A Primer In Fiscal Reality For NDP & Liberals

HONEY, I SHRUNK THE DEBT

-John Lawrence

September 28, 2006—As I tuned in to the Parliamentary Channel, it came as no surprise to see and hear Jack Layton (sigh) once again act as though he had been given some sort of power that Stephen Harper is supposed to recognize.

To be fair to the NDP and Liberals, I will concede that it is their job to watch and pounce on the government should it not do what is in the best interests of us, the people. That said, there should also be room for cross-party agreement when something good is done, such as our nation's debt being retired piece by piece.

As I watched the declaration that our surplus had gone to paying down the debt, something occurred to me. That is a lot of money to simply write off as unusable. What would the other parties have done with that cash, were they able to use it?

The NDP feigned outrage in the Commons yesterday, chastising the prime minister for not allowing any kind of debate over what to do with this large surplus. I say that this is feigned because either Jack knows that the government is mandated by law to apply any unaccounted surplus at the end of each fiscal year to the national debt and is simply playing a cheap game of politics, or worse, he is again showing just how clueless him and his party truly are. Apparently, Jack Layton thinks that Mr. Harper ought to consult him on just about every issue. The only thing standing in the way of that is the leader we have being just that; a leader.

Jack, you must realize by now that you lost. You are the head of a losing party and a defunct, non-important entity.

May God help us should there ever be enough Canadians dumb enough to give this man or his extreme leftist party control of our country.

The Liberals, currently being led around by Mr. Graham, were quite somber and reflective as they silently considered how many votes they could have extracted from the populace with that kind of bread. $13 billion is nothing to sneeze at. Do you realize how big the sponsorship program could have been with that wallet?

Had the Liberals somehow eked out a win in the last election, we could have universal hair care by now. Perhaps we could have rolled piercings into the health act, or made it mandatory for provinces to fund tattoo artists. We could have developed an even bigger useless gun registry and perhaps included hunting knives as well. Later, we could add bread and butter knives. (You must be aware of the sharp increase in stabbings as of late.)

With $13 billion, the Liberals could have funded anti-American mercenaries to help defeat George Bush and those evil cousins of ours or perhaps we could have simply continued to berate them on the world stage while our men and women oversees still depend on American air support to stay alive. We could have funded a national gay church and built bigger and better reception areas for the masses arriving on our borders each day.

We could have equipped our border agents with bullet proof undergarments so they would not have to be issued those nasty firearms. And of course, let's not forget the massive, mammoth spending spree that could have been handled by Liberal friendly Quebec firms in the run up to the next election.

Instead, what we got was a prime minister who has paid down more debt that our children, your children, will not have to struggle with. At one time, our debt to GDP ratio was greater than 60%, meaning roughly two-thirds of all incoming monies was used to service the debt. At present, it is just above 41% and heading downward. To give credit where it is due, the Liberals also reduced the country's debt over the last decade, but were keen to change the law coming into our last election.

As Canadians, we must stand firm in our resolve to balance our books. It is far too easy to succumb to the urge to spend, but luckily, Stephen Harper is a true fiscal conservative as well as a political one, unlike the leader south of the border who continues to accumulate massive debt loads. The end result? More money down the road. A brighter future for our children and their children, and even better social programs to come, thanks to more money to spend on programs as the debt becomes smaller and smaller.

Does that make enough sense to you, Jack, or do you still not get it?