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Originally Posted by troutman
Caring about kids means not leaving them with heath and education deficits, a one-trick economy, and a climate catastrophe.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan Coke
Or massive debt that cripples the financial ability to provide all those other things.
It doesn’t have to by either/or, in fact they have to go together. Sustainable health and education programs can only occur if the financial health of the province is being managed judiciously.
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We weren’t exactly providing those things before we took on the debt either.
A big chunk of the debt we’ve accumulated has gone towards infrastructure that if we didn’t put in place the next generation would have to pay for at a much higher price anyways. That isn’t to say that every dollar of our debt has been money well spent or that it shouldn’t/couldn’t have been kept lower, however when your population continues to grow regardless of how the economy is performing expecting to only expand necessary infrastructure when it can be done without borrowing money isn’t always a good long term strategy.
Our province should have raised taxes when things were booming so that we could have made the investments we needed after years of austerity without significantly impacting the economy and also put money away for when the bubble burst. Instead we chose at that time to keep the province living paycheque to paycheque and now we’re stuck trying to fix it without the help of oil and gas.