This goes to something I banged on about in another thread a while ago. While Poilievre and Rustad are basically talking about reducing spending and reducing taxes, we need to spend a lot of money to fix things that are seriously broken in this country and the provinces.
In no particular order, we need to spend more in:
- Defence
- Law enforcement to fill all the vacancies
- Courts/Prosecutors so cases can be heard in a timely manner
- Corrections to house everyone who should be in prison but get let out because our prisons are too crowded.
- Intelligence/National Security to deal with new and old threats
- Diplomacy (REAL diplomacy, not the weak sauce our government has been putting forward since PET gutted the Foreign Service)
- Infrastructure
- Mental Health/Addictions Treatment
- Housing (or at least make conditions favourable for increasing housing supply)
- Forest fuel management
- Flood mitigation
- Healthcare (or fix the system so we look like your average European system that costs less and provides better outcomes)
- Others I can't think of right now that are strictly within the purview of the Crown.
This is stuff that needs more investment to fix a lot of what's broken that falls into either the federal or provincial governments, but I'm not seeing anyone saying what they're going to do to properly fund these things. It's either "cut spending and cut taxes" or "let's make more ways of shovelling money out the door that do not address the core functions of the state".
It should not be that hard for us. We are one of the richest countries in the world, yet everyone thinks we have the budget of a third world country. I don't know where the money the government is collecting is being mis-allocated or wasted, but it doesn't make sense that we are a G7 country with services, infrastructure and general dysfunction that wouldn't be acceptable in any other developed nation.
/rant