Re: Colin Bartlett’s response to my recent letter entitled ‘Debt and Wealth.'
Bartlett asserts: “In the late 60s and early ’70s, our federal government embarked on a path of huge deficits and debt. In endeavouring to handle the debt, the (Bank of Canada) allowed inflation to climb to nearly 13 per cent and it became obvious in 1974 that it could not continue…”
Not so. According to canadianinflation.com, from 1974 to 1982, inflation soared higher than the rest of the post war era after the Bank of Canada ceased to finance major governmental projects and programs. The consequence of this change in financing was exposed in the 1993 Auditor General’s Report.
An astounding 92 per cent of federal debt was due to accumulated interest. Mr. Bartlett omits any reference to the prolonged and steady decline of such debts under Bank of Canada funding in the first 20 post-Second World War years.
Bartlett’s comparison of North Dakota’s demographics with those of B.C.’s is no doubt accurate, but irrelevant. The method of financing governmental projects and programs is the issue and North Dakota is less in debt today because it used its own state bank. Bartlett’s claim that privatization of public debt avoided runaway inflation cannot be validated by the records I have found. Those records show that when governments relinquish control of the issuance of their money and financing, they relinquish their sovereignty and enslave their citizenry to the greed of international bankers. Iceland has much to teach us.
W.L.M. (Bill) WilsonQualicum Beach