Getting the balance right in the federal government’s lockdown bailout funding is critical to the country’s economic survival.
The question arising now is how much is too much after Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government had by early April already earmarked $260 billion in income support, deferred payments, loans and guarantees to help the country’s businesses and workers remain solvent in the COVID-19 crisis.
Farmers in B.C. and elsewhere across the country might be arguing now it has become too much in the form of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and other assistance. Too much because, with their harvest season looming on the horizon, those farmers cannot find the workers needed in an underemployed land to bring in the crops upon which their livelihoods and the province’s food chain depends.
That food chain will be under growing pressure to deliver the variety and abundance British Columbians have come to expect because cargo from outside the province will be facing more supply chain challenges from a host of larger issues.
For example, container carriers and airlines are grappling now with the domino effects from the widespread shutdowns of global economies in the first half of 2020. They have their own operational issues to address to remain afloat. Most will have to reduce cargo capacity; some will sink in bankruptcy.
Canada’s prime minister, meanwhile, has spent much of 2020 distributing current and future taxpayer dollars to an ever-expanding circle of companies and workers in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Much of that initial distribution has been needed to keep the country’s economy and its workforce from unravelling.
But for government, giving money away is easy; knowing when to stop is not.
If too readily available for too long, CERB or other assistance can shift from survival benefits to work disincentives. Just ask a farmer struggling to find workers willing to forgo government financial assistance to help him harvest his crop.
