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At a Conservative campaign rally the other evening, local candidate Krystina Waler talked about her goal for her riding: “To make St. Catharines the best place to live, work and raise a family.”

That seemed to me to be a pretty good encapsulation of what governments should aim to do – lay solid foundations upon which citizens can build fulfilling lives.

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Frequently though, governments overreach, spreading their tentacles too far into the lives of their citizens, wasting their money in the process. The impossibly optimistic Ugandan space program under Idi Amin comes to mind – ranked by Time Magazine as one of the “100 worst ideas of the 20th century”.

Not to be outdone in the stupidity stakes, the Liberals have come up with a Canadian contender for the 21st century. Justin Trudeau made land in a canoe in Sudbury, Ont., after paddling round a lake for the cameras, to announce a re-elected Liberal government will create $2,000 travel bursaries to send 75,000 families camping for up to four days in a national or provincial park.