EDITORIAL Too much government

Ever get the feeling that there seems to be more people working to spend taxpayers’ money than there are people working to earn a profit? The proportion might not be quite that out of whack, but a case can be made that this country is simply over-governed. A recent report from Coopers & Lybrand, Reshaping Canada to Compete, points out that Canada has one federal legislator for approximately 88,000 people while in the U.S. there is one federal legislator for approximately 575,000. Here, in addition to the federal Parliament and public service, each of the 10 provinces has a legislature and a bureaucracy.

“This situation increases the cost of government and leads to overlapping jurisdictions and duplication of programs,” says the report. We call that an understatement.