Manitoba NDP MLA Billie Cross landed herself in hot water during a debate over protections for property owners by citing advice given to retail workers: “they want to steal, let them steal.”

Speaking during an Oct. 29 debate on Bill 210, Cross argued that property was replaceable and insurance existed, making confrontation over theft an unnecessary risk. The bill concerns civil lawsuits by criminal trespassers against people who own or control property; it would not change the Criminal Code rules governing self-defence.

Cross subsequently acknowledged expressing herself poorly, apologized for the confusion and said theft was wrong and should have consequences. That clarification matters. It would be unfair to suggest she endorses stealing.

But relying on insurance still misses the point. These crimes are not just about physical property or losing money. A home intrusion violates personal safety in the one place people should expect it most.

Avoiding violent escalation is understandable. Advising retail employees against chasing shoplifters is sensible. But a homeowner facing an intruder may be trying to protect a spouse, child or elderly parent. Advice about recovering merchandise cannot answer every question about defending a family.

Elevating a stand-down mentality into a guiding principle risks abandoning people when they most need protection. While homeowners should not have a blank cheque to act with impunity, Canadians do not outsource their moral right of self-defence to the police. We can discourage reckless vigilantism without tolerating lawlessness.

The seven Noahide laws offer a moral framework for addressing these questions. Rooted in Jewish tradition and understood to apply to all humanity, they prohibit theft and murder and require legitimate courts of justice. These principles condemn property crime while holding human life sacred.

The Jewish legal tradition also directly addresses the danger posed by a burglar. In his Laws of Theft, chapter 9, Maimonides explains the presumption that a burglar entering a home is prepared to kill its owner if confronted. On that basis, the burglar is treated as a rodef, or pursuer threatening life, and lethal defence is permitted.

This is a presumption of danger, not a requirement that the homeowner first establish the intruder’s murderous intentions. But Maimonides also sets limits: killing is forbidden when it is clear the thief will not kill, or when the thief has turned away and no longer poses that threat. He distinguishes home burglary from theft in places such as fields, where owners are generally absent and the presumption is that the thief seeks property alone.

The broader law of the pursuer also requires someone rescuing another person to use a non-lethal means when it can stop the attack. Preserving innocent life does not erase the obligation to avoid unnecessary killing.

These are religious legal teachings, not Canadian law. I draw from them a moral principle that Canadian policymakers should take seriously: people confronting a burglar in their home should not be expected to presume harmless intentions while their own safety remains uncertain.

Canadian law already recognizes self-defence and defence of property. Section 34 of the Criminal Code requires reasonable grounds to believe force is being used or threatened, a defensive purpose and a reasonable response. Section 35 separately addresses reasonable acts in defence of property. Courts assessing self-defence must consider the threat, available alternatives and proportionality, among other circumstances.

Those protections should be strengthened. The danger created by a forced entry into an occupied home should weigh firmly in favour of the person defending against it. That does not mean every trespasser presents a mortal threat or that any response is justified. It means recognizing that the intruder has created a potentially deadly encounter whose outcome the homeowner cannot know in advance.

This concern runs particularly deep in rural areas, where distance can leave residents waiting for police. Citizens need practical security: officers with the resources to respond, a justice system that deters theft and strong protection when they must defend themselves before help arrives.

Insurance is no substitute. Farm equipment may sustain a family’s livelihood. A small business may represent decades of work. Replacing stolen possessions cannot restore everything taken from people whose homes have been invaded.

Nor can an insurance cheque erase the memory of an intruder entering the place where your children sleep. Treating these crimes primarily as financial losses understates the violation and the fear.

Canadian lawmakers should not let concerns about importing American gun culture prevent them from strengthening self-defence protections. We need a balanced solution: condemn theft, protect innocent life and ensure that courts and police uphold justice.

That means stronger protection for people defending themselves against the danger an intruder creates, with firm limits against excessive force and revenge. Canadians should not have to surrender their sense of security and settle for the promise of an insurance payout.

