I actually have one probem with all of this. We are assuming that throwing more money at affordable housing is good. Maybe whats needed is more efficent use of the money they now get. Perfect example is the cost of a project here in Edmonton. Average cost per unit was 165,000. However new condo's towers in much better neighbourhoods were selling units that are larger better overall finish etc with the average at around 145,000. The value of the units that were built would only fetch 100,00 on the market. Could we not have just bought the units we needed that way instead of building them and saved money in the process and had them available for the poor in a faster timeframe. Heck what I would have done is give a rebate to the landlord and thus partially pay off part of thier rents. We would know the money went to the rents and thus the money would not be used for other uses. Thus we are not messing with the market, have people choose where they would live and not create areas with poor housing thus worse neighbourhoods in the long run. Just something to consider. Its all well and good to toss more money at it and hope it goes away, but if we are already tossing our money around and not using it effectively we have done very little and wasted tones of money in the process.
I personally would have liked all the money to go to debt repayment and then spend the intrest savings. The reason, the largest expense for the Federal government is still debt servicing and the highest debt per capita out of any government in Canada (well besides the Newfoundland provincial government) is the Federal government. We should not spend what we don't have but what we have. Just a thought what would happen if say we needed to start raising intrest rates again. We would be up the creek again. We are still not out of our fiscal mess and need much more to go to get it right. By the way anyone mention that we have the best situation of the G7 so we have it fine think again. All the G7 countries are doing a shitty job with fiscal management, and right now we are in a not as shitty a situation as the rest. But not in a good standing. I look at the $36 billion we spend annually on debt servicing and see what we could have done with that money. Say half goes to tax cuts and the other half to spending inititives. Think what could be done if we had an additional 18 billion a year to spend on priority areas and we cut every tax across the board by 10%.
Now I also hear about how a debt is like a mortgage and no sence paying off your mortgage if your roof is leaking. Well lets treat it like a mortgage and have a timetable to pay it off in 25 years. Basically lets increase our current payments from 39 billion in this budget (36 for debt servicing and 3 for the ecomonic prudence that goes to debt repayment) to 43.6 billion a year. Assuming we maintain the same intrest rates for the next 25 years, we would have paid off our debt with the money going to these spending inititives. Thus position us to actually be able to foster economic growth while funding anything we want at that point. By the way as the exonomy grows we would then have the money for either the tax cuts or spending proiorities as needed. This 4.6 billion may not sound like much to our 495 billion debt. But that money over 25 years along with the power of compunding intrest will save us a bundle.
Oh and in case any of you are wondering I have voted Liberal federally in every election I have been allowed to vote in (granted my MP David Kilgour is now an independant).
