Social Policy in Ontario

Conservatives driving us into ruin

Posted on February 7, 2011 in Governance Debates

Source: Toronto Star — Authors: G. W. Markle

TheStar.com – opinion/letters
Published On Sun Feb 06 2011.    G. W. Markle

Finance Minister James Flaherty pegs our national debt at $56 billion. It’s probably much higher than that, but it’s hard to know with a Conservative government. And now it seems the Conservative mandate is to create as large a national debt as they possibly can. The push to spend billions of dollars to purchase high-tech warplanes is a perfect example of this.

As Prime Minister Steven Harper’s government creates a larger and larger debt load, they do so knowing full well that eventually they’ll be pressured to bring the debt into line. Debt is a very effective leverage tool, and if you can straddle a country with enough debt, its government becomes very pliable.

We’ve seen the effect of this on a global scale recently. The global financial crisis was no accident, it was intentional. Call it an adjustment, if you like, a crisis deliberately created in an effort to depress markets, enabling somebody to buy up resources at a discount, and create cheap labour. An effective way to buy up entire countries at bargain prices. By the way: Who owns Iceland now?

At this point, there is no distinction between the goals and objectives of the corporate sector and those of the Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservatives, along with their business partners, will use debt as a ploy, an excuse to sell off (and buy up) our resources at a fraction of their value. They will push to privatize more government services, our healthcare, our prison system, law enforcement and security agencies, and anything else the Corporation feels it can make a profit from.

They will gut all social programs to maximize profit, and do it without any consciousness as to the detriment of our society. In the process they will effectively destroy the chance of any democratic involvement of the public in any decisions.

Rather than protect us, the debt created by military spending puts this country in a very vulnerable position.

G. W. Markle, Brampton

Tags: budget, economy, standard of living, tax

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