The Government Financial Resolutions You Didn’t Get

Prime Minister Trudeau just gave his New Year’s message that us Canadians should focus on “key values” for the New Year. OK, that’s nice and vanilla, but there was nothing on maybe some government resolutions on financial issues. Since it was missing, here’s what I’d want the PM, and probably all governments, to commit to:

If you’re one of the many people who are waiting for the government to fix your life – sorry – we can’t and we won’t. You need to get off the sofa and start fixing your own economy – the government makes a lot of feel-good promises, but we can’t fix it for you.

We’re going to commit to using the rule of doctors: First, do no harm. That means we’re going to fix the punishing new mortgage rules that will make it really hard for the average Canadian to sell their home or to buy one – even with 20% or more down-payments.

From now on, the government will become better stewards of your tax money. You send us a lot of it. Not just off your pay, but in GST, gas taxes, EI, CPP, and places you don’t even know about. We’re going to start treating it as if it were our personal money. No more throwing cheques at small but vocal special interest groups that yell a lot, or who we want to bribe to get their votes again.

We’re also not going to just hand out money as if it were candy anymore. Sorry about giving $10.5 million to a terrorist – tax free. If we need to settle claims, we’ll do it after a court orders us to.

Lastly, we’re going to stop lying or fudging the numbers. Sure we promised we’d “only” be overspending $10 billion and it became $40 billion.

Yes, I promised we’d have a balanced budget before the next election in 2019. Yes, two days before Christmas when nobody noticed, my finance department released a report showing we would be in deficit spending until at least 2055. Yes, the damage we’ve done will last an extra 36 years just to not overspend each year. We’ve seen the light, and our New Year’s resolution is to tell you the truth, and to actually start making the hard choices – just like each and every family has to make, and to live within a budget.

When pigs fly…..

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