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Since I have answered a number of questions from Mr. Buckna, perhaps he would be so kind as to answer a few of mine. And Mr. Buckna, please give us your own answers without quoting from some economics textbook that ordinary Canadians are never going to read.
1. The federal debt in Canada more than doubled in size (to around $1.2 trillion) under the Justin Trudeau government. And Mark Carney plans to continue piling onto that debt to the tune of $70 to $90 billion per year. Our federal debt is such that the government is now forced to borrow $1 billion per week just to pay the interest charges on the money they have already borrowed. Since you can't spend the same money twice, those funds cannot be used to build hospitals, schools, or infrastructure. Is borrowing more money simply to pay interest on previous borrowing a good use of funds?
2. What measures should Canadians use to gauge the health of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians? What impact has billions of dollars of federal spending had on those relationship measures?
3. Immigration levels (of all types, new citizens, permanent residents, temporary residents, students, foreign workers, etc) since 2015 have drastically increased. What impact have immigration levels had on housing prices, housing availability, student/teacher ratios, and health care services?
4. The facts surrounding health care in Canada are well known – too few GPs, too few specialists, ER shutdowns on weekends, too many serious treatment errors in hospital, increasing wait times for surgery and/or specialist appointments, just to name a few. While I realize that health care in Canada is primarily a provincial jurisdiction, the federal government has a health minister and a health department. Other than adjusting funding transfers to the provinces up and down from time to time, what specifically have the Trudeau and Carney governments done to improve health care service delivery in Canada? To what specific outcome measures can you point to support your answer?
5. Feelings of alienation in Quebec, Alberta, and Saskatchewan appear to have increased over the past few years. What have the Trudeau and Carney governments specifically done to diminish those feelings?
6. Justin Trudeau spent about $200 billion on his climate initiatives – EV subsidies, subsidies to battery manufacturers, etc. – and Mr. Carney appears ready to continue that trend. Yet, according to the Fraser Institute, fossil fuel consumption in Canada rose by 23% from 1995 to 2024. Over that same time period, the share that fossil fuels contribute to total Canadian energy consumption rose from 62% to 66% and shows no signs of slowing down. Have Canadians received good value for that $200 billion spent? What measure(s) do you use in your analysis?
7. Mr. Trudeau famously said that there is "no business case" for Canada to ship LNG around the world. Yet three billion people in the world rely on charcoal, straw, wood, and dried dung for heating and cooking – not only fouling the air but also directly leading to many health problems. Can Canada help the developing world stop burning wood and cow dung? Or, should Canada leave its oil and gas in the ground and let the developing world fend for itself?
Thank you.



