Critical Mine

I am no economist, but I can tell you what I see. While the government insists that Canada is well underway to economic recovery, small businesses are still suffering, and bigger corporations are either still laying more workers off or keeping tight on budget and praying that less spending will help them survive the ongoing economic crisis.


Canada's Economic Action Plan, our government's response to the economic recession, is a $40 billion dollar package over 2009 and 2010. While the government is claiming this full amount is intended to support the economy and create new jobs, a lot of this money seems to have gone or on its way to waste. The theoretical concept behind targeted stimulus spending is good in principle, but when spending becomes aimless or propaganda-oriented, that's when we, the supposed beneficiaries of stimulus, draw the line and question the choices Ottawa made.

The type of aimless spending I am referring to includes the stimulus given to industries that do not necessarily need it or those who have not been hit by the economic downfall. Industries such as aerospace, security, and defence are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's just the least of it. While I wouldn't object the regular spending on such industries for R&D purposes, putting the title of economic recovery on such help is purposely misleading us but is a calculated move on behalf of the government. Furthermore, this propaganda continues to include the massively large amounts of money dedicated to advertising the plan to the citizens of this country in all formats and mediums from print to web-based. The costs of the action plan road signs alone are estimated to have cost about $50 million dollars, an amount ridiculously large for the need knowing that you can find four or five of these within a block distance in some areas. What makes this even worse is that most of these signs were manufactured in the States by Zumar Industries defying the very purpose of stimulus spending, which is supporting your local businesses.

After all, it's like C. H. Spurgeon put it "Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.", but Harper and Flaherty seem to be struggling with both, especially the latter, so their solution was to just spend it all to make the industry content and brag to the voters about how Canada has one of the largest economic stimulus packages in the world, all in hopes of pulling off a majority in the next Federal election.

Finally, while the action plan seemed to have delivered some results, its impact could have been a lot better if spending focused solely on what the government claimed the plan existed for, supporting the hard-hit industries and creating more local jobs.