us. It’s a kleptocracy.”

 

These columns were first published in The Niagara Independent through the months of August and September. 

The consequential fiscal facts on Canada’s economy

The Niagara Independent, September 4, 2020  – In a CBC interview this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “We are asking Canadians to embark on an entirely different direction as a government. We are going to rebuild the Canadian economy in a way that was better than before.”

The Liberals’ intention to restructure the country’s post-pandemic economy is being described by many political pundits as a “bold plan.” One unnamed senior Ottawa mandarin stated in a Toronto Star article that the bundle of social programs and spending about to be showcased in the upcoming Thorne Speech is “a structural change in the way government in this country operates.” A senior Liberal political insider who is familiar with the plan (who wished to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak publicly) commented, “It’s all going to take money on a scale we haven’t seen before.”

Through a seemingly orchestrated series of insiders’ leaks, the Prime Minister’s backroom appears to be preconditioning Canadians for an economic recovery plan the likes of which we have never seen or experienced in our country. This foreboding forecast has many in Ottawa, on Bay Street, and in boardrooms and living rooms across the country bracing themselves.

National Post political newsman John Ivison reports, “Trudeau’s “literally frightening” spending plan has some Liberals, bureaucrats very worried.” In the Post’s feature column on Thursday, Ivison writes of the Liberals’ design to remake Canada in their own progressive image and he quotes an Ottawa insider as saying, “It is literally frightening. I am very worried about my kids’ future and their capacity to service that level of debt. The fact is that the government is embarking on a major policy shift and this is a government that is not worried by deficits of 10 per cent of GDP.”

In advance of the Liberals Throne Speech promises, here are current fiscal facts that are certain to be consequential for the country’s economy and our future prosperity.

On government spending, the deficit and national debt: In three months, between April and June, the Finance Department reports the government operated a $120 billion deficit. The Government recently projected a $343 billion deficit for 2021, but this does not include Finance Minister Freeland’s recent announcement of an additional $37 billion in spending. This fiscal deficit is more than the total federal government program spending was through last year – and more than all previous federal government fiscal deficits combined through Canada’s history.

By the end of the fiscal year, many expect the deficit to be nearing $400 billion. Canada’s national debt will have climbed beyond $1.2 trillion.

On the country’s economic health: With many businesses shuttered, it is not a surprise that the Canadian economy shrank from April through June. Statistics Canada reports Canadian economic output dropped by 11.5 per cent compared with first-quarter GDP in 2020. This is the largest recorded quarterly decline since Statistics Canada began reporting quarterly figures in 1961.

There is no good news in the current economic numbers: Government revenues plummeted by 37 per cent, down $52 billion over the quarter. Household spending on goods was down by 8.4 per cent, and down by 16.7 per cent for services. Business investment fell 16.2 per cent, as a direct result of plant closures, low oil prices, and heightened economic uncertainty.

On costly mismanagement of pandemic support funds: The Fraser Institute released a report that estimates one in every four dollars of pandemic income support payments — a total of up to $22.3 billion — was sent to people who did not need support.  Financial Post columnist Diane Francis opines Canada’s pandemic funding was “distributed with a fire hose, rather than targeted at those in need.” Francis points out Canada’s stimulus package is dramatically higher than what other countries – the equivalent of 15 per cent of its GDP, compared to 10.6 per cent in Australia, five per cent in France, 8.9 per cent in Germany, and 4.9 per cent in Italy.

On Canada’s economy showing signs of systemic weakness prior to the pandemic: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates the value of reduced output in Canada this year will be $113 billion. And recall prior to the pandemic the Canadian economy was absorbing the loss of $20.6 billion investment in the Teck Frontier mine project, as well as the collapse of Quebec’s $9 billion Energie Saguenay pipeline project – and a recorded $200 billion of investment lost in the Canadian resource sector since 2015. The IMF has recently calculated the total economic losses already incurred by Canadian businesses and those projected due to the pandemic will be $226 billion.

On rising personal / household debt: Today, one out of two Canadians are within $200 of insolvency at the end of each month. In fact, insolvencies are on the rise. Equifax Canada reports consumer debt is rising in Canada, reaching $1.9 trillion. Canadian households owe $177 for every $100 of disposable income (up from $106 in 1999). Just released IMF data factors that Canadian household debt is growing nearly 50% faster than the country’s economy. In a recent financial report for Global News, David Akin surmised that the pandemic “began as a public health crisis then metastasized into an economic crisis is likely to finish as a debt crisis that could end up swamping not only some governments but also hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Canadian households.”

All the fiscal facts aside, the upcoming Throne Speech will regale for Canadians the Trudeau Government’s bold plan to spend our way to recovery – “to build back better.” This illusory panacea of unbridled government spending is summed up in the bromide offered recently by Finance Minister Freeland: “Our government has taken on more debt so Canadians didn’t have to.” What an absolutely wonderful thought – reassuring for many Canadians.

