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Throne Speech only extends the COVID tunnel

Weyburn Review editorial

In mid-August, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament, in spite of widespread protests and concerns, and made grandiose promises of the new Throne Speech to come on Sept. 23rd.

He hyped the speech as a new beginning, with a new finance minister, and he spoke of the need to reset the agenda and the priorities of the government.

What happened on Sept. 23rd?

There was a whole lot of nothing except empty rhetoric about dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and putting Canadians into an even deeper debt.

The alarming thing was hearing the prime minister say the government is taking on the debt off the backs of Canadians as they continue to handle the costs of the pandemic.

The reality that the prime minister seems to be conveniently overlooking is the one reality that the citizens of Canada know all too well: there is only one taxpayer. For every level of government, whether it’s municipal, provincial or federal, there is only one taxpayer.

Where does Trudeau think the money is going to come from to pay down the huge mountain of debt that he’s burying us under? A debt that will exceed $1.2 trillion, and is only going to get worse before it gets better?

It is the coming generations of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will be paying that debt for many years, so it is quite ridiculous for Trudeau to make the claim that he’s taking on the debt so Canadians won’t have to bear it.

This only proves the reality of what the opposition was saying, that the real reason Trudeau prorogued Parliament was to avoid the embarrassment of the committees investigating him in the WE scandal. He clearly was hoping that people would forget all about the scandal, or that the process would just stop altogether.

He should be embarrassed by that whole scenario, but the problem is he has not come clean on the whole affair, and has not faced the consequences of the scandal that he rightfully should receive.

Trudeau should also be embarrassed by the Throne Speech for what it didn’t say. There was very, very little of anything that pertains to the agriculture sector in Canada, and there was absolutely no mention whatsoever of the oil and gas sector — sectors which feed and power the world.

This maybe isn’t surprising, since he has ignored the oil and gas sector that is a major part of the economy of Western Canada, and has enacted policies that will only hurt it further instead of letting it prosper and help to rebuild this nation’s economy.

There needs to be a direction set that will give Canadians hope that there is light at the end of the COVID tunnel, instead of just a longer tunnel.