MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley has some good advice from his grandfather and reminds policy-makers of our more recent past in his monthly column in the Hill Times today. As Parliament resumes with the upcoming budget on the top of everyone’s mind it is very timely…
My grandpa always said to me that if you want to be best in the world at something, do something no one else is doing.
Canada applied that advice to its economy in the 1990s, with impressive results. Other countries waded ever deeper into expanded social programs, higher taxes, bigger spending and more unionized public sector workers, while Canada went the other way after The Wall Street Journal twitted us for becoming an “honorary Third World country.”
After our near-death experience with massive deficits and out-of-control debt, we reversed course. Under the Liberal budget reforms, the size of government fell precipitously —from 53 per cent of GDP to 42 per cent, one of the most remarkable reductions in the size of government seen anywhere in the developed world in recent decades.
Read the entire column online at the Hill Times (subscription)…or here in PDF format.