Joseph Quesnel is the founding director of the Canadian Foundation for Universal Ethics Education, a federally incorporated non-profit dedicated to promoting universal Noahide ethics in Canada. A seasoned journalist and public policy analyst with more than 20 years of experience, he has provided expert testimony to both the Senate and the House of Commons.

The post Defending your home shouldn’t turn you into a criminal first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

Manitoba NDP MLA Billie Cross landed herself in hot water during a debate over protections for property owners by citing advice given to retail workers: “they want to steal, let them steal.”

Speaking during an Oct. 29 debate on Bill 210, Cross argued that property was replaceable and insurance existed, making confrontation over theft an unnecessary risk. The bill concerns civil lawsuits by criminal trespassers against people who own or control property; it would not change the Criminal Code rules governing self-defence.

Cross subsequently acknowledged expressing herself poorly, apologized for the confusion and said theft was wrong and should have consequences. That clarification matters. It would be unfair to suggest she endorses stealing.

But relying on insurance still misses the point. These crimes are not just about physical property or losing money. A home intrusion violates personal safety in the one place people should expect it most.

Avoiding violent escalation is understandable. Advising retail employees against chasing shoplifters is sensible. But a homeowner facing an intruder may be trying to protect a spouse, child or elderly parent. Advice about recovering merchandise cannot answer every question about defending a family.

Elevating a stand-down mentality into a guiding principle risks abandoning people when they most need protection. While homeowners should not have a blank cheque to act with impunity, Canadians do not outsource their moral right of self-defence to the police. We can discourage reckless vigilantism without tolerating lawlessness.

The seven Noahide laws offer a moral framework for addressing these questions. Rooted in Jewish tradition and understood to apply to all humanity, they prohibit theft and murder and require legitimate courts of justice. These principles condemn property crime while holding human life sacred.

The Jewish legal tradition also directly addresses the danger posed by a burglar. In his Laws of Theft, chapter 9, Maimonides explains the presumption that a burglar entering a home is prepared to kill its owner if confronted. On that basis, the burglar is treated as a rodef, or pursuer threatening life, and lethal defence is permitted.

This is a presumption of danger, not a requirement that the homeowner first establish the intruder’s murderous intentions. But Maimonides also sets limits: killing is forbidden when it is clear the thief will not kill, or when the thief has turned away and no longer poses that threat. He distinguishes home burglary from theft in places such as fields, where owners are generally absent and the presumption is that the thief seeks property alone.

The broader law of the pursuer also requires someone rescuing another person to use a non-lethal means when it can stop the attack. Preserving innocent life does not erase the obligation to avoid unnecessary killing.

These are religious legal teachings, not Canadian law. I draw from them a moral principle that Canadian policymakers should take seriously: people confronting a burglar in their home should not be expected to presume harmless intentions while their own safety remains uncertain.

Canadian law already recognizes self-defence and defence of property. Section 34 of the Criminal Code requires reasonable grounds to believe force is being used or threatened, a defensive purpose and a reasonable response. Section 35 separately addresses reasonable acts in defence of property. Courts assessing self-defence must consider the threat, available alternatives and proportionality, among other circumstances.

Those protections should be strengthened. The danger created by a forced entry into an occupied home should weigh firmly in favour of the person defending against it. That does not mean every trespasser presents a mortal threat or that any response is justified. It means recognizing that the intruder has created a potentially deadly encounter whose outcome the homeowner cannot know in advance.

This concern runs particularly deep in rural areas, where distance can leave residents waiting for police. Citizens need practical security: officers with the resources to respond, a justice system that deters theft and strong protection when they must defend themselves before help arrives.

Insurance is no substitute. Farm equipment may sustain a family’s livelihood. A small business may represent decades of work. Replacing stolen possessions cannot restore everything taken from people whose homes have been invaded.

Nor can an insurance cheque erase the memory of an intruder entering the place where your children sleep. Treating these crimes primarily as financial losses understates the violation and the fear.

Canadian lawmakers should not let concerns about importing American gun culture prevent them from strengthening self-defence protections. We need a balanced solution: condemn theft, protect innocent life and ensure that courts and police uphold justice.

