A key reason the Liberals & NDP are flailing in their attempts to address the growing cost-of-living crisis is that truly addressing it would require critically examining their own free-spending ideology.
By now, you’ve surely noticed that the more the Liberal government intervenes to solve problems the worse those problems get.
The plastic straw ban encapsulates this perfectly.
It turns out that the paper straws that have largely replaced banned plastic straws have ‘forever chemicals’ in them and are potentially quite bad for the environment.
Now, some are calling for further regulation to incentivize a move away from paper straws to some other alternative.
This pattern of the government intervening to solve a problem, making that problem worse/creating a new problem which leads to calls for further government intervention, is one of the main reasons Canada is in such a terrible state.
The Canadian government under the Liberals simply lacks both the basic level of competence or ideological moderation to address problems in an effective manner, and lacks the wherewithal to know when doing nothing would be the best course of action.
C-18 debacle
Nowhere is the failure of ideological interventionism more prominently displayed than the ongoing debacle of Bill C-18.
The Liberals claimed the legislation would result in a big payday for media outlets, and claimed Meta/Google claims of removing Canadian news links were nothing but a bluff.
Now, those media outlets looking to benefit from the unjust state-directed transfer of funds from Meta/Google are far worse off. Not only did they get no new money, but their traffic and revenue are declining as a result of the legislation.
Meanwhile, Meta is doing just fine:
“Meta’s decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians’ usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move.
Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news there at the start of August, according to data shared by Similarweb, a digital analytics company that tracks traffic on websites and apps, at Reuters’ request.
Another analytics firm, Data.ai, likewise told Reuters that its data was not showing any meaningful change to usage of the platform in Canada in August.
The estimates, while early, appear to support Meta’s contention that news holds little value for the company as it remains locked in a tense standoff in Canada over a new law requiring internet giants to pay publishers for the news articles shared on their platforms.”
Problems caused by overspending cannot be fixed by more overspending
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has repeatedly hit the Liberal-NDP Pact on the cost-of-living by pointing out how their excessive spending has made the affordability crisis worse.
Not only is Poilievre making an effective political argument, but his argument is based upon a strong understanding of economic principles.
Excessive Liberal-NDP spending has pushed up interest rates through increased government borrowing and flooding the economy with an increase in the supply of money that outpaces the increase in the supply of goods. As a result, the Bank of Canada has been forced to raise rates higher than would have been necessary otherwise.
These higher rates have driven up borrowing costs for indebted Canadians.
The value of money has also been eroded by excessive government spending and money printing, which is why many Canadians are finding that they are falling further and further behind despite having ‘more money’. We may have an increased or steady amount of monetary units, but if each of those monetary units are less valuable, we are poorer in real terms.
Additionally, the government continues to pile on more and more taxes. Much of this ideological, as Steven Guilbeault – with Justin Trudeau’s blessing – imposes a radical anti-growth, anti-development, anti-Western Canada agenda on the nation.
That said, some of the impetus behind tax increases is to try and cover the cost of excessive government spending. Of course, this further reduces the disposable income of Canadian households. Thus, Canadians are squeezed from both ends, with more money lost to taxes and more money lost to declining purchasing power as a result of inflation.
So, when Pierre Poilievre says that one of the first steps to bringing down prices and making life more affordable is to impose restraint on federal spending, he is absolutely correct.
And this is why the Liberals & NDP are flailing around.
They are so deeply invested in an ideological worldview in which government action and government spending is the answer to every problem that they simply can’t acknowledge the fact that their policies are making things worse.
In real time, we are seeing the danger of having overly ideological individuals in power, and we are seeing why fundamental principles like fiscal responsibility and limited government remain so important.
Spencer Fernando
