Trudeau's Debt

 

Under the rule of the Trudeau Liberals the national debt has doubled to $1.4 trillion from the $612 billion from when they first took power in 2015 and is growing by almost $4 billion per month and $10 million a day. This is more real than talking about deficits, which not only don't tell the whole story, they don't tell any of it. The interest on the debt in 2024 will be $54 billion annually, more than is spent on the health care system. In five years the interest will be $64 billion per year. The real uses that this money could be spent on for health care, improvements in infrastructure like highways, airports and bridges, or reduction in taxes is mind-boggling. And the jobs and prosperity that this would generate in the economy would also be the result of money spent on actual real things rather than just servicing the debt. Can you say out of control?


Federal Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned on December 16, 2024 just hours before she had to deliver an economic update that showed that the 2023-2024 deficit was actually $61.9 billion, after promising in April 2024 that the 2023-2024 deficit would be $40.1 billion, increasing the national debt to astronomical levels. She disagreed with what she called Trudeau's "costly political gimmicks" of the partial GST tax holiday and the plan to send all workers $250 cheques in the country earning less than $150,000 per year. Trudeau had told her that he was replacing her as finance minister after she broke ranks with him after years of presiding over the reckless financial mismanagement that his government was responsible for. There are calls from many quarters for Trudeau's resignation, including from his own party, because of the resulting chaos.


Pierre Trudeau ran up massive debts that were 10 times what they were when he took office which nearly bankrupted the country and took 30 years for the economy to recover. Like father like son, the present debt that the government of Justin Trudeau has accumulated will be borne by future generations far into the future. And there is no plan to reduce it. bundles of cash


PSAC strikers


The Fraser Institute released its 2024 report "Taxes versus the Necessities of Life: The Canadian Consumer Tax Index" which shows the amount of taxes that the average Canadian pays relative to cost of the basic necessities. It found that in 2023 the average Canadian family earned an income of $109,235 and paid taxes of $46,988, which was 43 per cent of its income on taxes compared to 35.6 per cent spent on basic necessities. In 1961 the amount spent on taxes was 33.5 per cent compared to the basic necessities of 56.5 per cent. The increase in the Canadian family's total tax bill has increased by 2,705 percent, with housing costs increasing by 2,006 per cent, clothing at 478 per cent, and food at 901 per cent. The decrease in disposable income means less money for savings, entertainment, travel and housing.


See how the Canadian economy will be the worst performing of all industrialized nations here - Canadian Economy 


One area of money going down the drain is the federal public service that has increased by 40% and almost 100,000 employees during Trudeau's time in office. The payments for salaries, bonuses and pensions went from $40 billion in 2015 to $60.7 billion in 2022. The settlement of the recent strike will cost $1.3 billion per year largely paid for by everyone else, most of whom don't enjoy the benefits and perks of government employees.


Federal government executives were paid, also coincidentally, $1.3 billion in bonuses between 2015 and 2022 even though many of the performance targets, which the bonuses are supposedly based on, were not met. Lower lever employees were also paid bonuses totaling millions of dollars. The annual cost to taxpayers for these bonuses increased by 46% since 2015 when Justin's reign began. If the growth in the federal bureaucracy had matched Canada's population growth, there would be 69,000 fewer federal employees at a savings of $10 billion per year.


Another money pit is the CBC, a crown corporation which gets $1.4 billion per year while other media companies survive without government funding. CBC president Catherine Tait, appearing before a House of Commons committee, wanted an increase of cash. The committee asked why CBC executives were still collecting bonuses while approving layoffs of hundreds of people. She insisted that the bonuses weren't really bonuses but “performance pay” and that she had no control over who received it, including to herself. This is despite the fact that she is the senior member of the executive team that recommends them. She refused to answer what her performance pay has been.


The CBC president is paid between $442,900 to $521,000 per year, and her performance pay is a maximum of 28 per cent of that total. So, it could be as high as $145,000. She said that the payments are written into employment contracts and can't be altered, even though she also said that the amounts are decided at the end of each fiscal year. The bonuses paid out for the 2022-2023 year were $14.9 million after cutting 800 jobs. Bonuses approved for 2023-2024 were $18.4 million, but the CBC board wouldn't say who got how much until it was revealed through access to information laws. The bonus for Tait requires government approval, but after refusing to answer whether it was paid or not citing privacy, said it hadn't made a decision. So just more pigs at the trough funded by taxpayer dollars. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has stated his desire to wean the company off government dependence and defund the CBC.


Further contributing to the national debt and dragging down the Canadian economy is the multi millions per year spent on financial support for woke causes. See the details here - What is Woke?


See what the national debt is in real time on the Canadian Taxpayers Federation website.


Taxpayers Federation