Another crowd whistling past the graveyard
Work in Progress/by Ivan Morgan
A kind person stopped me at the supermarket recently to tell me how much she loves The Shoreline, and how much she enjoys my column. She asked me how I managed to come up with a subject to write about every week. I told her the truth: my problem is trying to decide which among the many ideas I have to write about that week.
That is why I am apologizing to her and the rest of The Shoreline readers for this week’s column. I know this is a subject I keep coming back to, but I just can’t help myself.
As he was going out the door in 2017 then Auditor General (AG) Terry Paddon gave us all a warning about how our government was doing financially. After a long career in government, he felt the obligation just before retiring to hold a public lecture showing us how bad our financial situation really was, and how bad it would get if we were not more responsible. Paddon said things were going from bad to worse quickly.
In 2017 no one listened.
Meanwhile, the government of the day was telling us everything was rosy and getting better.
Jump forward to last week, when Premier Andrew Furey gave a ‘State of the Province’ speech to the Board of Trade. (I watched it on Facebook so you didn’t have to). It was a load of bumf (an appropriate word for a community newspaper). He was brimming with optimism, and bullish on the future. He said we are the comeback kids, poised for greatness, etcetera, etcetera.
On top of that, last week Deputy Premier Siobhan Coady gave her annual Fall Fiscal Update, painting a rosy picture of the province’s finances.
That same week the current AG, Denise Hanrahan, offered a very respectful, but very blunt, outline of her opinion of the province’s finances. She said in her opinion things are getting worse.
What frustrates me is once again no one appears to be listening.
Why isn’t this a major public policy issue? Why does government keep telling us everything is great when it is far from great?
The Liberal government says things are looking up. The AG says things are getting worse. Who do you believe? The AG is a clear-eyed, seasoned financial professional who has worked in government for decades. I know who I am inclined to believe.
Government then, and now, will say the only cure is to move forward in positivity and optimism. Of course, who doesn’t believe in that? Yet a series of AGs keep telling us that our situation is very bad and getting worse.
I can’t help but think we are all being sold a bill of goods.
There seems little to nothing in the media about this. I don’t understand it. Am I an irrelevant old fool fixated on outdated ideas? The Fraser Institute notes we will spend $1.1 billion this year on interest on our debt alone, about the same, they note, as we earn from offshore oil and gas. Your money spent not on you, but on interest owed to our lenders. And every year we get deeper in debt.
Does no one care? Will this ever change?
In his Board of Trade speech Furey quotes former US President Barack Obama: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
I am beginning to wonder if he is the change we seek. The Liberal Party doesn’t seem to have any answers besides the same old same old flowery language and upbeat nonsense.
The opposition Tories? They were the ones who duped us into the disastrous Muskrat Falls project, which has doubled our debt. Have they any ideas to get us out of the mess they worked so hard to create? I’m listening.
Who is going to be that change? What are they going to do? For the last few decades, the plan seems to have been to whistle past the fiscal graveyard hoping for the best.
How long can this go on?
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com