Let’s be thankful when repaying our pandemic mortgage
Remember that amid our fears and tragic losses we saved lives, jobs, businesses and social service organizations
The stores may be closed, but Canadians have been spending money and planning to spend even more money like never before.
No, it’s not a tsunami of online shopping and skyrocketing credit card debt.
It’s the daily, calm announcements from our government leaders. Salary replacement, grants, and forgivable loans for children, students, families, seniors, employers, small busi- nesses, landlords, chari- ties, schools, the self-em- ployed, the employed, and the unemployed. And always, more funding for protective equipment for “front line workers,” for COVID-19 testing, ventilators and COVID-19 vaccine research.
How far beyond $100 billion are we now?
We are mortgaging our future!
Those used to be fighting words, accusations shouted against governments for being careless about debt. “You are mortgaging our children’s future! It’s time to face the music.”
We are mortgaging our future. And it’s a good mortgage. We are the beneficiaries. We are also the collateral. We are the guarantors of our future.
Of course we will pay for it. Mortgages get repaid. We borrowed it from each other and we will repay each other.
When we repay our mortgage over the coming years, let’s do it gladly. Let’s remember and be grateful for what we bought. Amid our fears and our tragic and deeply painful losses we saved lives, jobs, businesses, and social service organizations. We protected health-care workers, fed families, and provided care and shelter for the homeless and for those at risk in their own homes.
We will repay our mortgage mostly through taxes.
There are plenty of political and economic voices that regard taxes as evil. They urge us to think of taxes as a form of extortion, armed robbery, mugging, or pickpocketing. We are told that “our hard-earned money” is being taken from us by an outside power against our will and our better judgment. Surely we know how to spend our money better than the government. Lower taxation is a way to “starve the beast” (government).
The “beast,” on our behalf, recently helped to ensure that millions of people can eat and have jobs to return to.
Let’s debate appropriate levels and forms of taxation. Let’s debate priorities and expenses. But let’s remember that the “we” who pay are also the “we” who benefit.
As we repay our mortgage we will also adjust our priorities, adapt to new realities, and shift our financial resources. Hopefully we will not do what we have often done in the past — reduce services that protect, nurture, heal, and care for people. Surely the present crisis has taught us that the cumulative underfunding and understaffing of sectors of our health-care system have had a devastating human and financial cost. Prevention is less dramatic than emergency intervention, but it costs less in every way.
The social, health, educational, economic, infrastructure, environmental, and technological needs and opportunities that we face require a different way of thinking about our collective finances. Our personal budgets have expense lines for “mortgage payment,” “car payment” and “utilities.” Perhaps our national and provincial budgets in the future should identify the payments that we are making to repay our collective COVID-19 mortgage.
We mortgaged our future. Good decision. Thank you. We’ll pay.