That means stronger protection for people defending themselves against the danger an intruder creates, with firm limits against excessive force and revenge. Canadians should not have to surrender their sense of security and settle for the promise of an insurance payout.

Joseph Quesnel is the founding director of the Canadian Foundation for Universal Ethics Education, a federally incorporated non-profit dedicated to promoting universal Noahide ethics in Canada. A seasoned journalist and public policy analyst with more than 20 years of experience, he has provided expert testimony to both the Senate and the House of Commons.

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A second wave of suspected cyberattacks on European supermarkets has exposed a vulnerability that Canada’s food industry should take seriously. Grocery stores in at least nine countries reported refrigeration failures. One Swedish supermarket said its refrigeration systems had been remotely set to 50 C. Across the affected stores, tonnes of food had to be thrown out. An earlier wave had already hit stores in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The economics explain why refrigeration is such an attractive target. Fresh food has a limited shelf life, and grocers and processors depend on a steady flow of deliveries. A few hours of disruption can mean discarded inventory, missed shipments and lost sales. Even when the equipment comes back online, a grocer may still have to discard products if it cannot establish how warm they got or for how long.

The same vulnerability exists in Canada. A cyberattack can force a company to replace inventory, reroute shipments and pay for emergency repairs. Over time, repeated disruptions and higher spending on cybersecurity can put upward pressure on food prices. How much reaches the checkout depends on competition and on who has the bargaining power to pass those costs along.

Ransom is one possible motive. With perishables, attackers have leverage because the cost of waiting rises by the hour. Paying can encourage further extortion, while refusing can leave a company absorbing a substantial loss. The European incidents also raise the possibility of deliberate disruption for its own sake. Public frustration with grocery prices is real, but it tells us little about who was behind these attacks or what they wanted.

For years, cybersecurity barely registered at many food industry conferences. It deserves a place alongside food safety. Refrigeration is the obvious example, but a breach at a processing plant could also interfere with ingredient controls, allergen labelling or the records needed to trace a contaminated batch. Automation helps companies run more efficiently. It also makes it more important to know who can access production controls and how quickly staff can intervene when something goes wrong.

Major grocers and manufacturers are already investing in more resilient facilities and systems. The harder question is what happens when they ask their suppliers to meet the same cybersecurity standards. A national retailer can spread the cost of monitoring, audits and staff training across hundreds of stores. A family-owned processor with a single plant has far less room to absorb those costs. Losing a major retail account over a requirement it cannot afford could put an otherwise viable business at risk.

Canada’s largest grocers have enough influence to set cybersecurity standards across much of the food supply chain. They can also help suppliers meet them. Common requirements, shared training and technical support would make it easier for smaller processors to protect their operations without paying for a separate compliance program for every major customer.

Perishability gives attackers a deadline they can use against any food company. A grocer can invest heavily in protecting its own warehouses and still lose a shipment when a supplier’s plant goes down. Helping that supplier stay operational is part of protecting the grocer’s own business.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University.

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Ottawa is working overtime to attract foreign investment while Canadian investors put billions of dollars into foreign securities. If Canada cannot give its homegrown investors good reasons to put their money to work here, why should it expect foreign investors to do so?

In 2025, Canadian investors bought $133.8 billion of foreign securities, the most since 2021, with most of that investment going into U.S. corporate securities. Foreign investors, meanwhile, bought $116.4 billion of Canadian securities. That does not mean investment is fleeing Canada. Foreign direct investment remained strong, with more money flowing into Canadian businesses from abroad than Canadian businesses invested overseas.

Canada’s deeper problem, however, is productivity. The OECD reports that investment per worker in Canada in 2023 was only 85 per cent of its 2014 level. Over the same period, investment per worker rose 21 per cent in the United States. The Bank of Canada has estimated that if Canadian productivity growth since 2000 had matched that of other G7 countries, GDP would be about nine per cent higher, or almost $7,000 more per person.

