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Up for another election?

Not me, says the democratic Scrooge
andrewbyline

As big a fan as I am of the democratic process, I’m suffering a little voter fatigue just now. Since June of 2004, we have had a federal election, a provincial election and a municipal election.

Given the fact that modern campaigns usually ramp up months before the official writ is dropped, we’ve probably spent nine out of the last 18 months in election mode.

You could also argue that the campaign for the federal government never really ended, with Conservative, NDP and Bloc parties threatening to derail Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government every week since he was elected in June of 2004.

That vote of no confidence finally came this Monday, which means we’re looking forward to the first holiday season federal election campaign since 1979. Which means I’ll be forced to watch attack ads during commercial breaks in It’s a Wonderful Life . Snowmen and nativity scenes will be sharing lawn space with candidates’ billboards. And at a time of year that’s supposed to be about coming together, and charity, brotherhood and goodwill to all, is going to be dragged into a bitter contest over the future leadership of Canada.

But all things said and done, I’m actually glad that this election is coming. Not because I favour any other party over the Liberals, who could probably use a few years out of power to remember what they’re supposed to stand for, but because it’s the only way to stall the current budget adjustments proposed by Paul Martin’s office.

For example, this year the Liberal Party has pledged to cut taxes by $5.3 billion retroactively. Someone earning $60,000 a year this year will pay about $500 less in taxes.

In total the Liberal Party plans to give back about $35 billion in taxes to Canadians over the next five years in recognition of the fact that the government has been running sizeable budget surpluses over the last decade.

So why am I opposed to getting some of my hard-earned money back?

While everyone I know could use a few extra bucks in their pockets, including myself, I don’t want to be part of another generation that sells its soul in return for a few short-term gains. I want to be part of the "buck stops here" generation that actually deals with some of the key issues of the day, that makes the hard decisions and sacrifices, and for once leaves a better world for the next generation. And I don’t even have kids yet.

Look at the Baby Boomers. They were hippy socialists in the ’60s, environmentalists in the ’70s, sold out those values in the ’80s and ’90s and are now preparing to retire in style. They are the generation responsible for globalizing the economy, for shrinking governments, for bigger cars, bigger homes, suburban sprawl, pollution, and a host of other problems.

In his book The Worst Generation Paul Begala calls baby boomers "the most self-centred, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation… If they were animals they’d be a plague of locusts, devouring everything in their path and leaving but a wasteland."

No offence to boomers as individuals, but collectively, wittingly or not, you’ve dumped a lot of problems on my generation, including a national debt which is sitting just under $500 billion. While boomers were raking in unprecedented levels of wealth, our country and province racked up an unprecedented levels of debt – debt that the boomers have no intention of paying.

Even now wealthy interests are lobbying for lower inheritance taxes, which were created to redistribute wealth and prevent the consolidation of money and power in too few hands. When that happens a democracy becomes a plutocracy.

Now our generation has a choice: We can plunge ahead mindlessly, follow the boomers’ example and look out for ourselves and our interests. Or we could become the generation that makes the crucial and necessary sacrifices the boomers wouldn’t make.

Instead of giving us tax breaks, and reaping a few votes in a short-term political game, I want a leader who would even be willing to raise taxes to attack our national debt.

Financial predictions and explanations are all over the map, but one thing most economists can agree on is that our debt is too high. We pay almost $40 billion a year on interest alone, while our total national budget is only about $165 billion. By the time we pay off that debt, we will have paid over a trillion dollars in interest alone. One blogger has made the claim that Canada only really borrowed $100 billion in the first place and the rest of our national debt is the product of years of running deficits while the interest on our loans steadily accrued.

We had a $20 billion debt in 1971. Our debt topped out at about $570 billion a decade ago before the Liberals starting making some significant payments on the principal. It’s taken about 10 years to pay off just over $70 billion of the total, while at the same time we paid (approximately) $300 billion in interest.

While Martin deserves a lot of the credit for the fact that the Canadian government is running huge surpluses, giving that money back to us is a bad idea that panders to our worst inclinations. And while even $300 a year or whatever might seem like a good idea, I honestly don’t think the economy or myself would even notice the extra $25 a month.

But imagine what we could do if we paid off our national debt and had an extra $40 billion a year to spend.

That’s the day I’m hoping for. It’s not the day that any of our national political parties have promised in the run-up to this election. Bah humbug.