Yet, if you still subscribe to the adage that “there are no free lunches” (and you remain doubtful that “budgets will balance themselves”), then consider Ayn Rand’s cautionary statement about blissful reassurances: “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/the-consequential-fiscal-facts-on-canadas-economy/

Trudeau and Freeland “Moving Canada towards full-blown Socialism”

The Niagara Independent, August 28, 2020  – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has revealed to Canadians that when the shuttered Parliament reopens on September 23 his government will deliver a Throne Speech to introduce “a bold, new progressive agenda” designed to restructure the country’s social safety net and address climate change. The Trudeau government is ready to bring in sweeping changes to Canada’s social welfare framework, revamping unemployment insurance, expanding health programs, and bolstering all forms of social assistance.

The Prime Minister has said a number of times in the last couple weeks that the pandemic crises provide an “unprecedented” opportunity to restructure the country’s economy and “fill gaps” in the federal government’s social safety netting. Trudeau asserts, “This is our moment to change the future for the better. We can’t afford to miss it because this window of opportunity won’t be open for long.”

Repeatedly PM Trudeau has signaled that his prescription for economic recovery is introducing more spending, more programs, and more government. Having installed Chrystia Freeland as his new Finance Minister, he has empowered a trusted ally who aligns with the PM’s ambitious government interventionist plan.

At her initial press conference, Finance Minister Freeland indicated she shares the PM’s vision, “This is a once in a lifetime challenge for our whole country and our commitment as a government is to do whatever it takes to support Canadians as we get through that challenge.” Freeland gushed that the government wants “to turn this tremendous challenge into a fabulous opportunity for our country.”

Yet, Freeland takes over the financial levers of a country drowning in debt, with a projection of $343-billion deficit in 2021. Through the past four years, the federal Liberals have outspent all past federal governments, including those governments that had to respond to world wars and global recessions. The government’s recent fiscal snapshot suggested the federal fiscal planning would not balance the budget until at least 2040 (and this was assessed before COVID-19).

Unfazed by these details, Finance Minister Freeland told a press conference this week: “Our government has taken on more debt so Canadians didn’t have to.” Freeland proceeded to report that the government intends to spend by the end of the fiscal year an additional $37 billion on an extension of CERB support program and an estimated $15 billion on an expanded unemployment insurance program. With these increased spending measures, the Trudeau government’s deficit this fiscal year will be nearly $400 billion and the federal deficit will have climbed beyond $1.2 trillion.

David Rosenberg, founder and chief economist of Rosenberg Research & Associates Inc. of Bay Street says the Liberals approach is nothing more than “a damn-the-torpedoes, full-steam-ahead fiscal policy response.” Lorrie Goldstein of Sun Media agrees, writing that “Trudeau’s big plan is to spend ourselves rich… all Trudeau’s bold vision for the future seems to be is a promise of more spending and more debt facilitated by low interest rates, which Canadians had best pray continue for decades to come.”

However, there is a much more significant and disturbing aspect to Trudeau’s and Freeland’s approach to fiscal planning than the Liberal’s increased spending. Financial reporter Kait Bolongaro of Bloomberg News editorializes that, in placing Chrystia Freeland at the helm of Canada’s finances, the PM “signals the most decisive lurch to the left in economic policy in at least four decades.”

Bolongaro foresees a much greater interventionist agenda as Freeland remakes the country’s socio-economic architecture: “It’s a major expansion of the federal government along the lines of the one overseen by Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who increased program spending and deficits in the early 1980s to combat a recession.”

“In a minority government that continues to profit from pandemic protocol and prorogation, she’s been given the chance to put her affinity for far-left global economics into practice,” observes Bolongaro.

Ottawa political commentator Spencer Fernando concurs and goes as far as to warn: “The Liberals are moving Canada towards full-blown socialism.” In criticizing the new economic and social imperatives the PM and Finance Minister have foreshadowed for the impending Throne Speech, Fernando writes: “The Liberals are moving from measures that were good and important – providing people money when the economy temporarily collapsed due to CCP Virus – to something that is dangerous, providing a massive disincentive against work. So, the Liberals are going to simultaneously give out a bunch of money – at the expense of working class and middle class Canadians – to provide a disincentive to work… That is an absolute disaster, and all Canadians should be afraid of the consequences of this.”

Sun News political columnist Anthony Furey alerts Canadians to the opening of Parliament next month: “Is Trudeau really going to try to sneak an entirely new political agenda, one that he did not receive a mandate from voters for during the last election, into the same confidence vote that contains the renewal of COVID-19 measures? It looks that way.”

Furey suggests the Liberals’ philosophical shift in economic and social policy necessitates an election call: “This is cynical and dishonest politics. It would be far more honest to just separate the COVID-19 measures from what is sure to be a deeply ideological agenda. If Trudeau has finally given up pretending to be something of a centrist Liberal and is now embracing far-left progressivism, then he needs to seek a mandate from the people to enact it.”

So, Canadians are placed on notice: PM Trudeau and Finance Minister Freeland will advance “a bold, new progressive agenda” — and it is incumbent for Canadians to assess the costs and question where this shift to the left will lead our country.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/trudeau-and-freeland-moving-canada-towards-full-blown-socialism/

A Pivotal Week for the Trudeau Liberals’ Green Agenda

The Niagara Independent, August 21, 2020  – Canada’s drama-teacher-turned-Prime-Minister provided plenty of theatrics this week by first switching Finance Ministers and then bringing the curtain down on Parliament. With his performance, Justin Trudeau succeeded in consolidating power in his Prime Minister’s Office and placing trusted globalists in the government’s finance and economic portfolios.