Canada needs more investment in the businesses, equipment and technology that allow workers to produce more. Canadians have every reason to invest abroad when the returns are better. The challenge for Ottawa is to make productive investment in Canada more attractive, not discourage Canadians from investing elsewhere.

The timing makes this more urgent. The Bank of Canada warns that U.S. tariffs and trade uncertainty still threaten a fragile recovery in exports and investment. If access to our largest market is less predictable, Canada has even more reason to improve the things it controls: productivity, investment incentives and confidence.

The federal government’s proposed Productivity Mega Deduction is therefore constructive. Allowing businesses to deduct the full cost of qualifying investments immediately can influence an investment decision before a dollar is spent. Ottawa estimates the measure will cut the marginal effective tax rate on new business investment from roughly 13 per cent to 6.4 per cent.

But that solves only one part of the calculation. A deduction lowers the after-tax cost of qualifying investments. It does not remove weak expected demand, trade uncertainty, regulatory delay or the tax consequences when an investment succeeds. The mega deduction can improve a project’s expected return. It cannot, by itself, make Canada the place where capital most wants to be.

I like metaphors. Imagine you plant an apple tree. It produces 100 apples a year. Someone offers to buy it because he can make it produce 200. Society gets more apples, more income and more tax revenue. But if selling the tree creates a tax bill that makes reinvestment unattractive, you may keep it. The asset stays in less productive hands.

Taxes do not merely collect revenue. They change behaviour. Ottawa should be using that influence to encourage Canadians to reinvest their money at home.

First, make capital-gains relief more favourable when proceeds are reinvested in Canada. Canada already allows a limited deferral when gains from eligible small-business shares are reinvested in other qualifying small-business shares. Broaden that principle. If an entrepreneur sells a Canadian business and reinvests within a defined period in qualifying Canadian businesses or productive assets, defer the gain until the money leaves that system. That directly rewards reinvestment rather than simply lowering tax on every gain.

Second, reward owners who build employment and payroll in Canada. Sweden’s tax rules for closely held companies partly link the tax treatment of owners’ dividends to the wages their businesses pay. Canada need not copy Sweden, but the principle is useful: sustained Canadian employment, payroll growth and reinvestment should count when deciding how successful business owners are taxed.

Third, change the tax mix rather than simply collecting less. Canada relies more heavily on income taxes and less on consumption taxes than the OECD average. In its 2025 Canada survey, the OECD examined shifting taxes equal to one per cent of GDP from labour income to consumption without changing total tax revenue. It estimated the change could raise potential GDP by about 0.8 per cent over 10 years and 1.1 per cent in the long run.

A somewhat higher HST, paired with larger credits for lower- and modest-income households, could create room to reduce taxes on work and productive investment without increasing the deficit.

A larger TFSA limit alone would not solve the problem. It would, however, give Canadians more room to save and invest. Greater savings can help lower the cost of capital, making more money available for productive investment in Canada, provided Canadian businesses offer returns attractive enough to compete with opportunities abroad.

Canada does not lack investment summits, speeches or promotional campaigns. It lacks enough reasons for capital created here to remain here. Improving productivity could strengthen the Canadian economy and support a rising Canadian dollar, which could also help make Canada more attractive to investors looking to keep their capital here.

Before asking the world to invest in Canada, Ottawa should give Canadians who save, build companies and take risks stronger reasons to keep doing so at home. If Canada becomes a place where successful investment wants to remain, foreign investors will notice too.

Capital is mobile. The goal should be simple: make Canada a place where success wants to stay.

Harry Margulies is an author, commentator and international tax advisor whose work spans economics, taxation, religion and public policy. A former international tax consultant with experience advising governments and institutions, he now writes and speaks on the relationship between policy, belief and institutional power.

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Job seekers who acknowledge, accept and adapt to how employers hire can focus their energy on what improves their chances of getting hired

Punching a brick wall will fracture your hand. Yelling at the rainstorm you got caught in won’t keep you from getting soaked. Fighting realities you can’t change isn’t a how-to-live-life strategy or a job-search strategy; it’s self-sabotage.

