Maclean’s is reporting the Parliamentary Budget Officer will release a detailed cost accounting of the Canadian war efforts on Thursday.Â
After the current stats showing declining support for the Tories and a rise in support for the Liberals, this is most likely going to completely rock the Conservatives – especially when tied with our current hard economic times.Â
This connection was never made well enough in the States, where they’ve spent about $700 billion on the war in Iraq – yes, the same cost to the taxpayers for the Wall St. bailout package.Â
Not to mention the war in Afghanistan isn’t really a national security issue to Canada and we are only there out of the kindest of our hearts. We could have spent that money on social housing, transportation infrastructure, education, and healthcare.Â
WorldChanging recently put together a list of things the Wall St. $700 billion bailout could have paid for. I’m sure our bill won’t be anywhere near that cost, but it’s an interesting exercise to put things into perspective.Â
- The entire debt of Africa is $320 billion
- You could put solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion
- You could implement the Kyoto Protocol for the entire world for $716 billion
The mission in Afghanistan has costed Canadian at least an extra $18 billion!
Not sure how the Liberals can claim this is the Conservatives fault, since they are the ones who agree to the mission and agreed to extend it several times.