This has been a pivotal week for advancing the Trudeau Liberals’ Green Agenda.

The Liberal organ Toronto Star highlighted a story recently in which Canadians learned PM Trudeau and his inner circle were strategizing on how to coincidentally shut down parliamentary debate on his government’s scandals and implement a “bigger and bolder” post-pandemic government intervention and green economy agenda for the country. We were told Trudeau and his insiders did not want a Fall election and were looking for a way to simply assert their will on the country.

Toronto Star reported an anonymous Liberal backroom stagehand explaining the theme: “[It’s an] opportunity for us to think big to think about child care, to think about how we can accelerate the transition to clean energy and how we can fight climate change, how we can help vulnerable people, how we can root out discrimination and level the playing field for working people and on all the progressive ideas that we’ve talked about and made progress on but in a different context. So can we actually present a big vision? I think we can.”

With the Star’s idyllic prelude, CBC reported their anonymous sources foreshadowing the first act of the week: “Trudeau, Morneau clash over green plans, soaring deficit.” The CBC script read: “A deepening rift between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his finance minister about coronavirus spending is also fueled by disagreements over the scope and scale of proposed green initiatives… Trudeau, who campaigned on a platform to tackle climate change, believes the 2021 budget should have an ambitious environmental element to start weaning the heavily oil-dependent economy off fossil fuels…”

Exit stage-left Morneau; enter wire-flying Mark Carney from his United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action position; and…

PM Trudeau surprised his captive audience by heralding Minister-of-Everything Chrystia Freeland as Canada’s new Finance Minister and then directed his embattled Governor General Julie Payette to shutter Parliament – promptly closing down the work of the committees reviewing the billion-dollar WE scandal, the PM’s ethical breaches, and China-Canada relations.

PM Trudeau took centre stage to deliver a soliloquy on his actions (in case the audience was confused by what they just witnessed): “We need to reset the approach of this government for a recovery to build back better. And those are big, important decisions and we need to present that to Parliament and to gain the confidence of Parliament to move forward on this ambitious plan. This is our chance to build a more resilient Canada, a Canada that is healthier and safer, greener and more competitive, a Canada that is more welcoming and more fair.”

(As an aside, note the Prime Minster used the phrase “build back better.” This is a reoccurring mantra that environmentalists are echoing around the globe to describe their green agenda to be supported by a new global order. “Build back better” was also uttered by U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden this week in his battle cry for a new American economic plan.)

On cue, Canada’s freshly ensconced finance minister used her first media scrum in Ottawa to reemphasize the Liberals’ plot. Finance Minister Freeland said matter-of-factly about restoring Canada’s economy from the COVID-19 pandemic: “To [the] question about decarbonization as part of our economic plan going forward: Of course, it has to be part of it. I think all Canadians understand that the restart of our economy needs to be green.”

So, in the Ottawa troupe, there now is Trudeau, Freeland and Carney (with a cast of supporting actors McKenna, Guilbeault and Wilkinson) all aligned to “build back better” by shifting Canada’s economy away from oil and gas and towards green energy, and introducing bigger, interventionist government to caretake national welfare, immigration, childcare and universal basic income programs. True to that Toronto Star prelude, the Trudeau Liberals are using the pandemic to fundamentally change the way the Canadian economy operates. (It’s a page ripped from Obama backroom advisor Rahm Emanuel’s playbook: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”)

The stage-managed events in the National Capital this week elicited scorn from a range of Canadian economists, financiers, energy experts — and from the editorial board of Canada’s leading national paper. Here is a sampling of the critical reviews:

  • Ross McKitrick, Economics Professor at University of Guelph and a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute assesses: “Green technologies that were known money-losers before the pandemic are still money-losers today. The only thing that’s changed is that we have even less money to work with, so the need to avoid wasting it is higher than ever. It’s critical to choose investments that will lead to real growth and job creation.”
  • Dan McTeague, former Liberal MP and now head of Canadians for Affordable Energy, panned the Liberals’ vision of “a new green, eutopia”: “Carney, like Butts, McKenna, and other Canadian climate fanatics, see this economic disaster as an opportunity for the deconstruction of the Canadian resource sectors. These are the sectors that contribute billions of dollars to our economy, and underwrite the affordability of everything we take for granted. Moving away from a resource-based economy will only result in greater financial hardship for Canadians, and more expensive energy for a long, long time.”
  • Jack Mintz of the School of Public Policy at University of Calgary is concerned about the $50 Billion price tag on the recommendations forwarded by the Government’s “self-appointed Task Force for a Resilient Recovery, arranged by the PM’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts.” Mintz writes: “Subsidies will widen a federal deficit that has already turned from pink to deep COVID red… The Trudeau government seems bent on bribing voters with mountains of new debt that it will leave for others to pay.”
  • Sun Media editorial succinctly states: “We need recovery, not decarbonization… What the Liberals should focus on is getting the economy firing on all cylinders, not using an ideological agenda to favour one sector over the others.”

