Now that we are about to select our next prime minister, it is time to focus on what we believe to be critical in the future for our country over the next four years.
Now that we are about to select our next prime minister, it is time to focus on what we believe to be critical in the future for our country over the next four years.
I would put it to you, dear reader, that there are two key issues that bear considering as we go to the polls. First is the economic future of our country. Second is the form of governance that we are prepared to put up with.
Canadians traditionally receive promises of gifts that someone else will pay for whenever we go to polling booths. Currently we have promises galore from all parties of tax cuts and an expanded array of free social services – all to be done within a balanced budget. This comes from a governmental level, which owes $616 billion more than its total assets. And the Canadian government is not alone. When we combine our federal, provincial and municipal government finances in this country, we owe $1.5 trillion. Our governments are balancing their books by paying only the interest on their loans. And they are borrowing the money to do it. Paying down the principal is to happen at some distant time.
Unfortunately Canadian taxpayers are no better off in terms of available credit to pay off our government's debts as every Canadian household is carrying its own debt load. Canadian families owe 150 per cent more than our average annual household incomes.
And now Canada is undergoing a medium if not long-term seismic shift in our economy. Our commodity-rich nation is faced with a prolonged decline in revenue and activity in our core business and manufacturing sector is pitifully weak. So, if we don't find a way to replace our industrial revenues, we will find that we will have to borrow even more money to pay for our expanding social programs – until we become the Greece of the Americas.
So let us start asking what strategies, both short- and long-term, our political parties propose to restore our crippling economic productivity. Where are the jobs going to come from to put laid off workers from our commodity industries? What do we have to do to get the EU Trade Agreement signed? What are we to do about trade with China and India? What do we have to do to profit from the Trans-Pacific partnership? When and how will we stop eastern Canada's importation of 600-million barrels per day from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? And that's just a start. Until these items are addressed, the federal election campaign is a sick joke.
As for our Westminster-style parliamentary system – it is broken. Canada has come to the point that we look to our federal ballot as an indirect voting method of selecting the prime minister of our choice. And that was tolerable so long as parliament was functioning as a governing authority. We now have a system where the prime minister or the Prime Minister's Office – at parliamentary committees, the Cabinet table, the Governor General's office and the Senate – makes all decisions. That leaves only the press, the provincial premiers and the Supreme Court as balancing forces.
Forcing provinces to hold elections to fill Senate seats is the prime minister's latest ploy. Unconstitutional but who cares?
Think about it.
Alan Murdock is a local pediatrician.
