…aha, the piper must be paid

Just because nobody has brought it up doesn’t mean nobody is thinking about it. The coronavirus bill is going to make Jeff Bezos 252 billion dollar fortune look like chump change compared to the money going to casualties of COVID-19.

Historically it never mattered whether the ruler was king, queen, potentate, president or prime minister, each was overcome by the prospect of spending at will from the nation’s treasury. It mattered not whether the nation in question was rich or poor, there was always money for war, for friends, for the old, for the young. “WOW,” said they to themselves, we always have money and there’s even more money in times of crisis!

Examples explode. Every day Prime Minister Trudeau, like some Saudi Prince, doles out advice for his subjects along with promises of more and more cash. Today, senior citizens! Yes the same ones that have been dying in droves because of a disgraced national attitude toward residents who live in homes for the aged and so called long term care facilities. The PM says, “We must do something for them and guess what, there is money in the treasury for them too.” Of course given the number of the aged that have been claimed by the VIRUS, many dollars have been freed up for the surviving old folks. Face it, 75% of the COVID 19 deaths in Ontario are pensioners. Figure 1,856 of the current total 2,475 dead were receiving the AOS plus the supplementary, and the Ontario treasury has just added $17,817,600. Almost 8,000 have died in the country and using the same probability (75% Old Agers) the National treasury will be adding $57,600,00. The PM can luxuriate in the knowledge that while a majority of the population will applaud his generosity, the wise will see it for what it is – A Potentate raiding the National Treasury on behalf of the dead to send monthly cheques to the living . Kinda works out doesn’t it.

And before the said potentate threw morsels to the Old Folks, he trotted out an assistance plan for big businesses that may be financially in dire straits. And why not a plan for BB? Two of the Prime Minister’s favorite businesses happen to have been in financial straits for years. Could Bombardier and SNC-Lavallin be a couple of big businesses needing big help from big brother in this time of national economic distress? Isn’t that neat, there is money in the treasury for companies in bad times even though they couldn’t manage properly in the good times.

Among the daily audiences of our recent past, the Prime Minister has promised money for the Oil Patch, farmers, airlines – every commitment calculating the need in the millions. Fishing industry just landed a ten bagger, $450 million dollars! The latest budget-projected deficit for the current fiscal year is close to $300 billion. We thought last year’s projected shortfall of 20 billion was beyond the pale but that was before the Corona Crisis. Frankly, using the word budget is silly because nobody in Ottawa is working with or without limiters provided by a budget! And while we have an Official Opposition that has from time to time during this raiding of the Treasury suggested a meeting of the House of Commons, where some elements of fiscal discipline need to be explored and some fiscal questions need to be raised, the Prime Minister is opposed. He is having such a good time in mid-raid, he has said as much. Things, he pointedly declared the other day, were going just great. It was his answer to lame duck Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. A critic today, but Scheer knows with a little more work and a few more victories in October of ’19 he would be at taxpayers cookie jar instead of Fuddle Duddle Two. Do we think Scheer, instead of Trudeau, would be less enthusiastic about sending from the Treasury carloads of freshly minted millions? No we do not!

The financial abyss that has been opened by COVID 19 is an opportunity for sanctioned looting of the Treasury. A Potentate’s dream, and in this case a Prime Minister’s opportunity to distribute a King’s ransom cheered on by a citizenry hoping to share in the ill-gotten gain. The cavalier attitude of the Prime Minister toward his spending spree came early in the piece. When asked what and how are you going handle the fraud that will accompany this surfeit of millions he said we will worry about that later. When later? Chances are on the Twelfth of Never. Circle that date but wait in vain.

So now we come to the reckoning. Yes the Piper must be paid. We have taken possibly as much as a trillion dollars while the vault was open and the King was wildly distributing the wealth that belongs to the nation. It must be repaid. How will you pay? Better question, who will pay? This is about the time the Federales turn out up with the plan that re-visits that old political fallacy that divides our fiscal obligations into three neat jurisdictions: Federal, Provincial, Municipal. I’m an octogenarian and I have spent a lifetime looking for the three different taxpayers that share the nation’s fiscal burdens–that would be the Federal taxpayer, the Provincial taxpayer and the Municipal taxpayer. The bad news is two of three of those taxpayers are missing, in fact they never existed but “sharing is caring” and if we want to make it safely through this dark and miserable war we get to take up the slack and confront that question knowing the answer of course. The other two taxpayers you thought were real were just figments.

Who pays the Piper? Short answer, we do. Expect the COVID surcharge to help remind us there’s always something to interfere with the life we knew just last year. The word goes forth. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is empty. Fill it!