SNOBELEN: Learning from America's past may help save Canada 

Article content

Benjamin Franklin was a clever fellow. He once allowed that “experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

It is a rare occurrence when we take the time or have the wisdom to learn from the experience of others. This election cycle, we Canadians seem determined to ignore the painful lessons playing out around the world.

Our southern neighbours are a good example. America has a debt problem. Its current federal debt, in U.S. dollars, is about $36.6 trillion. All those zeros add up to a debt per taxpayer of $323,048.

It costs money to service debt, and this year, Americans will pay $1.9 trillion in interest. That debt servicing expenditure will rise every year for at least the next decade, threatening the ability of America to pay for basic government services. They are heading for insolvency and Third World status.

This didn’t happen overnight. Way back in the 1990s, fiscal responsibility was briefly in vogue. But any kind of discipline is hard and spending borrowed money is easy.

Decades of governments, both Democrat and Republican, have failed to address chronic overspending. Despite the political theatre over balancing budgets and fiscal responsibility, every administration, including the first Donald Trump presidency, has presided over lower taxes, more spending and higher debt.

The answer to deficits is a combination of higher revenue (taxes) and lower spending. But this generation of politicians has neither the skill nor the courage to lead people to fiscal sanity. It’s always easier to fix blame instead of fixing the problem.

This is how America stumbled into the business of blame, isolation, incrimination and fear.

Facing a fiscal mess, the Trump administration has pointed the blame on trading partners, immigrants and everyone not on side with MAGA. The game plan is simple: Impose a hidden tax on Americans through tariffs and blame foreign nations while slashing the public service to rid it of “woke” initiatives.

It isn’t pretty, and it will lead to a darker future for America, but absent an adult conversation on prudent fiscal policy, it’s the only option available.

But all of that is America’s problem. The question now before Canadians is what, if anything, have we learned from the mess below our border. The answer is nothing.

Canada also has a debt problem. Its national debt has more than doubled under the misguided stewardship of Justin Trudeau. Currently, the interest on that debt eats up more than every dollar Canadians spend on GST.

It’s a good time to address how we are going to right the fiscal ship while facing the headwinds of the turmoil in America. This is serious stuff.

Instead, we have both our supposedly serious political parties locked into a contest to see who can pander to the most.

The Conservatives and the Liberals are busy outdoing each other with announcements of new spending and lower taxes, blissfully ignoring our worsening fiscal condition. They should be ashamed.

Canadians are better than that. We know that getting spending under control is better done with forethought than with a chainsaw. We know that significantly restructuring trade will require hard work and more than a little pain.

Ultimately, we know that if we don’t learn from the American example, we will be doomed to repeat some future version of it.

All we need now is some serious leadership. Don’t hold your breath.