Canada on track for $5.9 billion surplus - still depressed over NHL

Now if we can just get that invested back into social services like maybe affordable housing and healthcare.

When you can spend virtually nothing on defense, it's significantly easier to generate a surplus, I'd imagine.

It's also easier when you decrease overall spending, use that defense budget judiciously, cut out pork, and force Congress to be disciplined and anti-pork. Too bad the United States doesn't have such a President.

High taxes help, as well. Let's not forget that.

But they're immediately applicable in the form of healthcare. What are comparatively low taxes getting us here?

So in what do you guys think we should spend it on? I would say spend some of it on defence, I dont mean buying more used subs off E-bay, but the only real threat Canada faces is terrorism. Why not invest in more Air port screeners, immigration officals and beef up securtity at our harbours.

Best way to defend against terrorist instead of invading other countries (can't resisit a comment on the folly that is the Iraqi occupation)

Health care and education are paramount; beyond that, hopefully we can continue to invest in our infrastructure and our inner cities. Personally, there doesn't seem to be much point in combating terrorism if young people have no schools, no future and are knocking each other off like it's the national pastime. We're not there yet, thankfully.

I think we do need to invest more in defence, but there are other important things.

Military spending in nations like the US, Britain, and France is supposed to make money. The arms trade is, by far, largest source of financial transactions in the world; western nations — the US started first and has been the most successful — have been writing-off debt and running their economies by designing and selling weapons since WWI. Christ, most third-world loans are underwritten by the very nation that's about to sell them 3 billlion worth of helecopters. Defense spending, in theory, is supposed to be the cornerstone of national financial success, not the source of budget deficits; weapons are the engine of global economics.

Do what most people do in Sim City: construct a secluded paradise for the über rich and erect a giant gold statue honouring your benevolent leader.

I like the way you talk.

I think we should be pumping it all into health care. More funding could solve a lot of our problems.

But yeah, they should put half into debt reduction, the other half into health care. Adding an extra 500 million - 1 billion in defense spending wouldn't hurt either. Upgrade the 1970s rifles our troops are using.

But isn't healthcare nothing more than bottomless pit into which you can pour endless amounts of money without any real gain?

The British NHS is standing proof that billion dollar injections of funding can be gobbled up without any substantial increase in life expectancy. To give but one example, last week I read a story in the Guardian that CJD (Mad Cow) victims' families are lobbying the government to provide experimental treatment to prolong the lives of their family members. The cost of this treatment runs into millions of dollars. The most hopeful outcome offered by physicians is that these poor souls will get no worse. With this in mind, what will the government achieve by providing such treatment?

So we're discouraging research now? Terrific.

I'm not attempting to discourage anything. I am merely trying to point out that experimental treatments are often incredibly expensive, whilst offering little in the way of increased life expectancy or prolonged quality of life.

Up to the 31st of December 2003 there have been 139 deaths attributable to CJD in the UK. This dreadful condition is, at this point, incurable.

The only treatment available involves drilling a hole into the patient's skull and permanently dripping an untested chemical directly into his brain. At best this treatment can only arrest the spread of the disease, not reverse it. It is also incredibly expensive.

If we had infinite amounts of money then I'd be only too willing to offer this treatment under the National Health Service, but as we do not it's difficult to rationalize something that commands considerable cost for very little gain. Especially when there are people in Africa who could be saved from very preventable deaths at the hand of starvation, which should be a relatively cheap problem to solve.

No.

But even if it was, so what? So is maintaining fire or police services. The point of a health care system is to care for health, not make a buck.

That's assuming you don't consider receiving medical attention a "real gain". I do consider it such, and I've got the scars to prove it.

So you would approve the expenditure of massive amounts of money on CJD sufferers despite the fact that it costs millions of dollars for little to no gain whatsoever?

What if the next treatment costs billions for not much more than the same result? Would you authorize similar expenditure for a few hundred unfortunate people? At what point do the benefits outweigh the negatives? At the billion point level? At the trillion point level?

At what point do you draw the line and shout “Enough! We can't afford this!”?

No.

I don't think public health care has ever been about spending massive amounts of money on rare diseases. I would hope that a potential few billion would go towards improving hospital conditions, the purchase of new equipment, the hiring new staff, and so on. Perhaps some would go towards patient care or preventative programmes, such as health awareness education, or paid re-training for physicians.

As an aside, the British government may be finding themselves saddled with some ethical or legal obligation to CJD victims as the result of bureaucratic incompetence. Perhaps this is the reason for all the money spent.

What are you talking about? Talk about grasping at straws. If your going to attack the Canadian system say stuff like "the best doctors leave after a few years" or "Canadians often go to america to have surguries they have to wait months or years for done in days", not you rediculos hypothetical argument. Gee what if police services for the next year cost a gia-gio-tillion I guess it be wrong to pay.

The math in a public healthcare system should be pretty simple. You have x dollars. You spend that money to save/make better the most lives. If it costs 1000 pounds to save someone from a rare disease and that same 1000 pounds could save 2 people from a not so rare disease... you spend it on the second case, not the first case. The money itself is irrelevant, the point is what you can do with it.

The answer to "What value would you put on a human life?", the answer is "Not as much as two human lives".

(that sum gets all wacky when you are dealing with one human life vs one human life, but the CJD case is pretty clear cut, few lives, high cost)

Anyway, that's off topic. I think you should spend that money on some more of our life-expired military hardware! We've got some Churchill tanks that are going for a steal at the moment, a quick lick of paint will cover up that rust!

I think growth forecasts for 5 years are going to be massive guesses at this point. I think you guys would be wise to put the money in a big jar on the mantelpiece in case of a rainy day. The Middle-East and Far-East are wackily unpredictable places at the moment, and what happens there could have ramifications for everyone. Even Canada.

There was no criticism of the Canadian system, which I’m sure is very good.

But you must admit that you cannot spend an infinite amount of money on healthcare; and if you accept this then you also must accept that there has to be a cut-off point and tough and often painful decisions have to be made in order to determine it.

There isn’t a democratic government on the planet that wouldn’t like to offer every treatment for every disease for every man, but with the costs of treatment often being very high (and rising seemingly exponentially) decisions have to be made on which can be offered to whom.

For just a taster of the problem, consider the following article posted in the Critical Care Foundation forum .