Enough Is Enough!

New Rule: If you’re gonna play Santa Claus with taxpayer money, maybe don’t start by stuffing Zelenskyy’s stocking while Canadians are freezing their asses off in the snowbank. Look, I get it—Ukraine’s in a tough spot, Putin’s a Bond villain without the charm, and we’ve all got to pitch in. But $36.5 billion? That’s not aid; that’s a down payment on a second country. Meanwhile, back home, we’ve got problems that make the Kardashians look well-adjusted. Let me break it down for you, because apparently, our politicians can’t do math unless it’s adding zeros to foreign checks.

First off, safe drinking water for Indigenous communities. You know, the people who’ve been here since before maple syrup was a thing? There are still dozens of First Nations reserves under boil-water advisories; it’s like 1850, and we’re all pioneers. The government has thrown a few billion at this over the years, but estimates to fully fix the infrastructure and end this national embarrassment run around $3-8 billion, depending on who you ask.

With $36.5 billion, we could solve it ten times over, build luxury spas on every reserve, and still have cash left for artisanal bottled water deliveries. Instead, we’re telling them, “Hey, boil it or buy it—sorry, we’re busy funding tanks abroad.”Then there’s the homeless. Canada, the polite frozen tundra where we apologize for bumping into you while you’re sleeping on a grate. Homelessness costs our economy about $10 billion a year in lost productivity, emergency services, and general human misery.

To make a real dent—say, cut chronic homelessness in half—we’d need an extra $3.5 billion annually. Or, over a decade, approximately $52 billion for a comprehensive national plan.

With that Ukraine money, we could house every rough sleeper in a condo, throw in therapy dogs, and rename Toronto “No More Tents-ville.” But no, priorities: geopolitical chess games over basic shelter. Because nothing says “eh?” like ignoring your own citizens turning into human popsicles.

Food banks? Oh, please. We’re the country that invented poutine, yet millions are lining up for canned goods like it’s the Great Depression reboot. Food Banks Canada operates on grants in the tens of millions, but to truly tackle food insecurity nationwide—feeding the hungry, expanding distribution, maybe even preventing the need—we’re talking hundreds of millions to a billion extra per year just to keep up.

foodbankscanada.ca $36.5 billion could stock every pantry in Canada for decades, turn Tim Hortons into a free soup kitchen chain, and still fund a national beaver-meat festival. Instead, we’re shipping dollars east while grannies skip meals to pay rent.

Mental health—now there’s a laugh, pardon the anti-pun. We’re all one bad winter away from seasonal affective disorder turning into full-blown existential dread. Mental illness costs the economy $50 billion a year, and we’re underfunding services by billions—Ontario alone is short $1.5 billion, while national calls for $5.3 billion more in federal funding go unanswered.

With $36.5 billion, we could hire an army of therapists, build wellness centers in every province, and make Prozac the new national currency. Hell, we could afford to psychoanalyze the polar bears. But nah, better to fund foreign fireworks than fix the quiet epidemic turning Canadians into walking therapy bills.

Hospital wait times? If you’re waiting for surgery in Canada, you might as well pack a lunch—and a tent and lots of MREs, since you’ll be there awhile. These delays cost us $5.2 billion in lost wages and productivity last year alone.

To slash them? We’d need billions for more staff, equipment, and facilities—say, $10-20 billion to turbocharge the system and get people off lists before they expire on them. Well, with $36.5 billion, we could literally clear the queues, build robot surgeons, and turn ERs into express lanes. Instead, we’re like that guy at the DMV who says “next window” forever, while sending cash to patch up war wounds overseas.

And training young adults in AI? Come on, the future’s knocking, and we’re answering with a “sorry, not sorry.” AI bootcamps and programs cost $2,000-6,000 per person, and with millions of youth needing skills to not get automated out of jobs, a national program could run $5-10 billion to train, say, a million of them. We could turn every Timbit-munching millennial into a coding wizard, ready to battle Skynet. With that money going to Ukraine, our kids are stuck learning “how to beg for UBI” instead.

Look, I’m not saying cut off Ukraine entirely—war’s hell, and we should help. But $36.5 billion from a financially sinking country? That’s more than enough to fix our own house before remodelling someone else’s bunker. We could end child poverty, or hell, buy every Canadian a Tesla. Instead, we’re virtue-signalling our way into domestic neglect. New Rule: Charity starts at home, eh? Or at least in the same hemisphere.