Ahead of an important fiscal update this week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney cap the federal deficit at $31 billion, in part by eliminating big ticket items like a major rail project and the gun buyback program.
“We should have no deficit,” Poilievre wrote in a letter to Carney. “And if I were Prime Minister right now, we would be on track to achieving that. But your Liberal government has made that impossible for this year.”
The $31 billion cap Poilievre proposes is what the former Trudeau government projected the deficit to be for the 2026-27 fiscal year when it tabled the 2024 fall economic update.
If he were Prime Minister right now, we’d be so far up Trump’s ass we’d be attacking Ukraine and be the boots on ground in Iran.
I have no clue why the CPC party renewed their support for this dribble that lost them the last election that every poll said they had a 20 point lead going into, and had to be re-run in a stronghold riding to keep his leadership afterwards.
Then his “leadership” drives enough of the remaining MPs they retained over to the Liberals to give them a clear majority. In any reasonable party, he wouldn’t be holding a mop in the party headquarters afterwards.
His incompetence was the best thing that happened to Canada going into the lunacy of the present US administration. We’d have been so thoroughly fucked if he were in power, I shudder to think about it.
This is the MP who lost his seat, right?
Sorry, how does one cap a deficit for an entire country? This isn’t a small business that can’t pay it’s bills. I’m no economist but I don’t think you can tell your country that they can’t afford healthcare this year because the whiner doesn’t want the bills to get bigger.
I’m also convinced that Poilievre doesn’t actually understand how a deficit works any more than my cat does.
Note to people downvoting:
Downvoting a news article doesn’t undo what the opposition leader said, but it does make people less informed about it.
I think it’s helpful to hear what happened and then read a discussion about it in the comments.
It’s frustrating but I understand why the impulse is there
I’d really enjoy downvoting his face.
Poilievre obviously doesn’t understand money. Whether spending more money than you have in the bank account can make sense depends on what you are spending it on. Spending it on growing our economy and creating jobs makes it an investment that will create greater returns than the interest on it. Spending it to help people pay for rent and food when there is a pandemic and they are not able to work makes sense. Certainly not all of our debt was spent wisely but also certainly not all debt is bad either.
Poliestre went from high school to uni to a political job, and never once had a hair net and name tag. He has no idea about money, working, punching a clock, fretting about rent, draining a fry vat, re-stocking a shelf (grocery or VHS) or paying the visa with the mastercard.
Despite this, he’s learned the cost of everything while knowing the value of nothing.
He knows that austerity leads to hate, hate leads to voting out of spite, and voting out of spite leads to a conservative government. And his rich friends will be pleased if they can get in while we’re already accustomed to going without because they get more.
Certainly not all of our debt was spent wisely but also certainly not all debt is bad either.
$1.44T in debt means $54B a year in debt servicing that could have been spent on services for taxpayers.
Did you have a point?
$1.44T in debt means $54B a year in debt servicing that could have been spent on services for taxpayers.
That argument is always silly, the money wouldn’t have exist if it wasn’t for need to service debt money’s not real at that scale its just strokes of the pen. We don’t provide services because a subset of the population doesn’t want that, no other reason.
Why would Carney listen to this moron?
Because he has a vast wealth of knowledge and experience about economics. He was a paperboy after all.
Oh and he has a degree in international relations… only took him 8+(??) years to get it? (I actually forget how long, that’s a total guess).
the high-speed rail, the gun buyback program, external consultants, the federal bureaucracy, and foreign aid
If we vote hard enough can we get an opposition leader who attacks the government for the stupidly wasteful things they do — i.e. the gun buyback and consultants — and doesn’t just reject every single normal Canadian thing including building trains and funding the CBC?
NDP opposition party would be far better than the PCs.
No way the NDP is canceling the gun buy back
While I believe the opposition party should challenge everything, that doesn’t mean attacking everything.
Other ways to challange:
This bill is good, but have you considered adding/removing X.
Why has Canada gone Y direction when we have seen outcome Z from doing Y internationally.
Why is Canada going Y direction when we have also seen internationals do W.
But that doesn’t sell headlines
Or rile up Conservatives frothing at the mouth.
How is building a high speed rail between two cities in eastern Canada, that are already serviced by faster air service, a ‘nation building’ project? Especially when its projected to cost 90 BILLION dollars which will balloon to 180 BILLION dollars when its done and never actually make money? Thats a very typical Liberal grift. Send out contracts, spend a couple billion on preliminaries, cancel the whole fiasco, and the purpose is fulfilled. Not everyone who watched the Green Slush Fund, ArriveScam, Northvolt, Medicago and the billions wasted for ‘covid wage funding’ is blind. We’re not even going to mention the Finance Minister’s conflict of interest in the project as his wife would be a direct beneficiary. Wake up and smell the coffee.
