Serious flaws beyond the voting system are evident in our politics, but remain carefully unaddressed.
Outstanding is the 1975 abandonment of interest-free government funding by the nation’s own Bank of Canada, and its almost-total transference to the private finance sector; the raging interest charges which followed drove all federal and provincial budgets into serial deficits for the next 20 years, and squirming parties will simply not comment on possible debt extinction.
Indeed its permanence, and the $60+ billion combined federal/provincial annual interest charges (latest budgets) suggest a classically forbidden state of usury. Compare this with China, leaping from basket case to the No. 2 economy in the world in 70 years (World Bank Report) by funding itself interest-free. China creates massive asset after massive asset, and owes no-one but itself.
On a far smaller scale, Canada’s neighbour state of North Dakota alone in the U.S.A. has funded its own state requirements interest-free for a hundred years. It runs no deficits and has no debt (Bank of North Dakota Report). Do I hear the “No free lunch” squeak now!
Also the inherently corrupt method of funding parties by private donation is being only marginally limited, while it has been estimated that a $10 fee on 15 million (?) Income Tax Returns would easily fund all current parties, leaving plenty to kick-start new ones while eradicating the purchase of influence involved.
The wall of silence around this process is shameful and must be broken, and far more free votes by MPs and MLAs seem the obvious way to do it. They must be allowed to do what we elect them to do—initiate new policies to correct these fundamental flaws, not remain hog-tied by their party’s donors.
Russ Vinden
Errington