A small country like Canada comprised of 35 million people needs 420.000 Federal Swivelling Servants? One caring, compassionate, Mother-Earth aware bureaucrat for approximately 80 people ? 80:1 is the right number is it? Why not 40:1? Or 10:1 ? Or maybe 1:1 ?  

 Federal government employment growth in Ottawa soared during the first five years of Conservative minority rule, rising about 13% to 420,000. The cost of maintaining that rising pool of civil servants jumped $9-billion, or 40%, to more than $30-billion.

 So much for small government. The total number of well-pensioned, well-paid bureaucrats at the Fed level has doubled in the past 20 years. Has the economy doubled? No [50% increase]. Has the population doubled? No [that took 35 years]. Has the crime rate doubled in the past 20 years ? No [crime has actually gone up 400%]. Are individuals 200 % less capable than 20 years ago ? [many would argue yes].

 So when will these 'Conservatives' reduce government, reduce spending on non-military programs and socialization and reduce the burdens of the state both direct [income taxes] and indirect [fees, regulations, eco nonsense]? Probably never. On the plus side they have reduced corporate taxes to 15% [they should be zero] and the inane National Sales Tax, another 'temporary' tax installed by Mulroney and his statist government, which has magically become quite permanent. But the trend towards ever bigger government is all too clear – regardless of what ideology is in power.

The Federal Budget has $236 Billion in total revenue or over 20% of total GDP [itself a bad measurement of the economy]. Expenditures are $276 billion leaving a $50 billion deficit. Total debt just at the Federal level is $564 Billion, or $16.000 per person and going up. Debt alone consumes 13 % of the total budget [down from 38% in 1990]. Total debt in Canada is well over $1 Trillion or the size of the entire economy when provincial and quasi government owned agencies are added in. It is a fiscal quagmire. As with a corporation or a family, the surest path to financial trouble, is not paying your debts. The debt needs to be retired completely. This would result in a huge boom in investment and job creation. It would also allow the government to reduce income tax levels dramatically. Cut other program spending and redirect that money to debt retirement:

A good starting point for Mr. Clement would be to take a look at how then-finance minister Paul Martin tackled spending cuts in his 1995 budget. Niels Veldhuis at the Fraser Institute reports today in the Financial Post that the Martin Liberal budget aimed for more than $9-billion in cuts, or about 19% of departmental spending at the time. The Liberals never quite got that far, but Mr. Veldhuis figures they hit 12%, well above the fiddles planned by the Tories.

Reducing Federal spending by 20% should the the priority. Even a 10 % reduction in Fed spending means about $27 billion in savings, which can be directly applied to the debt. In less than 20 years the debt would be repaid and Canada would be a haven for the attraction of capital, job formation and better able to cope with the huge problem of off-the-balance entitlements which constitute literally Trillions of dollars in socialized promises but are unfunded. By reducing the debt to zero, you would be able to lower income taxes, attract capital, stimulate job creation and buy time to address the coming crisis about socialized entitlement spending which will be a far greater crisis than this past recession.

Every family should have a 'forced' savings or loan repayment program, in which a certain amount of monthly income is set aside for either paying off your debts, or if they are paid of, going to increase your savings. The Federal government is paying off the debt but only by a fraction of what can be done, if the Feds actually became serious about cutting wasteful spending and retiring the debt completely.