In his letter (Penticton Western News, May 6, Deceptive balanced budget), the NDP candidate for this federal riding, Mr. Richard Cannings correctly identifies the deceptive nature of the Harper Conservatives’ so-called balanced budget.
The looting of both the E.I. and contingency funds of $3.8 billion reveal the jiggery pokery of this government’s economic policy. However, it is also necessary to address some other decisions made by this government that concern budgeting and affect our country’s economic security.
Firstly, a few years ago there was a Auditor General’s report that identified significant amounts of tax dollars owed to this country that were being hidden in off-shore accounts, predominantly in British-Dutch owned financial institutions in the Antilles and Caymen Islands.
There was a lot of blather from the government that this would be addressed, but par for the course nothing happened. Canada loses an estimated $7.8 billion per year from what is pure and simple tax evasion. Cuts to programs and staffing at the Canada Revenue Agency have resulted in reduced capacity to investigate this growing problem of tax fraud. That’s a lot money that would more than balance our budget and should be circulating in our economy. Secondly, since March of last year and up to now, Harper has given around $590 million of Canadian tax dollars to prop up and assist the patently fascist nazi-infested Poroshenko junta in Kiev. There’s over half a billion that should be serving Canadians not Nazis. Very troubling. Lastly, the Harper government has basically given away the Canadian Wheat Board to a U.S. and Saudi owned corporation. From a rabble.ca news report, “This is a sweet deal for the new joint venture, Global Grain Group (G3), which gets the Wheat Board and all its assets -- valued as much as $17 billion -- for free, as long as it makes a $250 million investment in the organization. To add insult to injury, just last year a group of Canadian farmers tried to buy the Wheat Board assets for more than what the company (G3) is buying it for now, but were refused.” Let’s say the group of grain farmers were willing to pony up even a quarter of the CWB’s estimated value, that’s around $4 billion that adds to our economy.
Quite frankly, this disastrous decision sells our nation’s grain farmers out, and is tantamount to treason.
Mr. Cannings ends his letter with the NDP’s obligatory mention of dreaded, yet scientifically debunked human-caused global warming, or climate change. Maybe the disappearance of our grain farmers is a blessing in disguise for proponents of “renewable energy industries.”
This would allow for the entire provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and most of Alberta to be covered in solar panels and wind turbines to satisfy their idiotic “green” energy strategies.
Brian Gray
(Independent candidate) South Okanagan-West Kootenay