Governments stepped up their efforts to do more than put more of Canada’s citizenry on voters’ lists in 2022; they doubled down on putting more of those citizens on the public payroll.
That government payroll expansion action has increasingly worrying economic ramifications.
Worry 1: Canada’s buoyant employment recovery being touted by ruling politicians during 2022. It’s a worry because, as a Fraser Institute research paper pointed out earlier this year, close to 88 per cent of net new jobs created since the start of the pandemic have been in the public sector or are otherwise taxpayer-supported.
Meanwhile, the percentage of net new jobs created in the private sector during the same period, according to the Fraser Institute, has been next to zero.
That leads to Worry 2: The real economy, the one that generates the revenue for the pseudo-economy that is government and its growing legion of public-sector workers and taxpayer-supported benefits, is having a hard time recovering from the pandemic ills of the past two years.
And that magnifies Worry 3: Creating an economy that is largely dependent on government is bad for the real economy and worse for democracy.
The Justin Trudeau regime is all in on spending whatever it takes to remain in office, regardless of how deep a debt hole it digs for the country’s taxpayers.
That debt hole is currently close to $1.2 trillion deep. The country is not going to pull itself out of that mineshaft by adding to the public payroll.
A healthy job market is vital for any economy, but a job market that is increasingly reliant on taxpayer dollars is not doing any economy any long-term good.
Government has no money of its own; nor is it a creator of wealth.
Increasing voter dependence on public money might be good for maintaining office for political parties, but it is anything but good for a country’s productivity, innovation and economic vitality.
