Premier Sandy Silver may rightly be tagging the Yukon Party as at least partly responsible for this year’s expected deficit, however, the un-budgeted end of term expenditures at the centre of the present debate appear to have been mostly necessary rather than frivolous so most people might be hard pressed to answer what they would have done differently with respect to those items.
Perhaps the YP could have done a better overall job of managing our territory’s finances, but what does seem odd is Premier Silver complaining that the Yukon Party left him a small $5.4-million deficit when he is planning to leave a giant deficit for the next government at the end of his five year term.
Deficit financing, especially in a little jurisdiction like Yukon, should not be undertaken unless it’s for a necessary reason and is accompanied by a plan to get back to a balanced budget and retire the debt.
Imagine Yukon’s total population of 37,000 people trying to pay off a half-billion dollar debt (Editor’s note: The Yukon has a federally-imposed debt limit of $400 million). That is not the picture of a rosy future for our Territory and the justification for our current government to embark on this dangerous if not deadly fiscal practice is not apparent.
Don’t do it Sandy! Govern well with the money you have. No more taxes, no deficit financing and no more excuses or complaining.
We already have a fiscally incompetent government in Ottawa on track to drive our national debt to a trillion and a half dollars according to the Parliamentary Budget Office (Editor’s note: the CBO’s actual federal debt projection for 2022-23 is $717.7 billion), with no justification for its profligacy and no plan to retire the debt except taxing us more. Let’s not repeat that folly here.
Rick Tone
Whitehorse