Ontario premier Doug Ford was out west this past week hobnobbing with the big kids. Canada’s provincial premiers and territorial leaders were doing the annual medicine dance to convince Ottawa that they should call the shots. It is called the Council of Confederation and if these premiers had their way, there would be very little federal government and the premiers would be running everything.
It really is painful to think of Doug Ford telling anybody how to do their job. He still needs lessons in how to do his. For example, asking the feds to find nurses to come to Ontario because of a shortage in Ontario would be a waste of time. If Ford treats these immigrants as badly as he did the last nurses, what is the point? I have talked to a few former nurses now and it makes you realize how serious is the loss. These are the people who worked long hard hours caring for the sick and dying with COVID. They were undervalued and miss-treated by the Ford conservatives. Why would he treat any new nurses differently?
What is most disquieting, about this annual event is that the premiers use it as a forum in which they can gang up on our federal government. The sessions make no contribution to the future of Canada. They are sure as hell not making any contribution to the concern for climate change.
The annual argument over money all comes down to the pathological fear of Canada’s politicians of being guilty of raising taxes. They all seem to think that if they just run a few deficits, the tax income will catch up to the tax expenditure. It is not only bad economics and bad for the country but it has guaranteed us ballooning deficits now for decades. And the conservatives are just as guilty as the liberals and neither has the right to point the finger at the other.
This deficit problem got totally out of hand during the pandemic. Mistakes were made on the side of the government being generous. Demagogues such as conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre had a hay day in making stupid and irrelevant charges against the liberals over the mistakes that might have been made. All Canadians can be pleased that the liberals were in the driver’s seat during the pandemic and not the penny-pinching conservatives, who only look after their friends.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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