Stephen Harper’s Bail-Out Budget
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- “Federal Conservatives are hoping tax breaks and home renovations are the ticket to revive Canada’s ailing economy,” says the Toronto Star.
“Those two policies at the heart of today’s free-spending budget aimed at putting more money in the pockets of Canadians and hoping they spend it.”
Wrong. They’re aimed at keeping Stephen Harper and his chronies in power.
“The package will push Ottawa into the red even sooner than expected and rack up the first annual deficit in 12 years a hole the Tories don’t expect to emerge from for half a decade,” says the Globe and Mail.
“The Conservatives say their measures – which focus heavily on putting shovels and hammers to work across Canada immediately – will create 190,000 jobs over the next two years.”
If it works, “the government estimates the $40 billion in stimulus through spending and tax cuts will create or save 190,000 jobs and boost the economy by 1.9 per cent over the next two years,” says CTV.
“But that’s a big if, say economists, who caution the plan could still come undone by poor execution, wrong assumptions about people’s ability or willingness to spend, and slow-to-start infrastructure projects. ‘It all helps, but single handedly the government is not going to turn the economy around,” said Derek Holt, a senior economist with Scotia Capital.”
Flaherty’s budget plan, “predicts a deficit of $33.7 billion for the 2009-10 fiscal year and $29.8 billion the following year” says the CBC. “For 2011-12, the red ink would diminish to $13 billion, followed by a deficit of $7.3 billion for 2012-13.
“While the big-spending budget is meant to aid the Canadian economy, it will also be key to the survival or failure of the Conservative government. Opposition parties have threatened to topple the government if they don’t believe it is doing enough to aid the economy.”
Will Harper’s bid to bail himself (sorry, Canada) out succeed?
No need to stay tuned. You’ll find out soon enough.
Toronto Star – January 27, 2009
Globe and Mail – Ready, Set, SpendJanuary 27, 2009
CTV – Harper bets billions in stimulus will save economyJanuary 27, 2009
CBC – Bad-times budget delivers billions in tax cuts, spendingJanuary 27, 2009
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January 27th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Wow. Conservatives presenting a Liberal-style budget to buy Liberal votes in the House of Commons.
This is what to expect with minority governments, I suppose – a little tiny bit of everything to try and make everyone at least a little happy.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
we’ll find out 6:30 p.m. thursday. fingers crossed hoping the liberals take a stand
January 27th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
If only the peopel really DID have the power, Harper would be out on his ass.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
they do and they shall be soon enough
now the liberals have one choice
be men or merge with the pc party
i told two friends to go recommend a cbc topic
that’s now over 1200 recommendations now
imagine if i told every friend i had.
Ironic that i was honest said whom i represent and yet 50% more votes to me then anyone else.
Is this a sign that the youth are beginning to wake to how Harper is ripping them off.
The entire economics crisis in CANADA is completely manufactured in stephen harpers govt
37.8 billion in lost GST revenues
the squandering of 13 billion liberal surplus
the 18 billion in Afghanistan when we should have left.
68.8 billion GONE
and next year that increases another 25.2 ( 12.6 billion per gst point lowered)
so that 80 billion in 2 years
when we lost 93.8 billion
NICE COMPLETE SCREW CANADA ON THE WAY OUT THE DOOR
January 28th, 2009 at 11:43 am
i’m sure most of the money will be funneled to his friends.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Well, for the Bloc/NDP/Liberal supporters, you got what you wanted. A bail out package that is designed after the USA bailout package. For a situation that isn’t the same as the USA mess.
This economic crisis isn’t a Harper or Bush plan but a greedy business and banker lead fiasco. If people didn’t get themselves into deep debt, then there wouldn’t be a problem. Of course massive credit card and home mortgage debt is the government problem. NOT! Last time I looked, it was our choice to get into debt and not the governments. At least the Conservatives saw the situation rising and decided NOT to allow the banks to get into the SubPrime mess that has destroyed the USA. Brought in legislation to limit the amount of debt that individuals can get into.
The Bloc/NDP/Liberal coalition forced the Conservatives into the debt budget so you can thank your Separatist supporting coalition fans.
The Liberals won an election on getting rid of the GST. Guess what. After all those years, we still have the GST. At least under the Conservatives, it is at a lower rate. I guess all those people that are against GST cuts love to pay taxes and would never do anything to avoid paying them.
Surpluses are from your and my pockets. Not form some magical money tree. I prefer to have the money in MY pocket, not the governments. Of course if you want the government to control your every waking hour, then let them tax you. How much more in taxes do you want to pay? If we all loved paying taxes, why do so many people try to get out of paying taxes by doing stuff under the table.
If you look at the actual figures, you will see that most of the debt is due to lower tax revenues, much from those that are out of work or have pay cuts. I wonder how happy people would be with a budget that increased taxes just when their wages were going down?
A year ago, the Conservatives came out with a announcement that the economy was going down. The Liberals and NDP both stated that this was not true and that things were so good that there is no way that the economy was going down. Now the Conservatives comment about Ontario becoming a have not province are true. Hum, who was more in tune with the economy then.
Of course the Conservatives are trying to buy votes. That is what our political system does. The Liberals have been doing it for decades and it has worked in the vote rich Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa corridor. Well, the voters that prevented a Conservative majority prevented the Conservative from doing what this country needed. A quick kick in the butt to get people and business out of the debt cycle.
