Business
The Problem With Trudeau’s Fiscal Responsibility Message
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Franco Terrazzano
This year’s interest charges will cost taxpayers more than $46 billion. That’s almost $4 billion every month that’s not going to improve services or lower taxes. It’s also a cost of more than $1,000 for every Canadian.
There’s only one problem with the federal government’s messaging about saving money: the feds aren’t actually saving money.
“The foundation of our Fall Economic Statement is our responsible fiscal plan,” said Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
The mid-year budget update shows the government increasing spending by $15 billion this year. A far cry from Freeland’s March promise to find “savings of $15.4 billion over the next five years.”
Next year, the government will increase spending by $30 billion. And that comes on top of an already ballooned baseline.
The feds spent all-time highs before the pandemic. That means Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was spending more before the pandemic than the feds did during any single year during World War II, even after accounting for inflation and population growth.
Freeland is trying to put Canadians’ minds at ease by claiming her deficits are “modest.” Canadians have heard this before.
When running for prime minister in 2015, Trudeau promised to run a few “modest” deficits of less than $10 billion before balancing the budget in 2019. Trudeau blew that balanced budget promise by a “modest” $20 billion.
This year’s deficit is projected to hit $40 billion. Deficits in 2024 and 2025 are both projected to be $38 billion.
Is this the new modest? Four times larger than the “modest” deficits Trudeau first promised?
The mid-year budget update proves this government has no idea how to balance a budget.
In fact, the only mention of a balanced budget in Ottawa comes from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who forecasts the next balanced budget will happen in 2035. But that relies on the economy growing every year, relatively low interest rates and no new spending.
A government too incompetent to balance the budget means Canadians are paying dearly just to service the debt.
This year’s interest charges will cost taxpayers more than $46 billion. That’s almost $4 billion every month that’s not going to improve services or lower taxes. It’s also a cost of more than $1,000 for every Canadian.
Next year, debt interest charges will surpass federal health transfers to the provinces. Soon, every penny collected from the GST will go toward servicing the debt.
As bad as the budget is, the government could keep the ship from sinking with modest spending restraint.
The government could balance the budget next year by using its own projected program spending from two budget updates ago. Instead of running a $38-billion deficit next year, taxpayers would have a $1-billion surplus if Freeland just stuck to the spending plan she created in 2021.
This highlights the root of Trudeau’s spending problem – the ratchet effect. Almost every budget document released by this government drastically increases spending.
The mid-year budget update in 2019 first projected spending in 2024 to be $421 billion. This year’s budget update shows the government will spend $519 billion in 2024.
This government’s muscle for fiscal responsibility has atrophied.
MPs from all political parties can’t help themselves from taking a pay raise every year – regardless of the struggles their constituents endure. The prime minister can’t help but spend $61,000 on Manhattan hotel rooms during a two-day anti-poverty summit.
No one in government is willing to end the hundreds of millions in bureaucratic bonuses, despite departments consistently meeting less than half of their own performance targets.
The Liberals are also unwilling to take the air out of the ballooning bureaucracy, which increased by 98,000 employees since they took power. That’s almost 40 per cent more federal employees. The bureaucracy currently consumes half of every tax dollar used in day-to-day spending.
No party in the House of Commons is willing to oppose the more than $43 billion taxpayers are being forced to give multinational corporations to build battery plants.
This government hasn’t shown one iota of fiscal restraint. In fact, the government appears to be trying its best to run up the red ink. Fortunately for taxpayers, it would only take modest spending restraint for a serious government to bring the books back into black.
Franco Terrazzano is the Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
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Cricket Farm Axes Jobs
I remember back a few years ago, making my way down to the midway of the Calgary Stampede to check out all of the new flavorful wares.
The Midway hasn’t really offered much by way of new rides since I was a kid, not entirely sure I’d be interested in riding them, even if they did…
The Budweiser beer grounds get old, when a cold beer sets you back over $10.
Mini donuts have lost their luster…
But every year, there are new menu items that had given a reason to at least make the cost of admission worth giving this another shot.
Walking through the grounds, the wife and I noticed that one of the new Stampede Delicacies was pizza with bugs on it…
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And I remember commenting to the wife that commercially made pizza has always had bugs in it…just nothing that they’d admit too for fear of being closed down by health regulations.