The closing lines for the week go to the Globe and Mail editorial board who are alerting Canadians to PM Trudeau’s powerplay. In its lead editorial entitled “Justin Trudeau’s cynical disdain for Parliament, and for Canadian voters,” the paper suggests the PM is jeopardizing our country’s economic prosperity and undermining Canada’s democracy. Referring to PM Trudeau as a “callow scion” who is “ruthless, cynical and disdainful” the editorial trumpets: “Canadians should be alarmed by the way the Prime Minister is cynically trying to use this national emergency to his political advantage.”

With the Ottawa theatre now dark, Canadians need to be ever-mindful about what is unfolding off-stage in the recesses of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

Photo: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a campaign stop at the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area in Sudbury, Sept. 26, 2019. 

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/a-pivotal-week-for-the-trudeau-liberals-green-agenda/

10 of Ronald Reagan’s quotes on Big Government

  • Government is like a big baby – an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
  • Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving; regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
  • Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.
  • Either you will control your government, or government will control you.
  • We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around…. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of haven grown beyond the consent of the governed.
  • Status quo, you know, that is Latin for “the mess we’re in.”
  • When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation.
  • Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself.
  • Man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics. As government expands, liberty contracts.
  • The best view of big government is in the rear view mirror as we leave it behind.

Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer or experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

 

Optimistically Canadians will have a $252 Billion deficit this year and more than $1 Trillion debt

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux waits to appear before the Commons Finance committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday March 10, 2020. Photo: Adrian Wyld/THE CANADIAN PRESS

The Niagara Independent, May 15, 2020 –  A budget deficit of $252 billion this year and a national debt of more than $1 trillion? But then, who is counting?

Two weeks ago the Parliamentary Budget Officer Report was issued and it projected that, given the combined impact of the pandemic and the collapse of world oil prices, Canada will have a budgetary deficit of $252.1 billion this year. The country’s GDP (the value of all goods and services produced) will fall by 12 per cent for the fiscal year. This will result in federal tax revenues falling by $60 billion, while the government’s program spending will increase by $168 billion.

To put all these numbers in context, it is the worst financial statement in Canada’s history. The deficit figure that is about to blot the ledger books of our country is greater than in any single year during the Great Depression.

That was two weeks ago. Fast forward to this week when Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux appeared before MPs to testify at a finance committee meeting. Giroux said the $252 billion figure he cited in his report is “optimistic” and that it is “a low-ball estimate” of how much the federal government programs will cost the federal treasury this fiscal year. He anticipated the figure to be higher as the government continues to spend billions of dollars on emergency economic support programs to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

Giroux explained, “The figure of $252 billion is very likely to be the very optimistic scenario, as opposed to the number for the deficit for the current fiscal year. It’s very difficult to estimate what is a likely deficit figure given that details are missing for some of these potentially very expensive measures.”

Giroux also projected that the coronavirus lockdown could result in Canada’s debt climbing to surpass $ 1 trillion. The PBO replied to Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre’s question whether it was “possible or realistic” that the federal debt could reach a trillion dollars during this fiscal year. He answered, “Possible, yes. Realistic? Yes. Certainly not unthinkable.”

In follow-up to the PBO appearance, the Federal Department of Finance reaffirmed Giroux’s projection, saying that the department had no estimate on the amount of money spent by the Trudeau Government in the last nine weeks. As it turns out, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada is also not able to provide any performance audits of federal departments. It has been reported that the Trudeau Government has been withholding operations funding from the office, preventing it from conducting its regular schedule of audits.

So, one trillion dollars of debt: $1,000,000,000,000. Can Canadians carry this burden? The short answer is “yes.” Given the current projections, the PBO sees the federal debt-to-GDP ratio rising to 48.4 per cent this year (Trudeau Government has boasted it has always been able to keep it at a manageable 30 per cent). Even at this inflated rate, the debt-to-GDP remains below its peak of 66.6-per-cent back during the PM Jean Chretien years of 1995–96. In the mid-90s Canadians were paying 38 cents of every tax dollar to pay the interest on the national debt. As it is in our post-pandemic world, Canadians will be paying about 30 cents on the dollar in interest payments – but that depends on interest rates.  As Paul Boothe, a former senior bureaucrat at Finance Canada also explains, it will depend on the foreign government(s) who will set the conditions on the debt they will finance (about one-third of government’s debt).

For the PM, this is a problem for another day. Trudeau said recently, “There will be time after this is all done as we figure out how exactly this unfolds, where we will have to make next decisions on how that recovery looks. But right now our focus is on getting through this together as a country.” When pressed about how Canadians may be told what the country’s books look like, Trudeau offered, “We’ll find ways to share this with you but we have not yet been able to determine what the best way is of looking at a budget or an economic update or maybe another way of sharing information with Canadians about what we foresee for the months to come.”

It is difficult to keep track of the multiple financial commitments made by the Trudeau Government. The numbers are alarming. Last reported, more than 7.3 million Canadians have applied for emergency assistance. Another 96,000 employers have applied for the 75 per cent wage subsidy to cover about 1.7 million workers. Another 518,000 businesses have applied for $40,000 government-backed loans.

And there are increasing concerns being expressed by MPs and media about the lack of government controls in place to monitor its own spending. This week, details of how the federal government has suspended “compliance and enforcement” of the EI program during the pandemic were exposed. Federal civil servants revealed to media that massive fraud is taking place. There are as many as 200,000 cases being given the $2,000-a-month emergency payment; yet, questions to the PM about this $400-million-per-month-boondoggle were dismissed.

