Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
You conveniently cut out a part of my post that I intentionally posted because it will be an issue going into the future.
2% of GDP on defense spending is going to add approx $20 billion per year in spending, including lots of long-term spending which as we see with the F-35s is extremely costly.
Start adding that into things like increasing health care costs not just now, but going into the the future were more obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular issues are going to create an even bigger strain on the system, plus now pharmacare as well and its clearly not a sustainable path.
Plus, our economic growth is very sluggish right now, and with continued immigration issues, housing etc, social services issues, not sure how anyone looks at our country and thinks things are okay compared to previous years.
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But that's more of a revenue problem. As I pointed out, current federal spending is low by historical standards. Unfortunately, so is the revenue.
Most people point to the Chretien Liberals as the best fiscal managers of Canada in the last half century. But they mostly achieved that through maintaining strong government revenues while simultaneously cutting expenses. From 1995-2005, the federal government averaged about 23-25% of GDP in revenue.
Right now, largely due to ill-advised tax cuts and an international race to the bottom, Canada's federal government is only bringing in about 20.4% of GDP in revenue. When our government is bringing in ~15% less revenue relative to the size of the economy, is it really surprising that services seem to be getting worse while we're running deficits?