Yet many job seekers waste time and energy raging against ingrained hiring realities, growing bitter and angry when their expectations aren’t met, which can prolong their job search.

Job seekers who refrain from complaining about how employers hire and adopt what I call the AAA approach can focus their energy on improving their chances of getting hired.

• Acknowledge: Recognize the realities of hiring and understand what you can’t control.
• Accept: Stop wasting energy fighting decisions and practices you have little power to change.
• Adapt: Focus on what you can control: your actions, presentation, skills and job-search strategy.

AAA mirrors the wisdom behind Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: knowing what you can change, accepting what you cannot and understanding the difference. It also acknowledges a fundamental truth: employers control their capital, workplace and hiring process.

Succeeding in today’s job market requires letting go of misconceptions about fairness and any sense of entitlement you may have, and embracing five hiring realities.

As a job seeker, you’re offering labour, a commodity governed by supply and demand. When hundreds of job seekers have qualifications similar to yours, employers have more choices, and your bargaining power diminishes. Expecting top-dollar compensation when employers are flooded with applications is like selling sand at the beach; no amount of self-importance can change the law of supply and demand.

Positioning yourself as a rare commodity is how you overcome supply and demand. Generic qualifications in a job market full of them don’t show what employers want: evidence that you can solve problems and deliver results. Present yourself as a value proposition by quantifying past achievements in dollars, percentages or time saved. Results don’t always come with dollar signs.

A job search is a winner-take-all contest with one trophy: a job offer. Finishing second may mean you were an excellent candidate, but it still means you didn’t get the job.

You don’t win by regurgitating job descriptions; you win by treating every serious application like a title fight. Find where the company’s bleeding, show performance metrics proving you’ve stopped that bleeding elsewhere, and make the hiring manager say, “I’ve got to meet this person!”

Hiring is also a process of elimination. When recruiters face hundreds of applications, eliminating candidates becomes as important as identifying those worth interviewing. Some qualified applicants will be rejected. Others will eliminate themselves by giving employers avoidable reasons to question their suitability.

While there are countless reasons you could be eliminated, four common obstacles are:

• Mistakes and errors: Typos, spelling and grammar errors, or a chaotic layout suggest carelessness and may raise questions about the quality of your work.
• Lack of alignment: Your résumé and LinkedIn profile don’t explicitly reflect the core skills and experience the job posting requests.
• Unexplained employment gaps: Some employers view employment gaps as a red flag. Leaving them unexplained can create questions you may never get the opportunity to answer.
• Overqualification: Some employers worry that overqualified candidates will expect higher compensation, become dissatisfied or leave when a better opportunity appears.

You improve your chances of avoiding elimination by ensuring your résumé and LinkedIn profile are error-free, easy to read and focused on the position’s required qualifications and experience. Be prepared to explain employment gaps and why a position below your previous level genuinely interests you.

In hiring, perception can be the deciding factor.

Your résumé and LinkedIn profile create the initial impression that either encourages a recruiter or hiring manager to contact you or gives them a reason to move on. Phone screenings, video interviews and face-to-face meetings all shape that impression. Every word you say, every shift in your tone and every visual cue contribute to how an interviewer perceives you.

For example, saying you want a “stable” environment may come across as “can’t handle change.” What workplace is stable these days?

How you dress, read the room, project confidence and handle tough questions can influence whether an employer believes you’ll fit into the organization. Show up underdressed or overdressed for the workplace, and you may signal that you don’t fit in. Get defensive or deflect blame when asked about a past failure, and you risk being labelled arrogant or difficult to manage.

At the risk of sounding philosophical, you don’t own how others interpret your actions; you only own the choices that shape those interpretations.

Finally, your lifestyle overhead is your responsibility, not the employer’s.

I’ve never known an employer who hires candidates simply to help fund the lifestyle they’ve created. Your mortgage, car payments and debts are irrelevant when a company establishes what it’s prepared to pay for a position. Employers generally determine compensation according to the responsibilities of the role, market conditions and the value they expect an employee to contribute.