In a special column to the Globe and Mail, Preston Manning sounded an alert on the gross spending by the federal government. He wrote, “Sooner or later – and preferably sooner – Canadians will come to realize that the country is headed into a financial and economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude with, as yet, no realistic plan or demonstrated capacity on the part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government to deal with it.”

Last word goes to an unlikely left-of-centre character, former NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, who was also highly critical of the Trudeau Government’s spending ways. Mulcair wrote in a Sun Media editorial: “Trudeau will have created $10,000 of new debt for every man, woman and child in Canada during his time in office. The sums are staggering. Trudeau swatted away questions on that, not because it isn’t a huge problem but because he knows there’ll be an election before he has to bring in new taxes to start dealing with it.”

Mulcair concluded his criticisms with a lament for Canada’s future taxpayers, “Once again, this generation of leaders is putting everything on the maxed-out credit card of our grandchildren. One of the greatest inequalities in our society is that which exists between generations and it’s getting more and more unfair.”

(Is it now not accurate to say that with this $1 trillion dollar debt legacy, Trudeau Jr. has far surpassed the dubious legacy of Trudeau Sr., the father of Canada’s debt and its deficit-spending tradition?) 

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/optimistically-canadians-will-have-a-252-billion-deficit-this-year-and-more-than-1-trillion-debt/

Canadians Will Need to Brace for the “Second War”

The Niagara Independent, April 10, 2020 – In one of his daily addresses to the Nation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to questions about the country’s economic wellbeing by stating that his government had always kept a “rainy day fund” of money in case of a federal emergency. The PM told Canadians to be reassured that, though “it’s raining,” the country’s economy is in a strong position to outlast this storm.

Trudeau’s rain analogy was a direct swipe at a Globe and Mail lead editorial that was critical of the Liberal government’s fiscal mismanagement through good economic times. The editorial began: “One of the many things we’ve learned from the pandemic crisis is the importance of saving for a rainy day. Canada has failed for many years to do so. Now it’s pouring outside, and both governments and individuals will struggle to cope.”

The paper poured down on the government’s “sunny days” performance, stating: “Justin Trudeau’s Liberals instead kept ramping up spending, taking advantage of a booming economy…  Their apologists patted them on the back for their wisdom and foresight. If Mr. Trudeau had broken a little promise, what of it? Everyone did that. And the size of the debt didn’t really matter anyway; it was its size compared to GDP, you see. As long as that didn’t soar, well, not to worry. No rain was in sight.”

The Trudeau Liberal’s record over four deficit budgets have left Canadians with $78 billion of new debt. The Fraser Institute reports that the combined federal and provincial net debt has reached $1.5-trillion. Mirroring this government debt, Canadians’ personal and corporate debt are at record highs. Former Chief Economist for Statistics Canada, Philip Cross, surmised, “High debt levels across households and governments mean Canada is quite vulnerable to a downturn in the global economy … It is easy to imagine how the dominoes might fall.”

Canada’s debt realities are very disturbing when considering the country must now brace for the economic storm front that just battered China. Last week The Economist reported on “the jaw-dropping bad economic data” coming out of China as a precursor of what the rest of the world will likely experience. “In the first two months of 2020 all major indicators were deeply negative: industrial production fell by 13.5 percent year-on-year, retail sales by 20.5 percent and fixed-asset investment by 24.5 percent. GDP may have declined by as much as 10 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020.”

With the Canadian government’s proverbial cupboard bare, its $82 billion federal relief package will be paid for by borrowing money at record amounts – placing a yoke on the shoulders of future generations of Canadian taxpayers.

More disturbing is the fact that Canada’s pre-pandemic economy was showing signs of strain and systemic weakness. Canadians were absorbing news of the loss of $20.6 billion investment in Teck Frontier mine project and the possible collapse of Quebec’s $9 billion Energie Saguenay pipeline project. In total in the last five years, more than $200 billion in investment has been lost in the Canadian resource sector. The Conference Board of Canada has assessed, “With the economy already on precarious footing, the added shocks of the recent rail blockade protests, the arrival of COVID-19 and a collapse in oil prices have brought the country to the brink of recession.”

This week, Statistics Canada reported more than one million Canadians lost their jobs in March. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reported that as many as 40 percent of small businesses are not expecting to survive the economic shock of the pandemic (the Business Development Bank of Canada factors that 1.1 million small-to-medium sized businesses provides approximately 7.7 million Canadian jobs). Also this week the Canadian dollar dipped further below the American greenback: if one were to spend $100 in U.S. dollars buying an item online today, it would cost $143 compared to $134 only five weeks earlier on March 1st.

Punctuating this cacophony of bad news, Bloomberg News reported Canadians’ consumer confidence has fallen to a record low, surpassing even the worst numbers from the Great Recession. Nik Nanos reported on Canadians stark non-confidence in their economy: “The reality is there is a second war going on, that has to do with our economic and prosperity being at risk… when you look at consumer sentiment it is a steep, negative cliff.”

Even with government relief, Nanos is not optimistic in the short-term: “For many Canadians their initial inclination is still not to spend but to squirrel away… we’re in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm right now from a consumer spending perspective. I would expect for any support Canadians get (including businesses) they will try to maximize it, optimize it, and to hold back…. just because you send out the cheques and support businesses and Canadians, it doesn’t mean they will automatically start spending.”

