In an opinion piece, in the Victoria Times Colonist, Dr. Ryan Meili and James Hughes argue that 
investment in social spending does not adversely affect economic growth. Citing a study done in 15 European countries showed that for every dollar spent on education and health can result in a return of 1.7 times. Currently, we do not capture this investment and its spin off benefits. The authors argue that we need to look at investments in disease prevention and early childhood education, for example, the same way we look at a large bridge. It is understood that the infrastructure investment will be spread out over the entire life of the bridge. Social investment pays dividends years down the road. Changing how social investments are amortized, similar to infrastructure, would help convince politicians to invest people.