Trickle-up economy gives Canada chance

DEAR EDITOR:

It is reported that the COVID deficit has fallen steeply over the first two months of the fiscal year. Spending has dropped and government revenues increased by 86% from the previous year.

The Liberal government will continue CERB until October, while Conservatives preach the perils of high interest rates, the need to tighten our belt and balance the budget.

During the 2008 financial collapse, it was conservative corporatist thinking that saw salvation in bailing out the banks, while homeowners victimized by the bank’s predatory lending practices, got bupkis.

Erin O’Toole’s COVID relief plan was to bail out corporate and business owners — implying help would trickle down to the man on the street. But we already know from the Ronald Reagan days, trickle-downeconomics is a myth.

A big part of the strong post-pandemic economic bounce already recorded by the Bank of Canada is because the Liberal government chose direct investment in Canada’s human capital, keeping ordinary Canadians financially whole demonstrates that trickleup economics does work.

But, I fear, debt and balanced budgets will take a backseat to the real existential threat posed by climate change to our everyday life.

As I write this, Greenland is melting, while wild fires rage in Turkey and floods wash over parts of Germany and the U.K.

Brazil experienced its first snowfall in 63 years, and India has flooding in 10 coastal districts. Droughts threaten Africa’s water and food security, British Columbia is burning, while the Pacific Northwest is under a heat-dome.

With little rain for weeks, prairie farmers are forced to reduce production.

On the other side of the world, high temperatures and freak floods submerge subway tunnels in Zhengzhou, China, and flood surrounding communities.

There are no safe places left. Climate change demands collective action now.

Over 40% of the world’s population live within 100 kilometres of a coastline. Greenhouse-gas emissions have already warmed the planet by more than 1 C since pre-industrial days.

If the temperatures rise another two degrees, icecaps will melt even further creating hundreds of millions of environmental refugees fleeing coastal cities around the world flooded by rising seawater, not by millimetres, but by metres.

Canadians can see O’Toole’s corporatist agenda no longer provide the answers Canada’s future needs.

Jon Peter Christoff West Kelowna