The numbers in the Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index are a “bleak picture of economic anxiety across regions, age groups and most income levels.”  Three in four Canadians believe the nation’s economy will worsen over the next six months. One in three Canadians say their personal finances have worsened over the past year. Almost one fifth of respondents now say they are worried about losing work. Nik Nanos sums up the numbers by stating, “This is unprecedented because there is no structural problem in the economy right now. But this is like a hurricane bearing down on the Canadian economy and just wiping out prosperity and putting jobs at risk.”

In another interview this week, Royal Bank of Canada CEO Dave McKay and CIBC CEO Victor Dodig both projected that the economic fallout of the pandemic will last well into 2021. Businesses will assume a more cautious mindset which will prolong the economic recovery. Dodig summed it up by saying. “What worries me most is making sure our clients are able to bridge to a period of normalcy. It’s impacted everybody’s income, because it’s just stalled, and the income replacement hasn’t fully funded what they’ve lost. People will get back on their feet, but they’ll be a little bit more sheepish. They’ll manage more cautiously.”

In overcoming the health crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, as Nik Nanos stated, Canadians will need to brace for the “second war.” With the country’s finances as they are, we can expect individuals and businesses to be shell-shocked. And then the deluge of government stimulus dollars is sure to leave Canadians treading water in a sea of debt for years to come. (Which reminds me of that quote… “War is hell.”)

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/canadians-will-need-to-brace-for-the-second-war/

On “Wild Pigs”

Take a moment to let this sink in.. and here’s a thought to remember as you read this: Marx said, “Remove one freedom per generation and soon you will have no freedom and no one would have noticed.”

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting Communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.  He asked: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?”

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch-line. The young man said that it was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free food. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

“Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in Canada. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of government programs to feed us from cradle to grave, while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths:
1.  There is no such thing as a free lunch, and
2.  You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

If you see that all of this wonderful government “help” is a problem confronting the future of democracy in our country, you might want to share this with your friends.

God help us all when the gate slams shut!

A here’s a thoughtful quote to pass along:  “The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living.”

.

(Received in my email today – and could not not reshare it. – cg) 

Chris George provides reliable PR & GR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? Call 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

10 quotes on bureaucracy

“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – Thomas Sowell

“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.” – Honore de Balzac

“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.” – Eugene J. McCarthy

“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.” – Albert Einstein

“Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.” – Javier Pascual Salcedo

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” – Franz Kafka

“Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.” – Richard M. Nixon

“Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.” – Mary McCarthy

“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.” – Laurence Peter

“Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.” – Dale Dauten

 

Chris George, providing reliable PR & GR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Federal Government continues corporate welfare spending spree

Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. 

The Niagara Independent, February 7, 2020 — Many Canadians feel the federal government should not be in the business of doling out corporate welfare cheques. From an economic standpoint, it is most often money down the drain. Yet the Trudeau Government continues to shovel taxpayers’ dollars to multi-million dollar corporations. There have been numerous corporate payouts and debt write-offs in the last four years. Perhaps the most egregious example of corporate welfare is the recent payout to credit card company MasterCard – yes, that MasterCard, which recorded a net income of nearly $4 billion in 2017.

Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains took a break from hobnobbing with the wealthiest corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to announce the Canadian Government is gifting $50 million to MasterCard to help the corporation set up a Vancouver office. Minister Bains held a press conference with the company’s CEO Ajay Banga (whose 2018 salary was more than $20 million and his net worth is over $200 million) and the only thing missing in the Minister’s presentation was the over-sized cheque and grip-and-grin photo. For this handout, MasterCard will develop a new centre to advance cybersecurity technology that is expected to employ 380 people.

When the Prime Minister was first asked about his Government’s decision to give MasterCard $50 million, his response was, “Over the past five years, we have been focused on growing the middle class and supporting those working hard to join it. That is exactly what we have done.”

With the Trudeau Government it seems every explanation includes platitudes about championing the middle-class. With the new federal cabinet, Canadians can now rely on the Minister of Middle-Class Prosperity Mona Fortier and her new departmental bureaucrats to stand up for their interests, even though she admits she cannot define “middle class.” In Parliament this week the Minister stated, “Canada has no official statistical measure of what constitutes the middle class.”

But the greatest insult to taxpayers in the recent $50 million payola to MasterCard could very well be this: while corporate welfare was being debated in the House of Commons, the Minister of Middle-Class Prosperity was touting the Government’s generosity in having provided Canadians with a $90-a-year tax break – which the Minister suggested will pay for a child’s summer camp. This Government has no issues with the logic that would have MasterCard receiving a $50 million handout while Canadians get handed $90 to supposedly pay for summer camp?

The Trudeau Government has a long track record when it comes to rationalizing their corporate welfare. Recall these handouts:

  • Former Environment Minister Catherine McKenna gave away $12 million to grocery chain giant Loblaws to purchase “low-emission” refrigerator units for its stores. Loblaws, having earned more than $221 million in profit in the prior three months, announced in January they will lay off 800 people at their Ottawa and Laval distribution centres.
  • The federal government handed Maple Leaf Foods $28 million (Ontario handed out $34.5 million) to help the mega-food company with construction of a new poultry operation in London, ON. What was not communicated in this corporate grant announcement was that when the new facility opens, Maple Leaf will close its facilities in Toronto, Brampton, and St. Mary’s – leading to a net job loss of 300.
  • The Trudeau Government doled out $595 million over three years to its favourite mainstream media newsrooms, picked by media’s anti-conservative labour union bosses at Unifor.

