We cannot avoid accountability for our spending ways, nor escape financially unscathed

BY STEVEN KASZAB

Paying the piper refers to you accepting responsibility for your actions and decisions. Overspending has consequences.

$411+ billion dollars. That is what is owed to others by Ontario’s government, its agencies and corporations. Your share is $27,000 per Ontarian. Not important? Disinterested? Got better things to think about today? So, move along then, but be patiently weary as this debt will reappear soon enough and you will be forced to acknowledge its importance once and for all.

Debt has a way of increasing, while your saved income can and will decrease in time because of items such as: increasing taxes, governmental monetary acquisitions decreasing, governmental charges never seen before appearing, less governmental staffing to serve you, less services offered you, possible services once in the public’s hands now put into private businesses hands. Once a private corporation controls something the “profit” principle is applied, and it will cost the public big time. While the public authorities look at something well over time, private industry wants its profit “right now.

Once public debt grows, private banking institutions put the public sectors through the ringer with higher interest rates, sharper payment schedules and loads of legal this and that. The public’s borrowing ability can and has been harmed because its debt is just too massive, too much a threat to the public’s ability to repay. The government may need to cut services and staff in the essential service industries like healthcare. Most Conservative governments have no problem cutting services that are provided by Liberal-NDP friendly staff members.

Doug Ford has relied upon private industries’ ability to expand, grow and flourish in Ontario. Employment levels in some quarters are very high, and revenue is being acquired by the Provincial and local governments throughout Ontario, but is that enough? $411 billion is a lot of dough to repay or allow to hang over the heads of all Ontarians for many decades to come.

The public will have to face the music, reap what we have sown, pay the price, and get what is coming to us. We cannot avoid accountability for our spending ways, nor escape financially unscathed. Dodging the bullet today will only place the weight of our debts upon generations to come.