Juno News - We could've avoided a $343 billion deficit

00:00:00.000 $343 billion. Wow, what a staggering, unprecedented sum. That, ladies and gentlemen,

00:00:12.100 is now the deficit in Canada. The debt, pretty massive as well, exceeding $1.2 trillion.

00:00:20.000 Those were the figures that Bill Murnau released on Wednesday speaking in the House of Commons.

00:00:24.520 Although I should note, he didn't actually reveal those numbers. The fiscal snapshot

00:00:28.820 document that the government released, that says those numbers, and reporters poured through it

00:00:33.080 all. They found the numbers. They reported them. Murnau, giving a speech, never actually mentioned

00:00:37.520 the numbers that he was there to announce. Kind of can't blame the guy, because these are not things

00:00:44.020 to be proud of. You certainly don't want to focus on that stuff. You want to try and spin and redirect

00:00:49.020 people towards happier numbers, happier times. So I can't blame him for that. But here's the question.

00:00:54.700 What can we blame the liberal government for, Bill Murnau and Justin Trudeau? What should

00:00:58.260 we blame them for? Because for a number of years, there were a lot of us who were saying,

00:01:02.280 why are you running these major deficits, $28 billion and so forth, when times are good?

00:01:07.240 Now are the times you should be paying down the debt. So that way we can prepare for when

00:01:11.820 unprecedented, unexpected bad times, such as this, suddenly materialize. But they did not do that.

00:01:18.360 They kept spending, spending, spending. The other big thing, the big criticism the liberals are on the

00:01:22.980 receiving end of, is business leaders are looking at that fiscal snapshot and they're saying, hold on

00:01:28.060 a second. We support the economic support that was brought in in March and April to shore up all

00:01:33.420 those individuals and businesses who were forced to shut down, not open for business, not go to work

00:01:38.660 through no fault of their own. Of course, it was up to the government to make them whole. But here's

00:01:42.840 the question. At what point do we pivot from economic support to economic recovery? A lot of people say,

00:01:48.960 hold on a second, these programs, they do not incentivize people returning to work. Why not?

00:01:54.440 Why is that? Personally, I think that if you look at how Justin Stowe is riding pretty high in the polls

00:01:59.020 right now, because all he's really doing is giving out free money, maybe he sees, I want to keep giving

00:02:04.060 out this money right now because it's good for me electorally. A bit cynical, I know, but hey,

00:02:08.700 that's politics and I wouldn't put it past them. So what do you think? Do we cut them some slack for

00:02:13.300 this $343 billion? We're in unprecedented times. We have to shore up the economy. Or could they have

00:02:18.940 done better? I say yes, the latter.

Juno News - July 10, 2020