If you think that it would be better under the Bloc/NDP/Liberal coalition, then you are living in a dream world. If the Liberals or NDP had won and brought in green plans of any type, our economy would be worse that that in the USA where there are tent villages for people that have lost their homes.
Lets hope that the Liberals force another election on this budget. Lets stop all the support and stimulus plans for an election campaign. I actually hope that their is an election over this budget so those Bloc/NDP/Liberal supporters can suffer some more under THEIR own bad financial planning and budgeting. Recent polls show that the majority of Canadians feel that Harper is the best leader to get Canada through this fiscal mess and I think it would be interesting to see how that played out in an election. Especially when people find that their beloved coalition forced and election on their support line.
Of course you have the NDP that said they would vote against the budget even before it was presented. Whom are they trying to help? Only Taliban Jack to get some power that he can never get in the polls.
As for the coalition comments that more people voted for them in the last election. I never saw a place to vote for the coalition on my ballot. I never saw any campaign signs for the coalition. It is statistics and we all know that you can manipulate statistics to say what you want.
Canada is much better off than most of the countries around the world. This is because of both Liberal and Conservative leadership. Liberals for using the surpluses to pay down the debt and Conservatives for not allowing Canadians to borrow more than they can afford and letting us keep more of our hard earned money.
And remember that it was the Liberals that sent our troops to Afghanistan.
Take a look at how we base our economy. The GDP is a faulty system for basing the health of the economy. Now is a great time to fix the GDP calculations and change the system to reflect the personal and government debts as a negative factor to growth. Search the problems with the GDP and hopefully get the idea of growth to not be based on borrowed wealth.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Liberals balked at a coalition and their letting the harper and his band of thieves run :/
January 28th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Awe yes, Harper the astute economist who didn’t want to do anything (or was too stupid
to see anything) in November is our savior? What a joke. At least the Liberals with their,
as Dean Wermer would say, “secret double probation” know an election or coalition is
better fought or brought later in the year. Let Harper go back and micro manage the
Canadian Taxpayer Federation or firewall Alberta. I wish I were a fly on the wall in the
PMO today as the necon pinheads fume over Liberal oversight.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:42 am
It was Harpers “Band of Thieves” that first pointed out that there were economic problems arising last year.
Search the news about the fight when Flaherty said Ontario was going to become a have-not-province. Well Ontario is now a have not province.
Of course the Liberals are angels with their hands in the cookie jar with Ad-scam and all the other back room deals. Appointing Iggy to the leadership instead of having the members vote. Forcing out the other runners. Very democratic.
All I can say is that with a minority government, Harper has done more for our country than the Liberals with a majority.
We are in a depression that is going to make the 30’s look bad. All caused by governments and individuals that have over spent their allowances and gotten so far in debt. The Separatist Bloc/Liberal/NDP coalition have now forced a larger debt onto Canada than we can afford and in order to pay it off, we will be taxed much higher in the future. Great, we now have saddled our children with a massive debt to bail out and support many that didn’t need it to bring in Bush style support programs to rich millionaires. I wonder how many of them are Liberal supporters?
It was the Conservatives that brought in a policy to limit the depth of debt that individuals could get into with new mortgage legislation. It should have taken affect last April instead of October. Now that to me was a move in the correct direction. Of course the Bush bail out plan supporters within the Bloc/NDP/Liberal coalition wanted the banks bailed out. Last financial statements that I saw, the banks in Canada made a profit. Not in the billions but in the higher millions. Hum, no bail out needed here.
Do we need policies to put people further in debt? That is what the Bloc/NDP/Liberal parties have pushed for. We now have plans to get people to borrow. People that cannot afford to borrow any more money. No limits on wages of the executives or great support for the truly needy. A Budget that was not reasonably thought of but based on the Bush bail out in the USA.
The economic problems within Canada are not the same as the USA. But with the coalition, the good will that the Conservatives had with the business and investment community was shot out of the water. It put a big damper on the economy and brought it down even further and faster than it should have. Investors were spooked by the coalition talk that they pulled the plug out of fear of higher taxes under the Bloc/Liberal/NDP coalition policies.
People, in a time like this, politics have to be pushed way onto the back burner for the good of the country. Well, guess what, politics have made a bad situation into a disaster. I wish Harper had just let the coalition form and try to deal with the mess. In a political sense of the game, it would have been better. It would also have brought us into a screaming depression, not recession before Xmas. Now we will just hit it later and it will last longer as people are going to be so far in debt.
Of course a lot of the problem comes from basing the well being on the country on the GDP. We need to change the GDP and I will let you search the reasons why for yourselves. Try doing some thinking instead of listening to the CBC. Look at what is happening around the world. Look at the problems and millions of people laid off in China in the last months. Look at the number of bankruptcies in the USA in comparison to Canada before you start screaming for Bush style bailouts in Canada. Look at our economy in comparison to those of our trading partners and competitors.
Last year in the fall, we where doing the best of all the G8 nations. We still had a growing economy. We had some areas that were having issues and those areas were being looked at in a way that dealt with their problems. Now we have a budget that is treating all of Canada the same. Of course you have Newfoundland/Labrador that is a have province wanting to keep the transfer payments as if they were a have-not-province like Ontario is now.
Oh well. At least we don’t have the proposed tax increases that the Liberals and NDP were pushing for in the last election to make matters even worse than they are and will be.