Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, gave a speech back in December 2021 in regards to the government’s main priorities. Surprisingly they didn’t mention their enormous debts and deficits as a result of their spending spree during this pandemic. This government continues to present its historical levels of spending, largely financed by borrowing, as costless to Canadians, which is dishonest. The government’s inability to stick to their budgets pre-COVID led to the $600 billion surplus spent in 2020-22. As a result of the pandemic there were obvious surpluses, however, the government showed no care in targeted assistance to limit the amount spent and thus borrowed the money.
As of December 14, 2021, the Government of Canada has committed over $9 billion to procure vaccines and therapeutics and to provide international support. A majority of that amount has been allocated for the doses of vaccines secured for everyone in Canada. In more simple terms, the government has
secured around 6 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for each citizen. That’s not including the Omicron vaccine they plan to roll out in March 2022. In addition to the $9 billion for vaccines, $40 million in funding has been given to the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network, led by Genome Canada, to coordinate a COVID-19 viral and host. $23 million was given for the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre to accelerate the government's plan to get everyone vaccinated and boosted. $600 million will be funded over the next two years, through the Strategic Innovation Fund to support COVID-19.
Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, provided a snapshot of the country’s finances during the speech on December 14th. The new line items contribute to a broader spending vision of $71.2 billion over the next seven years. That starts with the $28.4 billion in the 2021-22 fiscal year, with $4.5 billion going towards fighting the Omicron variant, and another $5 billion going towards the B.C. flooding recovery efforts. Within the new proposals for government COVID spending, proposes to allocate $2 billion over the next two years, starting in 2021-22 in regards to the vaccines and therapeutics discussed earlier. The government is also funding $1.7 billion to Health Canada and PHAC to help provinces and territories secure COVID rapid tests and the supplies needed to administer them. You can watch the full video below.
With all the billions of dollars the government has been spending and will continue to spend, the effect it will have on the economy will be catastrophic. By now you’re probably thinking, “Where is all this money coming from?”. The answer is simple, taxes. Either tax money from today or tomorrow, either way the hard working people of this country will end up paying the enormous debts the government has decided to take on. The government needs to reassess their spending and consider the millions of people that will have to pay for this as a result of their careless spending for a ‘pandemic’ that is realistically a part of the past.