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How times change. When Justin Trudeau was first elected, he promised to set new standards in transparent government. He has set a new standard, all right … in how not to be transparent.
Recently, the government issued its Fall Economic Statement. The name was carefully chosen since it did not meet the level of detail that we would normally expect from a fiscal update. Now, for sure, we can cut the government some slack because of the pandemic, which has created budgetary chaos to say the least. But even in the context of a pandemic — perhaps especially in the context of a pandemic — the economic statement revealed the enormous depths of Liberal incompetence.
From the outset of the pandemic, the Trudeau government’s approach has been to spend first and think later … if at all. As a result, our country has been left adrift with no plan for dealing with the pandemic or rebuilding the economy.
As a result of their bumbling, there have been delays at every stage of the pandemic … delays in acquiring protective equipment, delays in approving rapid testing and, now, delays and botched efforts to secure vaccines.
To the south of us, Americans will begin receiving vaccines next week. Now, Trudeau is talking about next fall before Canadians are sufficiently vaccinated. Because of Liberal incompetence, we will all now needlessly have to endure another year of COVID sacrifice.
During the first wave of the pandemic, Trudeau felt it was more urgent and important to give a sweetheart deal to his friends in the WE charity than to invest in vaccine production. We see the same mentality in this economic statement. It has provisions for planting trees and other Trudeau pet projects but few substantive measures to help Canadian businesses recover.
There is no question that the federal government, like every provincial government and every government in the world, had to undertake deficit spending to cope with the pandemic. But what is alarming is that the Liberals have no plan for what comes after. The economic recovery aspects in the statement remain vague with open-ended timelines and with no plan for how to handle the ballooning debt.
In the meantime, with the tourism sector at a standstill, the Liberals bizarrely chose this time to impose new taxes on people who rent out their homes to tourists. Likewise, the Trudeau government has sat on its hands as Canada’s airlines and airports creep closer and closer to bankruptcy.
These are issues that hit close to home. On the most basic level, we all want our lives back, but Liberal bumbling is stretching lockdowns and restrictions longer. Moose Jaw has long depended on its tourism sector which has been driven to the brink of extinction by the Liberals’ continued delays in producing meaningful support policies. We are also in the service area of the Regina Airport which faces reduction in service as the feds continue to dither about support for our air infrastructure.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
