Conrad Black: The Liberal government's policy of self-impoverishment will hurt us all

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivers a fiscal update in the House of Commons on Nov. 30. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Likewise, it goes without saying that with a little original thought and leadership, Canada could quickly become one of the greatest nations in the world, yet that will not be possible if we continue to impoverish ourselves in pursuit of a pipe dream.

Notably, Monday’s economic update from Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, while enriched with the usual lively comments intended to persuade Canadians to lift their hearts to a brighter future after COVID, was indeed an unrepentant confession of utter intellectual bankruptcy as a grave financial embarrassment to this government.

That said, it is appropriate to mention that in one year this government has more than doubled the national debt accumulated in the previous 153 years of the Canadian Confederation. You think you have a legitimate excuse because of the pandemic, but you don’t. The approach to the pandemic was wrong and the main objectives stated by the government in its search and achievement of re-election were also wrong, so we pledged to waste money on a large scale before the arrival of the coronavirus, and our wrong political response The virus has seriously aggravated what was already a serious state of misrule.

Without sense

As is well known, on the night of the 2019 elections, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared that the main political challenge for his government was to fight climate change. However, you could say that this does not make sense. Certainly, the 2015 Paris climate conference proclaimed the absolute necessity of keeping the global average temperature no more than 1.5 C above what was believed to be before the Industrial Revolution, and pursuing that goal, according to a completely lax United Nations analysis would require the world to become carbon neutral by 2050. This was nonsense. There is nothing worrisome about a 1.5 C increase in world temperature over a 250-year period, and we don’t have a precise idea of what the world temperature was 250 years ago.

The Club of Rome and a wide range of generally well-meaning conservation organizations have been legitimately concerned about the plundering of resources and the state of the environment for a long time. Notably, most of the rest of the world believes that it can benefit from this process. Yet this administration led us headlong into this quagmire, and now says it is a target of redoubled urgency as we emerge from the pandemic. There is no doubt that we should have taken elementary general precautions, drastic measures to protect the elderly and other vulnerable people, and close as little as possible. Like many other countries, we do ourselves colossal damage by government incompetence. Certainly, with a little original thought and leadership, Canada could quickly become and be perceived as one of the greatest nations in the world. But we will not reach that destination impoverishing ourselves in pursuit of a chimera. Incentivize investment and shift our main revenue-raising effort to taxes on voluntary spending.

Source: Conrad Black | National Post