Editorial Never mind the subs, let’s get mines

Assuming the current high rates of growth in this country continue, the federal government will be “within shooting distance” of a balanced budget by the mid-1990s, Finance Minister Michael Wilson told a large luncheon gathering in Toronto this week. And that goal will not require new tax increases, he said.

Desirable as that may be, we find this kind of wishful thinking pretty hard to swallow. For we have seen precious little evidence of any real will on Ottawa’s part to significantly reduce its deficit, which remains painfully high despite warnings of the consequences being sounded by bankers and corporate heads across the land of serious trouble ahead unless Ottawa’s barons face up to the realities of the economic mess into which we are rushing.

We do, however, give Mr Wilson marks for not handing out armfuls of pre-election goodies in his recent budget speech. But the optimism it carried smacks more of vote attracting than economic common sense.

Fact is we have been going through a period of sustained economic growth since the 1981-82 recession, yet the federal debt continues to soar. It just seems that the more Ottawa takes in, the more it spends.

Granted the Mulroney administration has made marked progress in deregulation and the privatization of industry, thus reversing the government intervention that characterized the frightful over-spending of the Trudeau years.

There’s nothing wrong with budget deficits per se, if they are within reason and at appropriate times. But not $29 billion in buoyant times, where it now appears to be stuck. It already requires a quarter of Ottawa’s total spending just to pay the yearly interest on this soaring charge. This could see our federal debt at $350 billion in 1990 — a doubling in just six years. That would represent something like $13,000 owed by every man, woman and child in this country. This kind of performance is simply not acceptable. They promised us better.

We suggest that this government, which has raised taxes very significantly since coming into power but still running $30 billion in the red annually, is going to have to come to grips with its loose spending habits and handouts at almost every turn.

Unpalatable as it may be, cuts could and should be made in virtually every department — and this includes defence. We bristled, for instance, at the recent announcement that Ottawa is now planning to buy a fleet of 10 or 12 (no matter which?) nuclear- powered submarines the cost of which, with the necessary infrastructure and maintenance, will almost certainly exceed $10 billion.

If this costly plan is primarily a case of flag-waving to demonstrate our sovereignty, why not just develop more mines on our Arctic Islands, and start pumping oil and utilizing their vast reserves of natural gas. Cominco’s Polaris lead-zinc operation on Little Cornwallis Island is already doing much to stamp the Canadian seal up there, as is the Nanisivik on Strathcona Sound at the northern tip of Baffin Island (where we are soon to establish a military base). Then there is the still undeveloped Baffinland Iron Mines discovered by that late far-north prospector, Murray Watts. This is believed to be one of the richest iron ore deposits in the world — literally a mountain of ore. And there are certainly more mines waiting to be found there. While operating costs will be relatively high, this would be nothing near the cost of building and maintaining a submarine fleet. That’s a club we simply can’t afford to join.

The only tax increase in last week’s pre-election budget was a 1-cent-per-litre hike in the price of gasoline. That, said Mr Wilson, will fetch the Ottawa treasury some $300 million. That amount of money will about pay half the cost of a recent Ottawa contract to a Quebec shipyard to refit one of our aging frigates. That refit, incidentally, would appear to be more costly than buying a new one, inasmuch as this same government recently let a controversial contract to a New Brunswick yard to build six new frigates at a purported cost of $2.2 billion.

This is the administration that promised us it would come to grips with those crippling deficits by cutting federal spending to the bone?