Posted by blood roses at 10:45am Mar 24 '04I think I may be the only Canadian who posts on this board, but I'm going to give my opinion on this anyway.
I'm reasonably impressed with the new budget. First of all.. there is a $5.5 billion projected surplus. (keep in mind that Canada has about 10 times less people than the U.S. so $5.5 billion is a lot). Most of the money will go into some kind of contigency fund, and if it is not needed, it will go to pay down the debt... the goal is to get the debt down from 42% of GDP to 25% of GDP within the next 10 years (does anybody know the American debt to GDP ratio? just curious)
There'll be $2 billion dollars reinvested in health care, which is desperately needed. More would probably be better because at the moment the provicial governments are bearing most of the health care burden and they are struggling immensely. But it's a start. Increased post-secondary grants to students from low-income families which is good because tuition keeps going up.
That's pretty much it really... a bit surprising because there's probably an election coming up,so you would think they would try to come up with a more impressive budget. More health care money would have impressed people more (myself included). The one thing I'm really disappointed about though is there's almost no reinvestment in the military... now I am not big on military spending, but the Canadian military is in a sad, sad state, and I'm ashamed that we rely on the American military to protect us and can't defend ourselves.
Overall though, not bad, Paul [private] still has my vote.
I'm reasonably impressed with the new budget. First of all.. there is a $5.5 billion projected surplus. (keep in mind that Canada has about 10 times less people than the U.S. so $5.5 billion is a lot). Most of the money will go into some kind of contigency fund, and if it is not needed, it will go to pay down the debt... the goal is to get the debt down from 42% of GDP to 25% of GDP within the next 10 years (does anybody know the American debt to GDP ratio? just curious)
There'll be $2 billion dollars reinvested in health care, which is desperately needed. More would probably be better because at the moment the provicial governments are bearing most of the health care burden and they are struggling immensely. But it's a start. Increased post-secondary grants to students from low-income families which is good because tuition keeps going up.
That's pretty much it really... a bit surprising because there's probably an election coming up,so you would think they would try to come up with a more impressive budget. More health care money would have impressed people more (myself included). The one thing I'm really disappointed about though is there's almost no reinvestment in the military... now I am not big on military spending, but the Canadian military is in a sad, sad state, and I'm ashamed that we rely on the American military to protect us and can't defend ourselves.
Overall though, not bad, Paul [private] still has my vote.
Canadian Budget 2004 - blood roses