Moe, Smith — exactly what are we waiting for?

Unwilling to live within the tax revenues produced by the national economy, this government has borrowed more money in 8 years than all other Canadian governments combined since the nation was founded in 1867. This recklessness has doubled the national debt and created interest payments that are breaking all records – last year over $46 billion dollars and this coming year over $54 billion dollars. That is more than the federal government spends on the military, or healthcare. All of it taken from taxpayers to pay bondholders instead of being spent on public services.

Now, the centrepiece of their new budget is a capital gains tax targeting the few Canadian individuals and firms who invest in Canadian ventures or assets. This investment is what creates the new businesses and jobs and productivity the nation so badly needs.

It is bizarre to watch a morbidly obese and fiscally incompetent government propose – in the name of ‘fairness’ – to justify taking productive capital away from Canada’s small but critical investor class and hand it to the same bureaucracy that has for almost a decade shown they will only waste it.

Ten years of Harper’s fiscal restoration was laid waste by the Trudeau Liberals in the span of months. God Bless Poilievre, but he’s going to inherit a toxic stew of public debt and social entitlement that no amount of “common sense” can resolve. Extricating the economies of Saskatchewan and Alberta from this mess would be painful (of that there is no doubt) – but not doing so will be fatal.