It’s only going to get worse. Tinder dry dead pine and warm winters spells big fires and lots of them. I hate to say it but big burns are needed to purge the land of all this beetle kill wood so new growth can take hold.

Nature, once looked after the land.
If not an interface fire, let it burn. Nature did that. After the burn, comes new growth, growth that feeds many forms of life.

Ever notice how there’s never any shortage of money to deal with natural disasters or to fight a war? No matter how far a Provincial or the Federal government is in the ‘red’ for in accumulated deficits, no Finance Minister ever stands up in the Legislature or Parliament and says we can’t afford to do what needs doing, or something a government deems so.

Internally, so long as all the physical components to do whatever that is are existant, or can be readily procured, the money to pay for it all appears as if by magic. There is no question raised about how we are going to pay for it all later. Or if we ever will be able to, or what happens if we can’t.

Yet with most of the other things that also ‘need’ doing, ones that readily ‘could’ be done ~ because everything else needed to do them is already in existence, and often times un- or under-utilised to an enormous extent, the universal excuse of all our polticos, whatever their Party, is that “…we don’t have the money.” There’s something seriously wrong with that picture.

socredible, your right on the money. We get fires every year so what’s the big deal. There was a fire in Kooteny National Park a few years back and Parks just let it take its course. It goes along with Mercenarys idea forests need renewal unfortunately people get in the way.
Cheers

I think socredible is saying because the government can spend 170 million on fires annually they can spend with open pockets. Like say teachers, but think for a sec even in a bad fire year that is 350 million, where the teachers are asking for an increase in the 500 million to the billion dollar range. This is not total but just an increase, for that yes there is no money… an extra 100 million or 200 million to fight a heavy fire year is chump change compared to that, the next year may leave a surplus – but that won’t happen in the case of union demands. Can’t believe people still cannot see that.

No, not quite, Slinky. Though I do agree with what you’ve written above. I think though, that you might be making an all too common mistake of those who are inclined to the ‘right’ politically. One that I believe will eventually lead to the demise of governments they support, (unfortunately, in some cases), and their replacement by their opponents on the ‘left’. Who’ll then only succeed, overall, in making a bad situation inevitably worse. That mistake is the belief that the quantity of money is fixed, as if by the laws of Nature, and from that comes the nonsense spouted by the ‘left’ that “…the poor are poor because the rich are rich.” Those on the ‘right’ should have an answer to that. But they don’t, because they, too, have accepted the erroneous premise that the supply of money is fixed and immutable. Which it very clearly is not.

STILL wonder why KRUSTY came up here to do her flyby over the fire, what is she going to do.??? YOU want to talk about a waste of money well there you go KRUSTY is spending it faster than the province makes it.
Edited for language

It’s politics, ice. If she didn’t come it would be perceived that she and her government couldn’t care less about what’s happening near PG. If she does, she’s wasting the taxpayer’s money. Once again we focus on the minute details, or some specific issue (like teacher’s union demands ~ which might not be so minute, but still only obscures a far bigger issue).
That bigger issue is the question of whether the accounting we currently use to reflect government expenditure accurately portrays the actual physical realities, or grossly mis-represents them. In a way that makes expenditures on specific issues, be they the small cost of a plane ride, or the massive increase in education costs, pale in comparison.

Socred you talk a lot about the monetary inflation aspect not necessarily being tied to a fixed, as almost a law of nature, say to an algorithm of sorts that is detached from the real needs of the economy to operate at its optimal level.

From your moniker I would assume you support social credit, as in adding money to the money supply to reflect the realities of the needs and size of the economy without being a cause of inflation.

Some would say we already have this with the quantitative easing for the ‘too big to fail banks’, and others would say that doesn’t get distributed fairly throughout the economy, but is concentrated on subsidizing the loses incurred by the 1% demographic (trickle down economics). Others would say it should be distributed to the citizens of the country by a general disbursement annually on a per capita basis (trickle up economics).

I seen a CBC interview the other day of a lawyer that is suing the federal government about the Bank of Canada policy since Bretten Woods, claiming its a sell out of national sovereignty and unconstitutional. I guess prior to 1973 the Central Bank of Canada would, could, and did issue none interest paying loans to the federal and provincial governments for infrastructure investments as a form of social credit to the governments to cover the infrastructure that pays for itself in a way by increasing the capacity of the economy as a whole.

