LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Reining in `pilfermania’

Perhaps Canadians can be forgiven when our masters are trying to decide how many Senators should be allowed to dance on the head of a pin; forgiven for not believing that these same esoteric philosophers are the same ones who are spending our money like drunken sailors on a weekend spree.

The feds are not only budgeting to spend 125% of the intake in the current year, but the deficit has now piled up to about three years’ worth of present spending. That’s about $70,000 in the hole for the average family in addition to the mortgage and the car and the uncertain job tenure.

No province is exempt from this “pilfermania.” By spending $1.25 per $1 of income, Ontario has run up a similar debt per family to the tune of $35,000. To balance income and expenditure, total spending must be reduced by 20%. One possibility is to use the test of “value-added” as distinct from the “quality-added” factor. We may opt to keep kindergartens and a 70,000-person army but dispense with most road repair and formal multiculturalism. If we can persuade ourselves that a level of one year’s spending equivalent is comfortable as a permanent ceiling of debt ($160 billion compared with the current federal $447 billion total), a further 20% reduction in our spending habits at all levels of governments reaches acceptability in nine years federally, and three years for Ontario’s debt, both sentences to be served concurrently.

The mandate to move on this 40% cut depends mostly on the national conscience. The concept of “value-added” content in this context of financial freedom is purely monetary. It would add emphasis to Canada’s traditional buttresses of the resource industries.

Typically, the six largest family expenditures are federal taxes, provincial taxes, mortgage or rent payments, food, indirect taxes and municipal taxes, four of which are managed in an effectively unaccountable manner. Tax revenues continue to shore up, at least partially, an unsupportable quality of life.

In practice, the novel philosophy of national “pay-as-you-go” would affect all of us. This is depressing enough to a generation busily mortgaging its own grandchildren. A child reaching for the bottom of the empty cookie jar only to be told that the next week’s replenishment has already been eaten. We must pause before the cliff and decide between the awful choices of hurting now and leaving the economic drowning to our own descendants. Ken Hymas

Toronto