First of all let me say thank you to Jay Hill and Dick Harris for your years of service to this country. You can count on my support in the next election. I hope the Conservative Party wins a majority government.

These are extremely difficult (and historical) economic times and you folks in Government are faced with very tough choices, as this economic downturn is resulting in government revenues going down, and government expenditures rising. I am sure you are always looking for input into how Canadians feel about the issues in the country, so here is my 2 cents worth. Thank you to opinion250.com for providing the forum which allows me to do this.

I think the current economic crisis is 100% due to the fact for many decades now consumers, businesses, and governments in Canada (along with most other countries in the world) have been borrowing and spending too much money; people and financial institutions have been lending too much money; and the financial regulators have allowed this wild infusion of debt into our economy. All three of the aforementioned had to occur for us to get into our present predicament. You can pile on debt for a long time, but eventually an endgame has to be reached because at a certain point the debt cannot be serviced anymore. I think we have reached this endgame now.

I think the bottom line is all of this borrowing and spending which has gone on in Canada (as well as in the rest of the world) has artificially elevated our standard of living, because we have been in effect living beyond our means. I think this economic downturn is all about forcing us to accept a lower standard of living, a standard of living which we can afford to pay for.

I think trying to stimulate the economy (which really means pumping more debt into the economy) and bailouts are only adding to our problem. An old saying by Preston Manning comes to mind. As I recall he said something like (with regards to debt and deficits), if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you must do if you want to get out of this hole, is to stop digging. There is no magic pill which can be taken at this point in the game to solve our problem of too much debt. All of this excessive debt out there has to be paid off, defaulted upon, or inflated away by debasing our currency (or some combination of the aforementioned). These debt fueled boom and bust cycles have occurred many times before in the history of the world.

One suggestion I would like to make, is could you two MP's please consider asking for some kind of Parliamentary Inquiry to discuss how we got ourselves into this situation, and make some suggestions as to how future Canadians can avoid having to go through these massive credit induced boom and bust cycles.

Thank you.

When the Conservatives took over there were huge Liberal surpluses - seven consecutive years of them.

Now we are again back into huge deficit spending.

Makes me pine for the good old days of before.

Diplomat. You know why we are going into deficit spending.

Insofar as the surplus's go, all they mean is that the Liberals overtaxed us.

We all know they kited $40 Billion out of the EI Fund into general revenue so that they could say they balanced the budget. They also cut transfers to the Provinces for the same reason.

To have a surplus hardly means good Government. You should take some time to see how they managed to come up with their surplus's.

Have a nice day.

The surpluses were turned into practically nothing before the global meltdown started.

The EI fund is not poorer by 40 billion because the federal government dipped into it. The obligation to repay any money taken from the fund rests legally with the government, just like moneys taken by government over the years from the Canada Pension Plan are still a liability that must be repaid from general revenue should the need ever arise.

The need would materialize when contributions IN are not sufficient for payments OUT - without any buffer remaining.

Then the shortfall must be made up from general revenue (higher taxes) and possibly higher contributions, either scenario being politically undesirable.

EI is being run the same way.

Governments always resort to this kind of financial flim flam and every government has done so in the past.

Thank you for wishing me a nice day! I hope you will enjoy the same!

"Insofar as the surplus's go, all they mean is that the Liberals overtaxed us."

Huh??????

The annual so called "surplus" was a budget surplus. The source of the money that was gained over the year did not only come from taxes.

Whatever the source, the "surplus" went to pay down the debt which had been continually increasing. To me, that is a prudent, fiscally sound thing to do in good economic times - gather as much money as is reasonable and pay down the debt. Something countries like the USA were unable to do. They tried reducing tax and look at where it got them.

When our trade surpluses go out the window due to lower oil prices, increased C$ valuation, and decreased lumber sales as well auto sales, and our taxes are not high enough to accommodate the resulting economic downturn, we have to dig back into the kitty, which is still in negative territory. Just imagine if we had not paid down some of that debt. We'd be in even worse shape.

I believe our total debt has been dropping for the last 10 years. Over that time period our debt to GDP ration has dropped from about 65% to about 40%.

The USA had a low of 40% around 1980. At the beginning of the 1950s it was around 90%. It has once more risen to the 60%+ figure.

Jay spelled "advice" wrong.

Gus. If you get a chance, read the editorial in today's newspaper. It is titled Phony Money Real Headache. It is about quantitative easing.

Which newspaper, the NY Times?

You mean Jay actually writes those columns?

The balance between quantitative easing and qualitative easing is a fine one. The question becomes, how much qualitative easing can we afford, before the state of equilibrium has gone too far the other way?

Just to clarify my use of the notion of qualitative easing.

As I understand it, the notion of “easing” as is used on s socio-economic sense is one which tries to soften the social effect of the economic situation we find ourselves in.

Quantitative easing appears to be the notion of government creating new money and ingesting it into the economy not necessarily with any conditions attached.
Qualitative easing, the way that I used it above, is the notion that we have been overextending our ability to pay for the things and services we have procured and we must, as a society, slow down our procurement addiction so that we can catch up with our ability to pay. In doing so, our quality of life will take a hit of sorts, at least in those areas of our lives which have relied on satisfying our money costing wants.

As far as I see it, if we do either one without the other we will either have superinflation or depression.

I do support the notion of quantitative easing if it the money floats to projects that are public investments in the future, especially those which increase qualitative projects such as alternative energy projects, transportation systems projects, communication systems projects, etc. etc. Those would then be the conditions.

In fact, those projects increase the capital assets of the government for which, in my view, it would be reasonable to produce more money to reflect the capital asset value.

Then there is, in my view, even a better return on the dollar, if the money is invested into research which is a building asset rather than depreciating asset. There seems to be no indication of that happening in Canada, anyway. Maybe some of the countries that have smarter governments.

Thats just like our politicians to allow the robbery that occurs at the gas pumps only to give it back to us in an attempt to make themselves look good to those they rob.