Know your debt situation first
By Letter to the Editor on March 20, 2019.
Re: “MP Report: Canadians want reduced taxes, debt,” March 1 What methodology did the MP from Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner use to conduct his poll of “constituents of this riding”? He provides no margins of error or probability of accuracy for any of his numbers. There must be at least 1,000 randomly selected respondents to the poll (How Polls Are Conducted, The Gallup Organization, 1997). No data on these critical factors are given. How can he be sure what number of respondents have voted Conservative in the past? What if 60 per cent of them have? Can he not see how this can dangerously skew the results? This poll is devoid of credibility and amounts to commission of perjury in the court of public opinion. Before any citizen cries about government debt, he should evaluate his personal financial situation. “Canadians owed nearly $1.78 in credit market debt, which includes consumer credit and mortgage and non-mortgage loans, for every dollar of household disposable income in the third quarter (Financial Post 12/14/18).” “The total debt load of all Canadian households sits at over $2 trillion, an amount roughly equal to the country’s entire economic output (MacLean’s 12/20/18),” while “The federal government’s market debt – the debt on which Ottawa pays interest – has topped $1 trillion for the first time, Department of Finance documents show (CBC 3/26/18).” This is one half of Canadians’ personal debt. “The average Canadian owed $22,154 on top of any mortgage at the end of June, TransUnion said, a figure that has grown by 2.7 per cent in the previous 12 months. The average credit card balance was at $2,840 at the end of June, and on average, people owed $19,087 against their car, if they owned one (CBC 8/22/17).” “While Canadians can get a five-year fixed-rate mortgage with an interest rate as low 2.5 per cent, most unsecured lines of credit carry rates of 7-9 per cent. And interest rates on credit card debt are well into the double digits (Global News 6/7/17).” Many if not most consumers’ impulse control is equal to that of a child when it comes to spending money. If they can’t pay their bills, the fault is theirs, not the government’s. Those suffering monetary distress should properly arrange their finances. This is something about which they can actually do. Changing the government’s spending habits is difficult. Genuine freedom, the lack of which is a tiresome Conservative dog whistle, can never be achieved when strapped with debt. Money is not for spending, it is for counting. Fred Lewis Medicine Hat 13-12