This list goes on: $2.7 milllion to Canadian Tire to put electric car charging stations at their gas bars, $40 million to BlackBerry’s automated car division even though the company’s CEO said they did not need the money and a $373 million loan to Montreal-based aviation company Bombardier (which later laid off 3,000 Canadian employees).

There are also those endless, inexplicable debt and loan write-offs for government-friendly corporations. Recall a few years ago, the Trudeau Government wrote off $2.6 billion to General Motors and Chrysler corporations only to have Chrysler lay off 1,500 employees in Windsor and GM to close its doors in Oshawa putting 3,000 people out of work. Then there is the government forgiving the Irving family of a loan worth $7.4 million – beyond the $35 million in non-repayable funding for its wallboard operations in the Atlantic. Imagine this government looking after the interests of the middle class by writing off multi-million dollar loans to James Irving, who is worth approximately $5 billion!

Of course there is the temptation to swipe at this Federal Government that is headed up by a Laurentian-minded, trust-fund Prime Minister. How does such a government relate to middle-class taxpayers when they are cozied up to their tight corporate fraternity? This is a fair question for the Middle-Class Prosperity Minister and her Liberal colleagues, given that the Trudeau Government wants to put middle-class Canadians at the centre of all its rationalizations. But, irrespective of the answer, middle-class common sense tells us that the cheques recently handed out to corporations were a waste of taxpayers’ dollars – and in principle and in practice, corporate welfare should end.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/federal-government-continues-corporate-welfare-spending-spree/

The Dead Horse Theory of Bureaucracy

The tribal wisdom of the Plains Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”

However, in the Canadian Government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
11. Declaring that because the dead horse doesn’t have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and, therefore, contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And, of course…

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

 

The joke was selected from Epic Political Jokes & Quotes – the 150-page-plus e-book bursting with funny guffaws, “shaggy-dog” stories and sideways jokes about politicians and politics. Read more about it hereOrder your copy here.

Three Contractors and the Fence

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence on Parliament Hill. One is from Ottawa, another is from Toronto, and the third is from Montreal. All three go with a government official to examine the fence.

The Ottawa contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he said, “I figure the job will run about $900 ($400 for materials, $400 for my crew, and $100 profit for me).”

The Toronto contractor also did some measuring and figuring, then said, “I can do this job for $700 ($300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me).”

The Montreal contractor didn’t measure or figure, but leaned over to the government official and whispered, “$2,700.”

The official, incredulous, said, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”

The Montreal contractor whispered back, “$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Toronto to fix the fence.”

“Done!” replied the government official.  

And that is how our government procurement works.

 

FROM OUR E-BOOK

The joke was selected from Epic Political Jokes & Quotes – the 150-page-plus e-book bursting with funny guffaws, “shaggy-dog” stories and sideways jokes about politicians and politics. Read more about it here. Order your copy here.

This Federal Government Has a Spending Problem

The Niagara Independent, March 15, 2019 — Finance Minister Bill Morneau will be delivering his fourth federal government budget next Wednesday, March 19. Given the news that the government ran a budgetary surplus of $300 million through the first nine months of the fiscal year, many financial analysts and political pundits are expecting the Finance Minister to increase federal spending – yet again.

Avery Shenfeld, chief economist for CIBC, forecasts in a Canadian Press interview: “I’m expecting cheques to go out somewhere. Remember that in the last election the party that won was the one party not promising to balance the budget… The recent sluggishness of the economy is just one more reason to expect a budget that sends out some goodies.”

With the looming election this Fall, Canadians are likely to see Minister Morneau make new (costly) promises relating to a national first-time homeownership initiative and a new national pharmacare program to provide “free” basic drugs for all. Canadians will be told the government can afford these promises based on our strong economic performance and an attractive debt-to-GDP ratio.

Interestingly, the federal finance minister no longer speaks of “deficits” and of “balancing the budget.” His favourite economic metric now is Canada’s “debt-to-GDP ratio” – the federal debt figure divided by Canada’s total economic production.

Pundits believe Bill Morneau will also use this budget address to explain to Canadians that he and the Trudeau Government have a firm hold on federal government finances. His speech is sure to pre-empt the Opposition’s attack of the Liberals fiscal record through the past four years.

As the oft-heard criticism goes, Justin Trudeau ran in 2015 on a promise to stimulate and grow Canada’s economy by spending small, annual deficits of $10 million. Somewhere in the last few years this Liberal plan was abandoned and, today, the Finance Department projects the government is on track to run deficits until the year 2040, which will add approximately $300 billion to the country’s federal debt. (ed. – This is not as bad as it sounds given our debt-to-GDP ratio.)

