Pierre Poilievre — take note of Liz Truss's ensnarement: How FP columnists saw it in 2024
financialpost.comDuring their debate Joe Biden and Donald Trump engaged in silly finger-wagging about who had expanded the deficit most. But neither had any sort of plan to deal with mounting deficits and mountainous debt. Consolidated government gross debt has reached 123 per cent of U.S. GDP, heading for 134 per cent in 2030. With rising interest rates, Democrats’ devotion to more spending and Republicans’ to tax cuts means the debt can only rise, and with it the likelihood of financial stress. That incumbent governments are floundering should surprise no one. This week it’s happening in the U.K. and France. This fall and next year it may happen in the U.S. and Canada. You mess up economically and voters punish you. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: “It’s almost always the economy, stupid.” —
Taxpayers need to question whether every new government intervention in the economy generates net benefits to society. Too often what Oscar Wilde once remarked seems to be true: “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.” With so many bureaucrats milling about, decisions slow down as files are passed from one to another. Accountability is lost. Departments point fingers at each other, as we have seen in the ArrriveCan debacle. New programs are hatched and more employees hired whether they are needed or not. With work-from-home, less gets done as unsupervised employees walk the dog or do the shopping. —
Where is Ottawa’s climate commissar Stephen Guilbeault on cheap Chinese EVs? You’d think Minister World-on-Fire would be delighted to see even conservative enviro-skeptics such as myself being tempted by an attractive but cheap and apparently safe and efficient EV like China’s Seagull. At last, an EV that ordinary
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