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The resulting farrago of contrived federal government munificence toward complainant groups has essentially been a substitute for real policy these 29 months of this government. It has now caught up with them. The budget last week contained hundreds of invocations of the word “gender” as if it were a sex manual for pubescent youth and not the supposed fiscal blueprint for the federal government. The budget did not address the deficit, the over-taxed condition of almost every income-earner in the country, or the implications of moving determinedly from half the rate of U.S. economic growth this year to a third of it next year, while all income-tax brackets and corporations in Canada pay a higher rate of taxes than their American analogues.

The government has loaded all its political freight on the rickety wagon of political correctness

In Cromwellian terms, instead of “addressing the nation’s grievances,” the government is well along toward becoming “its greatest grievance.” The government has loaded all its political freight on the rickety wagon of political correctness: demonstrably absurd propositions about the environment, gender issues, and native people. It won’t fly, but it’s not too late to become serious and produce some real and not pretended leadership in a desirable rather than merely trendy direction. Rather than trying to lead us across an endless desert of needless deficits, HST should be raised on elective spending, especially luxury goods and optional financial transactions. It would then be a voluntary tax on the relatively well-to-do. All income taxes should be reduced. Thus would Canada stimulate economic growth while eliminating the federal deficit, if it were all calibrated properly. If we reinvigorated economic growth while reducing the deficit, we could lead the world back to hard currencies, that are backed by something, and not just measured against each other as all currencies lose value in unison. The gold standard would not be appropriate, but some combination of gold, energy units, and consumer essentials could become a yardstick for currency that would be emulated by other fiscally responsible countries.