The public debt looms over our future according to Toronto Star columnist Heather Scoffield. As Covid-19 put millions of people out of work and thousands of businesses out of operation, governments around the world, including Canada’s, engaged in spending at levels not seen since World War II. Recent budgetary proposals to fuel economic growth and investment caused considerable concern among fiscal conservatives. Where Ottawa sees a flourishing future ahead for Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux, expects that the budget will meet only half of the projected job and business growth. Scoffield leans toward the more optimistic view. [Note: In a further article, (July 2, 2021), she reports that Giroux has re-assessed Canada’s fiscal health, concluding that with a debt to GDP ratio below any other G7 country and interest rates below 2%, the federal government is in a strong position to continue investments to help Canadian companies as the economy reopens. – Brigitte Kitchen
“Mary Ng, the Minister of Small Business…has $4 billion at her fingertips… It is a generous pile of money that the government is hoping will propel 160,000 small and medium sized businesses out of their technological complacency and into the digital age, the key to decent growth and good jobs over the long term.
Just half of the Canadian companies with fewer than 500 employees have a website, and of those, only 10% could make payments online. E-commerce is only […] “