The Liberals’ continuous deficits are fueled by their unbridled government spending. Federal spending has grown from just under $300 billion annually in the last year of the Harper Conservative government to almost $340 billion for this past fiscal year. In reviewing the post-WWII period in Canada, PM Justin Trudeau has presided over the fourth-largest average annual increase (3.1 per cent) in per person program spending. This unflattering record ranks behind only his father, Pierre Trudeau (4.5 per cent), Lester Pearson (5.3 per cent) and Louis St. Laurent (7.0 per cent). In fact, this Trudeau Government has now recorded two of the three highest-spending years in Canadian history – 2017 and 2018.

To place the current Liberal Government’s fiscal record into context with those of recent Prime Ministers’, both PMs Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien recorded average annual per-person spending declines of 0.3 per cent. Over the Stephen Harper Government’s 10 budgets, that government recorded an average annual per-person spending increase of 1.5 per cent.

The difficulty with the Trudeau Government’s continuous overspending is brought into sharp focus in a recent analysis released by the Fraser Institute.  Jason Clemens, co-author of the Institute’s report entitled Prime Ministers and Government Spending, observes, “Wars and recessions clearly affect government spending, but to see this high level of peacetime spending when the economy is also growing could spell trouble for Canadian taxpayers in the future.”

Clemens explains, “The past few years have seen rapid and historic increases in deficit-financed government spending in Ottawa, at a time when the economy is growing. Higher spending often leads to higher deficits and more debt that ultimately must be paid by taxpayers, which is why current spending levels represent a burden to current and future taxpayers.”

But on Wednesday Canadians will not hear about these facts – about the challenges presented by continuous deficit spending. Instead, Finance Minister Morneau will tell us about the Liberals’ attractive election promises. He will reassure us with an accounting of the country’s favourable debt-to-GDP ratio. Yet, as the Fraser Institute’s report suggests, it may be best to remember that all this government overspending does not add up for Canadians’ fiscal future.

 

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/this-federal-government-has-a-spending-problem/

The Fall Economic Statement: “An Inadequate Response”

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau has faced criticism for admitting the Liberals financial plan will probably lead to an indefinite number of deficit budgets. 

The Niagara Independent, November 30, 2018 – For months leading up to the Liberals’ fall economic statement, Finance Minister Bill Morneau indicated his statement would respond to the recent U.S. corporate tax cuts that had eliminated any tax advantages for Canadian businesses and investors. Morneau stated he could not reduce corporate tax rates for Canadians, as they would cost the government too much, but he would have measures to address the newfound disadvantages experienced by the Canadian business community.

On Nov. 21, the finance minister brought forward his plan offering $17.6 billion of new investment incentives over six years to the country’s business community – something that he concedes will commit the federal government to an indefinite number of deficit budgets.

MP Pierre Polievre, Conservative finance critic, was quick to criticize the Liberal government’s embrace of long-term deficit financing. “Not only did they break their promise, not only will they fail to balance the budget, as they said, but they now admit that under their plan the budget will never be balanced… in other words, they are putting our future in a reckless state of danger by spending our tomorrow on their today.”

Kevin Page, president of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, also voiced concern with the new spending, “We’re deficit-financing the corporate sector.” The former federal parliamentary budget officer observed, “This is a financial statement that responds to the business community.”

Though the finance minister’s statement may have been designed to encourage the business community, there has been a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for the government’s plan from the country’s foremost economic analysts. The reaction is best summarized by Jack Mintz, president’s fellow at the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, who stated “I think this is a really inadequate response.”

Mintz wrote in a Financial Post column: “This fiscal update does the minimum possible to ensure Canada attracts more private investment and entrepreneurship. It makes some attempt by allowing temporary accelerated depreciation. But that is wholly lacking in addressing the serious competitiveness, innovation and productivity issues facing Canada arising from burdensome regulations, our inability to get goods to tidewater, new levies on carbon, property and payroll, and high personal taxes on families and highly skilled, high-income workers.”

Others agree with Mintz’s analysis. Craig Alexander, partner and chief economist for Deloitte confided, “It’s not going to lead economic forecasters like myself to really change our economic outlook.” The Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO Perrin Beatty stated, “There should have been specific reference to the situation we’re facing in our energy sector and a commitment to get our resources to market. I’m disappointed as well that there isn’t a clear strategy to bring the books back into balance.”

The loudest criticism was heard in the west. Don Braid in his Calgary Herald column captured Albertans’ heightened frustration: “Ottawa offers no specific help for Alberta’s oil price crisis.” He argued the federal economic measures are inadequate for the immediate support needed for the western economy, “There is no money for rail cars, no locomotives, nothing to speed up pipeline construction and no specific industry targeted measures.” Braid then quoted Alberta Finance Minister Ceci as saying “Ottawa is living on a different economic planet.”

Albertans punctuated their disapproval a day after the finance minister’s economic statement when thousands of protestors took to the streets of Calgary to greet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There were loud boos as well as chants of “Build that pipe.” This inhospitable reception prompted the PM to shorten his day’s itinerary (and he retreated back to the Capital instead of carrying on to join the Grey Cup festivities in Edmonton.)

Yet, the government and Finance Minister Morneau persist with their economic approach. Facing his own sea of protestors in downtown Calgary this week, Morneau stated: “I want you to know that we are going to work to be as supportive as we can.”

 

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK:  https://niagaraindependent.ca/the-fall-economic-statement-an-inadequate-response/