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The way we were

The way we were Re Harper's Canada: What a Wonderful World by Al Pope (the News, July 17): Firstly, a perhaps minor and fine point at first glance, but taxes don't pay for anything - they are collected. Dollars or currency pay for things. Secondly, there

Re Harper’s Canada: What a Wonderful World by Al Pope (the News, July 17):

Firstly, a perhaps minor and fine point at first glance, but taxes don’t pay for anything - they are collected.

Dollars or currency pay for things. Secondly, there is no need for taxation of any kind in Canada to pay for services to the people. There is only the need for the federal government to take back the right to print money, which it gave up circa 1913. At the moment, if the government needs a million dollars, it borrows it from lending institutions and immediately begins paying interest.

Before 1913, if the government needed a million dollars, it printed it. There was no interest involved when it printed money although each dollar in circulation at the time of printing, by the fact of printing, was devalued by an identical, though very small, amount. Wealthy people didn’t like their dollars being devalued and so convinced the government of the day to pass acts and to borrow from the banks. This shifted the cost of the devaluation of dollars to the poorer people who couldn’t avoid “taxation.”

There is absolutely no reason for Canada to have had a national debt. If it had continued to print the money it needed past 1913, there would be no national debt.

There is no need for Canada to have a national debt today. It can still take back the right to print money, pay off the national debt and forever free the people of Canada of the usury involved in the present system. And please, don’t reply with statements about hyperinflation and destruction of the economy if they were to start printing money again - the interest on the national debt is doing that as I write.

And another point to do with a different column: Canada is, legally, not a country and never has been, it is a Democratic Constitutional Monarchy. It is owned by the Crown of England. I so wish that weren’t so.

Dave Cook

Burwash Landing