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Lunch is not free

Until we accept that there is in fact no free lunch, don’t expect any significant change in debt levels.

I refer to Neil Dawe’s letter (The News, Oct. 7).

Like Russ Vinden, Mr. Dawe feels that the Bank of Canada should be lending the government $600 million at low cost to cover its debt.

Since reference to the latest Bank of Canada’s financial statements indicate total assets of only $60 billion (mostly to cover its liability for $58  billion in notes in circulation) its not entirely clear to me how they feel this could be done without going to the private sector. We Canadians have an aversion to responsibility and a propensity to blame others for our own mistakes.

Wild government spending, these gentlemen say, is the problem. However we need look no further than ourselves for the real culprits.

We vociferously demand increased funding for health care, education and virtually every other service at the same time demonstrating a firm reluctance to pay for them in the form of increased taxes. Rejecting the HST is a prime example.

Until we accept that there is in fact no free lunch, don’t expect any significant change in debt levels.

Colin Bartlett, Parksville