Sounds Nice, Smells Bad

Since becoming a little bit more interested in our nations’ politics I thought I would look up some info on my local MLA.  He has advertisements up around the community and is a member of the NDP party.  Many people consider the NDP party to be quite liberal, and a party that love unions and are probably quite interested in a services type government at both the provincial and federal level.  As we should all be aware by now, that means stealing money from someone and giving it to others that you don’t know. 

I went to his local website (the MLA) and he seems genuine.  I will trust that he truly cares about the community as it appears he has spent a fair bit of time in it and on different community committees.  He graduated with a degree in economics so I thought it would be nice to have someone with that educational background.

I read their agenda which was written in 2010.  Now for my American reader’s, 2009 was a tough year in Canada.  We had a bad recession which obviously followed yours.  In this “state of the union” address, he proudly commented that other provinces, faced with budget shortfalls were often ending particular services (he didn’t say what kind of services but said they were important) and even selling off provincial assets to make up the shortfall.

He went on that the NDP government would not follow suit.  They would keep providing the services that Manitobans expected and that they would not sell off provincial owned assets (namely Manitoba Hydro) during this downturn and recovery period.  In other words, some provinces were cutting back, either reducing spending or selling assets to reduce their deficit.  The NDP would not fall into that trap.

It got me thinking; that sounds great when you quickly glance at it….but there is a glaring problem.

If I hit a downturn, where my salary was reduced and I was headed to a budget shortfall, I would have to take drastic steps.  I might have to sell a car, or even my house, I might buy more generic food, what ever it took to make ends meet.  I think almost everyone would take those measures.

Apparently the NDP government doesn’t need to do that.  They’ll keep spending to make sure they get your vote.  The other provinces were doing what they had to so that the deficits could be as small as possible.  But the NDP would tell us this is unacceptable. 

Deficits can be dealt with later I suppose?  I would like to know when being financially responsible went out of style.