no welfare for the merchants of death

In the lead up to the 2015 general election two Conservative Party of Canada bigwigs (Denis Lebel and James Moore, respectively) were proud to crow about the sweetheart deal made between Pratt & Whitney and the Canadian government in the urban voting blocs of Longueuil and Mississauga (Montreal and Toronto).  A Fraser Institute report suggests this now makes 3.6 billion inflation adjusted dollars in "repayable contributions" from the federal government to the aeronautics giant. This subsidy takes the form of an interest free loan which may or may not be repaid depending on the success of the project.  Even if the loan is repaid it is really of no great benefit to the Canadian taxpayer whom the money was extorted from; it is not like they will ever be seeing the money again. Instead it will go to purchase more implements of war from the merchants of death, to hire more
bureaucrats at the competition bureau to wreck havoc on the free enterprise system and to build more public schools in which our children can be indoctrinated into love of and obeisance to the state.

Massive spending projects in major urban areas out east in the lead up to a general election are sadly nothing new to Canadian politics; vote buying is a time honoured tradition in this great nation of ours.  It is certainly unfair that wealth should be redistributed for political purposes but this is the nature of the state; that some should benefit at the expense of others.  So long as an organization in our society with a monopoly on force and the ability to coercively tax exists these sort of incidents will occur.  The taxpayers will suffer because of this deal, not only to the degree which they were taxed in order to finance the loan for the project, but also when they are again forced to purchase the jet engines created.

Instead of increasing military spending it would greatly benefit Canadians if the Harper government drastically reduced expenditures on munitions and radically scaled back the size of our armed forces. Given our close alliance with the hegemony, our substantial natural defenses (the oceans and our geographic isolation) as well as our good terms with Europe there is really no credible threat to our national security.  Instead of inflicting punitive taxes upon the productive economic class in order to subsidize the merchants of death and to increase military spending we should allow workers and businessmen to keep their wealth and reinvest it in the economy or consume it as they please.  This will make our economy stronger and our nation wealthier so that should the unfortunate time ever come when we are called to take up arms to defend our nation we will be able to afford to do so having not already drowned in debt and spent our treasure on buying votes or increasing the wealth of a few politically connected cronies.  We should also open our borders to those who wish to flee their own repressive governments or the brutal conditions of third world countries.  This immigration would be a great boon to the economy but also is critical to our national security in being able to turn out a more sizable defensive fighting force.