Since Canada joined with the central bankers of central bankers and the global banking system they have imposed a sanction of sorts against the Canadian government funding infrastructure in this way, and thus the debt and interest payments to the central bankers have accumulated at alarming rates… and with these interest payments coming from the real economy that in effect retards our national sovereignty, economic development, and future fiscal ability to maintain government services of all types.

Have you heard anything about this and if so, I wold be interested in what your thoughts on the matter are? It seems to me we follow the constitution and bring this practice back and to hell with the globalist central banking cabal.

Oh and so, if so and we were back to constitutional banking in Canada, then wouldn’t it also be that any money spent on things like forest fighting should also be interest free loans from the central bank of Canada, as well as for education and infrastructure as they all relate to protecting and expanding the productive capacity of the overall economy.

Good conversation.

A little off topic of the main headline (maybe 250 News should consider having a free for all on public holidays?) but further to Eagleone’s 5:13 AM post:

The following quote is taken from the 1993 Report of the Auditor General of Canada:

“In 1991-92, the interest on the debt was $41 billion. This cost of borrowing and its compounding effect have a significant impact on Canada’s annual deficits. From Confederation up to 1991-92, the federal government accumulated a net debt of $423 billion. Of this, $37 billion represents the accumulated shortfall in meeting the cost of government programs since Confederation. The remainder, $386 billion, represents the amount the government has borrowed to service the debt created by previous annual shortfalls.”

(I was not able to find this particular report on the government of Canada website, but the Wayback Machine website had it.)

http://web.archive.org/web/20140312214454/http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_199312_05_e_5944.html

“Rocco Galati has taken on a case for a group called the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform, or COMER, which wants the central bank to return to the practice of lending federal and provincial governments interest-free money for infrastructure.”

Rocco Galati challenges role of Bank of Canada in latest case

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rocco-galati-challenges-role-of-bank-of-canada-in-latest-case-1.3065650

I do indeed support the implementation of ‘social credit’, Eagle. Though I’m afraid that term itself has now become riddled with many mis-conceptions as to what it actually is. It is NOT Quantitative Easing as has been attempted recently in the USA and elsewhere. It is not ‘inflationary’, for contained within its original proposals is a mechanism to introduce needed new money in a way that lowers consumer prices rather than raising them. It simply makes the figures of finance properly REFLECT the facts of physical reality.

I am aware of the lawsuit being waged against the Bank of Canada by COMER and its prominent lawyer, Rocco Galiati. I don’t believe it has a sound basis in fact, and will prove unsuccessful. Many of the things the Bank of Canada is alleged to have done, supposedly to the benefit of the country, it simply did not do. Not in the way it’s been made out it did, anyways. Some of those things it theoretically *could* do, but the benefit to the country, overall, would be doubtful. We need to decide what we want to do. What is most important to us. Trying to destroy a system of banking, which, for the most part, works quite well for all (even though there is a correctable ‘flaw’ currently embedded in it that makes it seem it works better for bankers than the rest of us); or move to correct that ‘flaw’, which is what proper ‘social credit’ is all about.

Charles posted:-“”Rocco Galati has taken on a case for a group called the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform, or COMER, which wants the central bank to return to the practice of lending federal and provincial governments interest-free money for infrastructure.”
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I think if you research the matter further, Charles, you’ll find that the Bank of Canada did NOT do this in the way that is often imagined by many so-called ‘monetary reformers’.
The Bank of Canada is the Federal government’s fiscal agent. What it DID do was take up government debt issues (Federal, not Provincial, except possibly rarely in exceptional circumstances ~ an I can’t recall any offhand), on a short-term basis, and then marketed them when the time was deemed more, or most, appropriate. By doing this it was able to save the government a considerable amount in interest over what it would have had to pay if it marketed its debt issues directly whenever it needed to raise money. The whole issue of government debt financing is quite complicated. Governments are NOT, despite what is often told us, just like any other borrower.

To go just a little further with this, a National Debt (or even a Provincial one, in the case of BC and the other Provinces) is primarily a ‘distributing agent’. It is currently how necessary ‘new money’ enters the economy. This ‘new money’ is necessary because the financial system as a whole as it presently operates is not fully ‘self-liquidating’. In other words, we can’t fully ‘pay’ from what’s been produced from what we ‘pay’ when we come to consume it. We never, overall, have enough ‘money’. Properly, its position as such a ‘distributing agent’ should be taken up by a ‘Capital Account’ ~ the same as is the case with any private business.