Re: 鈥渟a国际传媒鈥檚 total debt keeps climbing,鈥� Feb. 20.
The government has proudly announced a balanced budget. However, the provincial debt will increase by $4.6 billion in the next year due to infrastructure spending (and by $20聽billion over the next five years).
No doubt we will only be paying interest charges on this and not paying down the principal, as usual with our governments.
How is this a balanced budget? It鈥檚 a bit like saying our household budget is balanced, except that we will be buying a new car on our line of credit this year and next year we鈥檒l renovate the kitchen on the line of credit, etc.
Where is the plan to start paying down the debt rather than increasing it? Oh, to do that we would need to cut spending or increase taxes, and taxpayers won鈥檛 like that.
They won鈥檛 vote for us, so we will say we are balancing our operating budget and hope most taxpayers won鈥檛 notice the massive increase in debt, once again. It will need to be paid some time, won鈥檛 it?
John Miller
Victoria
