How encouraging I find it that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is projecting a budget of only a $2.9-billion deficit for this year and the government will easily post a surplus of $6.4 billion in 2015.
Zounds! The man is a miracle worker of the first water.
This is astounding considering the bungling bunch we have had over the last 50 years. When I look at the Canadian Debt Clock, it shows we have a national debt of something like $679,419,195,500. If we pay eight per cent interest on $680 billion, doesn’t that come out to $54 billion for this year? If we end up with a deficit of $2.9 billion, doesn’t that mean that we haven’t even paid the interest, so in actual fact every cent we pay in taxes does not go to pay down the debt but only goes to the money exchangers as interest?
When questioning people, not one can explain what the deficit is nor the amount of interest nor the national debt. Thank heaven for Flaherty because he must know what’s going on.
The simple fact of finance is that any country that prints its own money can never go in debt so where does the $679,419,195,500 come from?
At one time in Saskatchewan, there was a young Baptist minister by the name of Tommy Douglas who joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation of Saskatchewan. Douglas was probably the finest Canadian to come out of Western Canada! There are people at this time who still remember wheat of a grade 3 which sold for as low as 19 cents a bushel and cattle going to market and being sold for less than the freight bill.
Well, Douglas asked the Finance minister of Canada if the government of Canada would give Saskatchewan $5 million to alleviate the depression. This was about 1935!
The Finance minister replied to Douglas that the young man from Saskatchewan must think that money grows on gooseberry bushes.
In 1939, when the Liberals decided to go to war, the government created $1.2 billion toward the war effort. I believe that Douglas then stood in Parliament and said that the minister must have found that gooseberry bush.
So it seems the government may print debt-free money if it wishes.
Douglas was instrumental in the formation of the Canadian Wheat Board; Government Auto Insurance; Unemployment Insurance; crop insurance; formation of the Bank of Canada; the Canada pension plan; and family allowance. These represent the difference between a man who works for the people and one who works for ...?
At this time when our province and our country are wallowing in debt while producing hundreds of times what we can consume, I think of H.L. Mencken, who said, “Elections are nothing but the futures market for stolen goods,” and Johann Von Goethe, who said, “The best slave is the man who doesn’t know he is a slave.”
From recent polls and conversation at coffee row, I would say Prime Minister Stephen Harper, if he might win the next election, will definitely be the leader of a minority party as our Eastern buddies will get more welfare from Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.
Should Harper wish to be remembered fondly in the West, while he still has a majority government and if he works for the people, he should bring in the triple E Senate so the West will at long last have some equality. It’s now or never!
Dennis Combs
Olds