This is probably no surprise given the misguided law and order agenda and the Harperites' fondness for locking people up whenever they can, but capital spending by the Correctional Services of Canada is up by 146% in the first six months of the current fiscal year; and, now that they are armed, the Canada Border Services Agency is up by a whopping 270%. Wow! Those guns sure do cost a lot, Tex.
Andrew Coyne points out that from 2006 to 2010 the Harper Regime increased program spending from $175 billion to $245 billion. Per person spending increased from $5,800 in constant 2010 dollars to $7,200. Yeah, these guys do like to spend.
Add to these woes the fact that the implementation of the U.S. Volcker rule is going to make borrowing by the federal government more costly and, as a report on Flaherty's boutique tax credits this week points out, those credits negatively affect federal tax revenue significantly.
Who's going to suffer for this spending and political targeting? Why we are of course, but at least we can say Huntsville is happy.
But it isn't just the Harper Regime that is mismanaging money. Mortgage credit is a staggering 1.8 trillion, and overall consumer debt is $48 billion. Credit card debt fell in the last quarter, and the overall pace of accumulating debt has slowed, but, get this, the overall private debt load still rose by 4.5% and lines of credit were tapped to pay down the credit cards - the usual Peter-Paul game that people deeply in debt unfortunately play. And here's the kicker: sales financing - that is, buy now and pay later schemes designed to suck you into debt - rose in the last quarter by an astounding 18.4%.
The pressure on the consummer to borrow will be intense from banks in 2012, I predict, since Canadian corporations are sitting on a pile of cash and have curtailed borrowing considerably. And if the housing market begins to wobble - and the condo scene in Vancouver and Toronto suggests it might - look out!
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