Show that contribution while taking personal responsibility: either reconsider your financial expectations or expand your skills and pursue better-paying opportunities.

None of this means employers always get hiring decisions right. Some overlook qualified candidates or make decisions based on questionable assumptions. Discrimination and other unlawful hiring practices can and should be challenged. Accepting hiring realities doesn’t mean surrendering your rights.

Getting angry at hiring realities won’t change them; you’ll only deplete your stamina and potentially prolong your unemployment. You can’t force employers to change how they hire. You can change how effectively you compete for the jobs they offer. Acknowledge what you can’t control, accept what you cannot change and adapt your strategy to land your next job.

Nick Kossovan is a syndicated columnist and career expert with over 20 years of experience in the corporate hiring landscape. He specializes in providing pragmatic, unsweetened advice on career navigation, workplace dynamics, and professional growth. Nick Kossovan decodes the psychological impact of AI and social media, helping us make sense of our evolving digital landscape.

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Ottawa has tried to abolish the Indian Act before, and every attempt has failed.

In 1969, Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien went furthest. His White Paper proposed scrapping the act, ending the separate legal status of Indians and handing control of reserve land to First Nations people. First Nations leaders denounced the plan as assimilation imposed from Ottawa, and the government dropped it. Later governments tried narrower rewrites in 1996 and 2002. Both died.

Yet on Oct. 26 in Ottawa, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew held up his own status card for the cameras. He noted the card says he is “an Indian, within the meaning of the Indian Act.” “I think it’s time to abolish the Indian Act,” he said, adding that the work “needs to be done with First Nations people and First Nations governments.” Ironically, that same card gives his call for abolition a credibility that no other first minister can claim.

The messenger matters. Coming from a First Nations premier, the call disarms the old charge that outsiders cooked up abolition as a scheme. Prime Minister Mark Carney called the act “racist and anachronistic” and said he was “very open” to abolishing it.

The next day, Carney retreated. The review, he said, has “no fixed conclusion.” Within 24 hours, abolition had become a review. National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak of the Assembly of First Nations warned that the act protects First Nations people.

Woodhouse Nepinak has a point. The act is a cage, but it also holds up the roof. It defines who has status, gives band councils their legal existence, shields on-reserve property from seizure and anchors the tax exemption. Tear it out without replacements, and Ottawa leaves communities exposed.

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s 25 years of work on this problem point to three practical steps toward abolition.

First, set a hard date. Past efforts died in open-ended consultation. In 2020, Frontier researcher Joseph Quesnel proposed that Parliament write a sunset clause into the Indian Act so that the statute expires in 10 years. A deadline would give Ottawa and First Nations a reason to negotiate rather than delay.

Second, give First Nations ownership of their own land. Under the Indian Act, the Crown generally holds legal title to reserve land. Section 89 protects on-reserve property from seizure by outside creditors, but also restricts its use as collateral, making it harder for First Nations people to unlock its value and obtain capital. Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto called wealth that people possess but cannot borrow against “dead capital.”

Frontier has long backed a First Nations Property Ownership Act, set out in the 2010 book Beyond the Indian Act by Tom Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara and André Le Dressay. Ottawa would transfer underlying title to each First Nation, which would then decide whether to hold the land in common or let members own it outright.

Third, build the new floor before tearing out the old one. Quesnel would have Parliament pass interim rules on the tax exemption, membership and elections. A First Nation without its own replacement agreement with Ottawa would live under those rules until it has one. No community would wake up in a legal vacuum. The national chief would have her answer.

It’s time to favour true autonomy and end paternalism.

The work leading to abolition need not start from scratch. Many First Nations have already moved at least one area of governance, such as land management, out of the Indian Act through laws passed since 1999. The off-ramps exist. The deadline does not.

Kinew held up a card that calls him an Indian under legislation from 1876. If Ottawa means it, the card needs an expiry date.

Dr. Marco Navarro-Génie is vice-president of research and policy at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Marco is the author of three books, including the 2023 release Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic, co-authored with Barry Cooper.

