Canada’s public finances are in a disastrous state. Under the Trudeau Liberals, spending, deficits, and the national debt have exploded. Justin Trudeau exploited the covid crisis to create a whole series of expensive new programs in areas of provincial jurisdictions such as daycare, pharmacare, and dental care. The Conservatives, NDP, Bloc and Greens all supported the Liberals’ massive covid spending and none of them is committed to reducing the size of government.
This is utterly irresponsible. Because of this fiscal profligacy, inflation reached its highest level since the 1970s and Canadian households have seen their purchasing power dropping fast. When another recession hits, the federal government will be in a precarious fiscal situation and could lose control of its finances. Moreover, no broad-based reduction in the tax burden will ever be possible when our government keeps spending more and more on everything, paying for new programs with borrowed money, and when our national debt keeps growing at an unsustainable rate.
A People's Party government will:
Create a new Department of Government Downsizing that will systematically review all programs with the goal of abolishing ideologically motivated programs that promote wokism, programs whose main purpose is to buy votes, outdated and ineffective programs that don’t serve a clear purpose anymore, etc. Eliminate public sector jobs correspondingly.
Get rid of the deficit and balance the budget within a year after taking power. Tens of billions of dollars in savings can be found rapidly by eliminating or drastically cutting the budgets of large programs and agencies such as corporate welfare, foreign aid, aid to Ukraine, climate change programs, the CBC/Radio-Canada and financial support to media, equalization payments, regional development agencies, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the Strategic Innovation Fund, etc.
Abolish the new federal programs created by the Trudeau government that intrude on provincial jurisdictions, including the daycare, pharmacare, and dental care programs. Eliminate all other programs that duplicate provincial programs or intrude on provincial jurisdictions, so as to focus spending on core federal responsibilities.
Cut personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and the personal capital gains tax after the deficit has been eliminated, over the course of several budgets, as the fiscal room is found to allow it. Stop using our tax system for political ends and make it simpler and fairer. In particular, eliminate targeted tax measures that are inefficient and serve no compelling public policy purpose.
.svg)
