What Fiscal Responsibility?

Every time I look at a newspaper, electronic or hard copy, I see more stories regarding government cuts to programs and services.  And that seems to be the case at every level of government from municipal to federal.  I often see words like “fiscal responsibility” and hear how this has to be done to bring down government deficits.

We have politicians telling us we have to tighten our belts and people like our federal Finance Minister Flaherty telling us we have to work harder to save for our retirement.  Just this week the Alberta Ministry of Seniors and Community Supports announced another $6 – 8 million dollar cut (following a $10 million cut last year) from frontline services.  The Calgary Board of Education, the Edmonton Board of Education, the health regions and it can go on, are all shaving their budgets while we pay for it and our services are eroded.

This wouldn’t bother me if the governments led by example.  But leading by example is not shown when they spend $200 million to build a hospital they can afford to staff.  That is not good fiscal management.  Spending $15 to $20 thousand on an appeal process to keep a family from accessing $5000 worth of Speech Language Therapy for their child is not good fiscal management. 

And then the government pays “performance” bonuses to bureaucrats.  When I have to go through a half dozen layers of bureaucracy to get some services for a family, that tells me there are too many layer of people being paid by our tax dollars.   None of this is good fiscal management.

Then we have our federal role models.  To spend almost a billion dollars for the G20 summit when the rest of the world is talking about economic restraint has made us a joke to the world.  The rest of the world is now referring to it as the “loonie boondoggle”.  This is not really a role model I would want my kids to emulate.

Just one man’s opinion