My local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, recently published 2 articles highlighting the inability of Canada’s governments, both Federal and Provincial, to finance certain services which would seem to be essential to the citizens of this country. The Spectator is decidedly Leftist in its perspective, yet the 2 articles in question do nothing but affirm the absurdity of Mindless Leftist Compassion!
On Oct. 8, the paper cited the failure of Ontario to provide adequate prison spaces for those deemed a danger to the general public. In response to that shortage, the provincial government has decided to increase from 2 to 3 the number of prisoners consigned to each cell! Various judges have condemned cramming 3 individuals together in such a limited space as cruel and inhumane. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has warned it will undoubtedly lead to a decline in both the mental and physical health of all inmates as well as an increase in the level of violence within our prisons. This situation has of course led many judges to reduce if not cancel the sentences of various convicted criminals. While Ontario’s Solicitor General, Michael Kerzner, recently announced that 3 billion dollars has been allocated to deal with this problem, one wonders how and why a service so essential to the welfare of the general public had been allowed to decline into a state of borderline dysfunction.
On Oct. 9, The Spectator ran a piece by Parliamentarian/Physician Robin Lennox in which she lamented the dangerous decline in the quality of Health Care in Hamilton’s various hospitals. While politics may have been involved in her criticism of Premier Doug Ford, who is a Conservative while she is a member of the Left Wing NDP, her outrage that 413 health related jobs, including those of 143 nurses, had just been cancelled in the Hamilton area would seem to have made perfect sense. In a country given to Socialized Medicine, Health Care must be a top government priority. Gross deficits, obviously, would seem to be the reason for Ontario’s assault on an essential service which was already in a significant state of decline. For years people have complained of the ridiculous delays imposed on them in their visits to our hospitals’ Emergency Rooms, delays which in some cases may very well result in the death of those seeking help. Indeed in another article on Oct. 23, The Spectator estimated that 30,000 people are presently on waiting lists for surgical procedures which the area’s hospitals simply could not supply upon demand!
On a seemingly unrelated topic, The Rebel posted an article on Sept. 24 entitled “Stop Helping Hamas.” Prime Minister Carney had just been to the U.N. in N.Y. where he had pledged 100 million dollars to Gaza and the West Bank in an effort to assist those innocent Palestinians suffering as a result of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. What perplexed The Rebel was that he had made the donation with no stipulations whatsoever, and indeed no assurance that Hamas might not simply confiscate it in the pursuit of its terrorist agenda. Since the attack on Israel in Oct. of 2023 in which approximately 1200 innocent people lost their lives, Canada has given more than 600 million dollars to the State dominated by the very group responsible for that abomination.
That 600 million is but a fraction of the billions dispatched elsewhere by Canadian politicians intent on solving all the world’s problems. Over 25 billion has been sent to the strife-torn Ukraine. As starvation is an issue in nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Haiti, Ethiopia, Ecuador, etc., each of these have received millions from Canada. Of a less urgent yet significant nature, the issue of Women’s Rights in various foreign lands still stuck in the Middle Ages, has also led to massive expenditures in the recent past. Most ironic of all, however, is the 5 to 6 billion dollars Canada must spend annually on problems related to the massive explosion in immigration it experienced under the Liberal leadership of Justin Trudeau. From 2000 to 2015, slightly over 600,000 immigrants annually entered Canada. From 2016 to 2024 that number swelled tp approximately 1.4 million. While a manageable amount of immigration to Western Democracies is deemed beneficial to both those countries and the migrants themselves, why would Canada, whose deficit is deemed to be in the vicinity of 2.4 trillion dollars, pursue an optional policy costing it 5 to 6 billion dollars per year? In the U.S., where Biden’s insane open borders allowed over 10 million “illegals” into the country between 2021 and 2024, it is estimated the feds have spent somewhere between 150 and 450 billion dollars in dealing with their presence!
Monstrous deficits are the result of a multitude of gubernatorial indiscretions and cannot be blamed solely on the political Left. Yet the various expenditures cited above do entail an implicit criticism of that sector which compulsively submits the Pragmatic demands of Reality to the dictates of Compassion. Canadian dollars are not going to stop Putin from killing innocent Ukrainians or Hamas from hating Jews or Muslim fundamentalists from treating Women as second class citizens. While I fully support the humanitarian goals of the Left, I am simply arguing that Compassion must begin at home, that our governments must make their foremost priorities the Health and Safety of their own law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, those who here in Canada might very well lose their lives while walking down the street because some heinous excuse for a human being had been released on bail for the 20th time, or because our under-funded health care system had not yet been able to examine those odd gurgling noises in his or her heart!