| Big spending can lead to big consequences |
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| Local Content - Editorial |
| Written by production |
| Thursday, 25 February 2010 17:33 |
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With the billion-dollar deficit 2010 Alberta provincial budget behind us, Canadians are already wondering what the federal budget will look like as Canada slowly appears to be recovering from the global recession. Just what the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty have in store for us is anyone’s guess. Some critics are voicing concerns the budget will not be a visionary one in a time when the country could probably use a good dose of vision. Others have worried the Conservatives might pump billions more into spendthrift stimulus programs and send the federal deficit skyrocketing to new heights of fiscal largess. We’ve been down that road before, and although we managed to turn things around and get our country back on track, we still had a $600 billion plus national debt to service thanks to too many decades of spending first and asking questions later. In Ottawa, Parliament Hill has been a Conservative self-enforced political ghost town for over a month since the prime minister asked the governor-general to prorogue parliament. Time and the polls have shown that to have been an ill-advised decision. But, whatever else it might have been the prime minister claimed at the time that it was, it at least partially was to shut down and retool in preparation for tabling a budget. What has been happening behind closed doors in the boardrooms and offices of Parliament Hill during this hiatus? We will soon find out next week. One would hope the prime minister has been true to his word in taking careful preparation for a budget that will be one of the most important in charting the course for the nation’s future. Going down the road towards more bloated deficits will have short-term positive effects but won’t be what the nation needs in the long term. Our children’s generation will someday suffer for their forebears lack of responsibility and a driving need to live in the moment and not look back, or into the future. Still, the time is ripe for some limited larger-scale spending. Infrastructure costs have never been cheaper based on the cost of labour and other factors, and cannot be claimed to be a symptom of short-sightedness on the part of a government. And that being said, there is some social spending that is unavoidable in harsh economic times if we are to keep people with roofs over their heads and food on their tables. Spending more and more, however, is not the answer. It will only create more problems in the end than it will solve. It is no different that balancing one’s check book. If expenditures always exceed revenues the eventual outcome spells bad news down the road. And just because we can borrow more and more on what seems like endless foreign credit, that doesn’t mean it would be a good idea. Someday the bankers will call in their debts, and the result may not only be the nation defaulting on billions. Let’s hope Harper will strike the right balance. for the nation’s future. |
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