I mean…what’s next – boasting about mouse droppings in your soup?
But this bug thing has seemingly still managed to take off for reasons I cannot fathom. Are cow farts really impacting the planet that much?
It’d be hard to believe and harder to prove, even if this were true.
But then to read about some massive cricket farm in Eastern Canada, where cricket proteins were to be used in the mass production food items – chips, crackers, protein and energy bars and even flour – were soon to become a thing made me even more leery of processed foods.
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Acheta Powder, by listing in ingredients…because this is the soft way to slip something onto the “may contain”, listings…which seems more innocuous than bugs or crickets…
But because my consumption of processed food items is low, were never much of a consideration and hunting for this on items I had no intention on purchasing anyways, seemed an awful waste of time.
The Eastern Canadian Cricket farm was built by Aspire Foods, for the tune of about $90 Million Bucks…$8.5 million provided by yup – you guessed it, Your Taxes, through federal grants.
Which, while is nothing in relation to the $40 Billion that has been extorted by the governments, out of your hard earned paycheque, to subsidize EV Batteries, with a 20 year ROI of ZERO…is still as big of a loss because…apparently, like the failure in trying to force people into expensive and unpractical EVs or turning plants into meat looking substitutes…
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Mmmmmmmmmmmm…
Is also a Huge Failure.
Not enough people are eating Ze Bugs…which has turned out to shutter 2/3rds of the staffing in the workforce, in London, Ontario at the Aspire Cricket Farm.
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Now…I’m all for innovation.
It’s what has created the device I’ve used to create this post and share it with all of you. I love some of the items that have leant to making my life easier and reduced efforts for tasks that offer little by way of satisfaction or payoff…
But with this being said…the market will always be the decider on what will or will not take off…and even with the bombardment of fear mongering around climate change and sustainability, bugs as a protein substitute are rapidly proving themselves out of market because…like me, you are not eating Ze Bugs!
Business
Sanctuary State Told To Cut Spending On Hotel Stays For Migrants As Costs Expected To Hit $1 Billion
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Hopkins
A state commission is encouraging Massachusetts to cut costs on emergency shelter services for migrants and other families by spending less on expensive hotels.
The emergency shelter system in Massachusetts housing migrant families and others experiencing homelessness is expected to spend over $1 billion in fiscal year 2025, according to a state commission report investigating the matter. The report comes as Massachusetts, a sanctuary state that limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities, is continuing to experience financial hardship over the border crisis and an influx of migrants into their communities.
The draft report proposed spending less on the most expensive accommodations for migrants — which would include hotels and motels. Prior reports have found that housing migrants in hotels or motels in the state can be as costly as $300 per night.
“Since the EA shelter system reached capacity at 7,500 families last year, approximately 50% of families have been in hotels and motels across the state,” the report stated. “The Commission recommends limiting reliance on hotels and motels to best serve families and increase the financial and operational efficiency of the system, while recognizing that hotels and motels may be a last-resort option for surge capacity at times of rapid changes in demand.”
“Data suggests that hotels and motels are the most expensive type of shelter in the EA system,” the report concluded. It also noted that the state’s shelter caseload and system costs have skyrocketed to “unsustainable levels” since 2022.
The immigration crisis taking place under the Biden-Harris administration has hit Massachusetts particularly hard. Roughly 355,000 illegal migrants and other inadmissible foreign nationals live in the state, and approximately 50,000 have arrived since 2021, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
Democrat Gov. Maura Healey, in her efforts to clamp down on the state’s crisis, has publicly called on illegal immigrants to not go to Massachusetts, offered plane tickets for them to leave, and has asked residents to take in migrant families. The state has also experienced a rising number of deportation cases as illegal migrants continue to flock there.
Despite the growing pains with mass illegal immigration, the governor has remained steadfast in her opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for an immigration crackdown, and she confirmed that her state’s law enforcement would “absolutely not” help with mass deportation efforts. The entire state of Massachusetts is considered a sanctuary for illegal migrants for its laws limiting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
The state legislature appropriated $639 million to the emergency assistance shelter system for fiscal year 2025, according to the report. However, expense projections are expected to hit $1.094 billion – leaving a shortfall of roughly $455 million for the fiscal year.
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