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Too many Canadians are dangerously indifferent about government. They think that it is not relevant to their lives and feel that they could have no influence on it in any case. When Canadians do think about their government, most often it is to complain about the housing situation or the rising cost of living.

A big turnoff to many people is anything to do with government financing, especially budgets, debts and deficits. They are seen as too boring, too complicated and of little importance to one’s ordinary life. This is a big mistake. Government financing determines the taxes we pay and the public services we do or do not receive.

Government budgets, like those of businesses or households, estimate revenue (in this case, mainly taxes) and expenditures. In a good budget, the former should exceed the latter. As someone once wisely said, if your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.

Alas, at the federal and lower levels of government in Canada and in so many other countries, budgeted expenditure exceeds planned revenue. The difference is the deficit, and deficits turn into debt. When governments continually run deficits, as most have been doing, that debt grows. Canada’s government debt is currently estimated at 113.5 per cent of our total annual output, higher than in many other countries, though slightly lower than in the U.S., where debt is over 120 per cent of GDP.

To cover their deficits, governments must borrow money and pay interest on it. Lenders, mainly in the private sector, must be willing to buy this debt, usually in the form of government bonds. As debts grow, investors may become more concerned about the risks of lending to governments. They also have other investment opportunities, including in rapidly developing areas like artificial intelligence.

To attract these investors, governments may have to pay higher interest rates. Until recently, interest payments were not such a serious problem because rates were low, making borrowing cheap. Now interest rates are higher, and future borrowing costs remain uncertain given inflationary pressures, wars and the unsettled political situation in the world.

As old government bonds come due, governments often have to borrow again to repay them. If interest rates have risen, that new borrowing costs more.

In Canada right now, over eight per cent of government spending goes to cover interest costs on the debt. These charges are now over $90 billion. As governments continue borrowing, interest costs could consume an even larger share of public spending. Since more than one-third of the debt is held by Americans, a substantial portion of these payments also goes to the United States.

This is where government debt becomes a problem for every Canadian. Tax dollars spent on interest payments are not available to provide the services we want from our governments, like health care and pensions. They cannot be used to invest in the major projects and infrastructure that we need to improve our productivity and our standard of living. In fact, such projects are often financed with even more government debt, adding to future interest obligations.

Most Canadians would prefer to see an improvement in their standard of living through lower taxes or other means. Over the last decade, economic output per person in Canada has risen by only 4.2 per cent, or less than half a per cent per year. In some years, it has actually fallen. Over that same decade, per capita output in the U.S. rose by 16 per cent. With more tax dollars going toward interest payments, we have less money to invest in improving our economy.

What can we do about this dire situation? When one wants to get out of a hole, the first step is to stop digging. Before we can improve our present situation, we must stop making it worse with continuing deficits. We need to start running surpluses in order to be able to reduce the size of the debt. At the very least, we need balanced budgets so that the debt is not increasing.

There are only two basic ways to balance a budget: increase taxes or reduce government spending. Some combination of both can also be used. Canadians would not be happy about higher taxes, which would mean another attack on our already beleaguered disposable income and standard of living. Canada’s currently high level of taxation relative to other countries is already impeding investment and economic growth.

Cutting government spending is also difficult. It is said that when the fire department’s budget is reduced, the first thing that gets cut is the water. Nevertheless, serious determination and good management can lead to reduced government spending with minimal harm done.

There is no easy or fast solution to our current situation, but not biting the bullet or tackling it head-on right now will only lead to an even bigger problem in the future. The longer governments postpone difficult decisions, the more of Canadians’ tax dollars will go toward paying for yesterday’s spending rather than meeting tomorrow’s needs.

Dr. Roslyn Kunin is a respected Canadian economist known for her extensive work in economic forecasting, public policy, and labour market analysis. She has held various prominent roles, including serving as the regional director for the federal government’s Department of Employment and Immigration in British Columbia and Yukon and as an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Kunin is also recognized for her contributions to economic development, particularly in Western Canada.

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