By Michael Nickerson
The line between hope and denial is very thin. Its human nature to hope for a better tomorrow no matter how bad today is. When a loved one is ill, most hope for recovery (if not, find yourself a shrink). Farmers hope for rain, or sun, or whatever weather they need to get through another growing season unscathed. It keeps you going, helps you push through the tough times. It helps people get by when all seems lost.
But that can flip to denial in a big hurry. That lump under my arm can’t be a tumor; must have just pulled something. What drinking problem? I’m just a really social guy. Do I smell smoke? You’re dreaming, go back to bed.
It is not a stretch to say that many Canadians (and much of the world, really) have been in a state of denial about Covid-19. It’s overblown; just a bad case of the flu. We’ll be fine by Christmas. Let’s get back to some NHL hockey and have a good ol’ fashioned summer BBQ party!
Now those who have either been ill, lost someone, or been on the front lines treating the infection and its many repercussions don’t need a wake-up call. It’s all too real for them. But those thinking the world was going to get back to normal by fall should have had the stupidity thoroughly smacked out of them when Finance Minister Bill Morneau recently provided a “fiscal snapshot” on the state of Canada’s federal finances. In short, the federal deficit for this fiscal year is estimated to be $343 billion. There’s nothing like a good gut punch to start your summer vacation.
To put this in perspective, that’s tenfold what the deficit was originally projected to be in a time when the Liberal government was already under fire for spending their way down a deep dark hole of national debt. It amounts to, in one year, some 70% of the total military budget the government pledged to spend over the next twenty years. We’re talking numbers and job losses as bad as or worse than the Great Depression, back when there was no such thing as universal healthcare or the substantial social safety net we enjoy today. From a military perspective, fighter planes didn’t cost over $100 million each, nor did maintaining a modest underfunded military cost more than $25 billion annually (defence spending in 1933 amounted to some $13 million, about $250 million in today’s dollars, and less than three percent of the total budget instead of eight percent today).
So what’s this all mean? It means all hands on deck. To get through this we’re going to need everyone pulling their weight, making sacrifices and hard choices. And we’re going to need everyone to park their ideological hobby horses and work together. A case in point: Morneau had barely sat down after his update when the usual Conservative response was parroted from across the aisle. Where’s the plan for recovery?! We need to decrease spending, engage in austerity and balance the books! It’s like telling a man drowning in a hurricane to work on his breast-stoke. The old rhetoric is not going to cut it anymore.
And the military needs to make not just hard choices, but existential ones. No more infighting between departments, no more pumping up budget requests and looking for the most expensive kit there is instead of the most practical available. Cut extraneous expenses and operationally needless expenses (submarines and the Snowbirds anyone?). There will be limited budgets in the coming years. Suck it up and get used to it.
But how limited those budgets will be ultimately lies with the Canadian public. Will we come together in common cause like in past world wars and prioritize what matters, shelve the partisan squabbling, make even the most basic of personal sacrifices (that’s right, wear the damn mask already!)? Because if you’re still in denial, it’s that serious folks. And we’re going to need all hands on deck for some time to come if we have any hope of getting through it.
