Still not enough to bury scandal
Dear editor:
After all the furor and palaver of the SNCLavalin Scandal that has gripped Canada during the last seven weeks, the federal budget was presented in Ottawa this week.
The prime minister and finance minister were grinning like a pair of Cheshire cats who swallowed the proverbial canaries, telling those who chose to listen that everyone will be cared for during the next five years, thanks to spending tactics included in this 460-page budget.
Millennials will gain easier access to loans for house purchases, Indigenous people will benefit on all sorts of expenditures that top $8 billion, and seniors will eventually benefit from lower drug costs that will presumably keep them alive longer to pay more taxes.
To counter recent warnings of a possible economic downturn on the horizon, Liberals want this to be looked upon as a stimulus budget; if truth be told, that word “stimulus” has simply replaced “porkbarrel,” when goodies are handed out in an election year.
All that is required from Canadians to benefit from all these wondrous promises over the next five years is to cast a vote for the Liberals on Oct. 21; that sounds easy enough, especially if you disregard that nowhere in those 460 pages is there even a passing mention of a balanced budget anywhere in the foreseeable future.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set forth on his Sunny Ways in 2015, after campaign declarations that “the budget will balance itself,” followed with a pre-election plan for $10-billion deficit spending to boost the economy.
The latest budget deficit is $15 billion this year, then $20 billion next year, and so on down into that deep, dark bottomless rabbit hole of never-ending deb
Of course, all this pandemonium and hubbub of good cheer in an election year, is ultimately designed to drown out any request for much-needed investigation of the SNC-Lavalin Scandal.
The Liberals desperately want to put that behind them and change the channel, but will Canadian voters really be so gullible, with the PM’s popularity is at an all-time low, and his party lagging in the polls? Bernie Smith
Parksville