There will come a day when Canada indeed does come together in a sincere desire to build bigger and better across this great land. It’ll happen when the free money runs out.
But, for the foreseeable future, the ludicrous borrowing our national government engages in will continue. It’s hard to imagine, but the Mark Carney regime plans to go deeper into the red than even that remarkable Justin Trudeau-roadshow of economic imbecility managed.
Of course, these days it isn’t called borrowing. That’s far too ugly a word, although an entirely truthful one.
No, instead we call it investing. What a joke, as though we’ll get interest back on the billions borrowed, when exactly the opposite occurs: Canada will pony up a bigger and bigger fortune each year to pay the financial freight for getting deeper and deeper in debt.
The numbers are so huge they become almost meaningless, which is one of the challenges.
Because Canadians’ eyes glaze over at the red ink on the borrowing ledger, which is something politicians understand only too well. That’s why election campaigns nowadays resemble advent calendars, where every day a new door opens to unveil another expensive promise that can only be paid for by borrowing more money.
Here are the awful numbers anyhow. The projected deficit for the financial year just ended is $48.3 billion. (It will probably be larger once the financial eggheads in Ottawa tot up all federal spending).
Hey, let’s rejoice. This was Trudeau’s last kick at that particular financial can. Remember, when first elected as prime minister, he blithely announced budgets balance themselves? Well, when you have a family trust fund they probably do.
Back in the real world, where most of us live, there’s no such convenient backstop, which probably explains why we’ve had ten deficit budgets in a row courtesy of Trudeau’s vaunted sunny ways. The result is Canada’s now well past the trillion-dollar mark in overall debt.
Ah, but Justin just laid the foundation: Carney intends erecting an even larger straw house upon it. In the current financial year he plans on borrowing another $62 billion, followed by a further $60-billion in the following 12-months. It’ll be more, of course. It always is where government’s concerned. All this borrowing is supposed to make us more competitive, juice GDP and supercharge productivity.
Well, it certainly didn’t do that under Trudeau. Canada’s GDP increased by only one per cent during his time as prime minister, making our country the worst performer among the world’s leading 37 nations. (In comparison, Ireland’s GDP increased by 70 per cent per capita during that decade.)
Is it any wonder we feel poorer than back in 2015? Maybe it’s because so many of us actually are.
The good news, if you can call it that, is this will not last. There’ll come a time when the bond market revolts and interest rates on our debt skyrocket. Then our currency will collapse as inflation rips.
This isn’t rocket science; though it might appear so to those with convenient family trust funds. It’s what happens when a country borrows so much those lending the cash demand higher and higher interest payments in return for the increasing risk of default. It’s a financial doom loop.
When that happens we’ll have to face the house of cards we’ve created. Only then will we build pipelines, open mines, ignore the victimhood industry and ultimately restore the vitality that once made this a country ably thriving from its own resources, rather than borrowing the wherewithal from others.
Getting there will be painful. Canadians will suffer. But it’ll happen.
