Once again the federal government surplus appears to be headed to the double digits. The projected surplus for the 2006/07 fiscal year is currently projected to be close to 10 billion dollars, almost 3.5 billion higher than projected in the budget.
Once again we see real evidence that there is no necessity for infrastructure, health care or education to be short of essential funds. It is disgraceful to see that in Québec clinics are charging 400 dollars per patient in order to qualify for a family physician when there is plenty of money available to fix these problems. Once again all of this year end money will be paid down on outstanding debt. Only the interest saved will be returned as future tax cuts.
A far better formula would be to use at least 50 %of the surplus for necessary social and infrastructure investments and the remainder divided between tax cuts and debt reduction. This surplus will be added to the more than 80 billion dollars in previous surpluses over the past 10 years that have been applied to reduce outstanding debt. (see the fiscal reference tables at the Dept. of Finance site.
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