Hydraboss

Ya, there was a great line in that article about Wynne implementing the Hudak plan. Guess she isn't quite as anti-conservative as she appears, eh?

This is hilarious. Good for Ontario. You win. For anyone that thinks you can continually give in to unions and re-elect liars and still be okay financially, this should be a wake up call. There is no way Wynne will be able to even scratch the debt when she can't even get the deficit under control. (EDIT ->to be fair, this is exactly what we've been doing in Alberta since Klein and look at the mess we're in now...fingers crossed we throw the idiots out of office on May 5) You guys need a Ralph Klein to come in there and clean up the mess. It'll still take 20+ years, but nothing's free.

I'm hardly praising Harper. Go back and read my posts about the budget - I said that all governments do it regardless of stripe (and I don't agree with this kind of shell game). What I take issue with is the constant "Harper took a surplus and turned it into a deficit" bs. The "surplus" he inherited was the result of skimming by Martin so it wasn't really a true surplus to begin with. It just gets really old when you and your ilk (and I don't care what political stripe you are) continue to bang on the drum of this false truth to push your point of view. edit->sp

If the federal government tried to do the same thing (see: Brazil, Statoil, etc) the shit would hit the fan. The thought of Ottawa trying to control Alberta-owned resources would be near explosive. Hell, we still haven't forgiven the NEP and look how long ago THAT was.

They tried this, to an extent, with Cenovus (formerly Alberta Energy Company - AEC). The province owned a shwack load of AEC but soon found out that it had to play by the same rules as every other energy company and spun it off (first all their oil reserves to go strictly natural gas). You're right in that if the government wants to play in the energy sector in Alberta, they would soon end up being the only player and government bodies aren't exactly known for being successful business-wise. They should remain the government and the regulator and keep their fingers out of the pot.

I'll accept portions of your argument as being genuine the moment that you admit that this "surplus" the Grits handed Harper was from the almost $60 billion worth of skimming that your saviour, Paul Martin, did on EI, CPP and the federal workers' pension. The Liberals could not have budgeted their way out of a wet paper bag without utilizing this process.

Create a Canadian federal oil company to take a poke at Alberta's resources and see what the outcome is (please!). I assume you want the Wildrose to take every seat in the province except Edmonton-Strathcona, because that would be exactly what happens. The vast, vast majority of taxpayers in this province wouldn't care about some CEO getting a few million dollars in under-the-table payments (if anyone could actually prove that's happened/happening) if that money put them to work. For example, do you think anyone in the trades would care if the government shelled out a few million to the head of Shell in exchange for the company building Albian Sands? I doubt any of the 3000 workers, from my company alone, that worked on that site for a few years making six figure incomes would really give a damn. This is no different from the manufacturing industry in Ontario - do you think the CAW would raise a fuss if there was a chance to get all their union jobs back under the same conditions? Not likely. Back to the election.... Tonight will likely be the make or break for the three parties in contention (even the third place PCs). There is only going to be one leaders' debate, and the three real leaders (and the Liberal) will be on Global for 90 minutes. 90 minutes to convince the 20+% of "undecideds" that they should get off their asses and actually cast a vote (not going to happen though). This is Jean's to lose for the house, Notley's to lose for seats in Calgary, and JP's to lose for everything else. Jim's biggest challenge is to NOT have his party decimated ala the Kim Campbell federal PC party destruction. Just about time to start the prediction betting.............

I believe they'll just have that conversation inside their head. Good lord this multiple-screen name thing is getting out of control.

I can't imagine Canadians care enough to give that rat's ass. Your ranking makes no sense. I can't explain it because it doesn't mean a damn thing. Would you care to explain how being #100 or being #1 makes any credible difference except in your mind? And where, exactly, are you getting this ranking from? The G7 is well known and Canada is in it, so what "think tank list" are you quoting from? Got a cite?

This is starting to feel a lot like discussing physics with Rainman.

You really have some pretty poor reading comprehension there, don't you? I asked WHY anyone should care in real terms. What effects does your silly rating have on Joe Consumer? Care to actually answer the questions, or would you prefer to just call me "buddy" again?

Actually, Canada IS doing pretty good. Why, again, does your "economy ranking" matter?

Exactly why do you think anyone in this country actually gives a damn what ranking Canada has? How does that number affect their daily lives? Just curious.

A lot more than "Harper supporters" are going to vote for him once The Hair That Walks Like A Man and the Other Guy push their platforms that take back tax cuts and this is interpreted at "higher taxes" on Average Joe and Martha. The mid-line liberals in this country will finally have a reason to move to the right and vote conservative - because money trumps "do-good-ism" every time. edit->sp

W, is Canada really the #15 economy in the world? Really? Hmm. I've never done so well as I am right now. Can't imagine what shape I'd be in if we were, say, #14 or <cough, cough> #13!!!!!! If this is what it's like to be #15....awesome. I'll take it.

Oh my! The dream....

But the average Canadian WON'T get the picture because the average Canadian is financially retarded. This all comes down to classic socialism vs capitalism - you want everyone to kick more into the pot to support "have nots" and the rest of us want to keep more of what is ours. The two sides can discuss it to the bitter end, but will NEVER agree because the debate isn't actually about TFSAs per se, it's about social responsibility vs personal responsibility. The cons will take this to another majority because the message will be "we gave you a tax break and the other guys just want to take it away". Plain and simple. Realities don't matter to the masses - whoever has the best sound bite wins. And it will be Harper. And the rest of his clowns.

Are you kidding? That honor goes to a man whose name starts with "T" and ends with "rudeau".

So, we should take it that you are against a government keeping a promise?

No, I think he means how the Liberals got in and made the left happy by creating

And this is my problem why? I am concerned with the welfare of my kids FIRST, but there's that whole "it take the wallets of the whole damn village to raise a kid" thing. Of course I'd rather see taxes go down, but the TFSA earnings exemption benefits from TIME and in the case of using them for my kids (17 & 18), that will be very significant over that amount of years. If someone had thought up the TFSA program thirty years ago, two things would likely be happening now: 1) There would be more people not relying on government handouts to survive retirement, and 2) governments may have reigned in spending tax revenue that wouldn't exist. Besides, we all know that tax cuts are far too easy for the left-leaning (or just anti-conservative) press to beat up on. Doing the adjustment to the TFSA program is much smarter - a huge number of Canadians are too dumb to understand the ramifications of large scale tax deferral / capital gains-style tax exemption. The "left" just knows they're mad. They don't know exactly why, but they're mad.

Okay, I'll give it a shot... Taking money out of my kids' pockets is BAD when you do it by overtaxing the crap out of their father. When I get to keep more money, I am able to invest it for THEM in TFSAs (so they don't have to live on government handouts when they're retired). Taking money out of my kids' pockets is GOOD when..... oh wait .....it's NEVER good.

A couple of interesting points to add: Alberta teachers do not start at the "zero" level on the grid - the first thing that got negotiated was that all brand new teachers start at grid point "1" (given credit for a year of experience that they don't have). Regarding the 12+k difference in salary starts, I'm curious what the cost of living difference is between Ontario and Alberta in general. Perhaps this would explain the difference? One "year" teaching experience is calculated as 125 days within a calendar year. This can include the 90 paid days of permitted sick leave they have in the contracts. A huge number of teachers in my kids high school (approx 750 students) are "coordinators" of this or that, which comes with extra pay for not really doing anything extra. Funnier than that, each "faculty" has a Director (Director of Math, Director of Biological Sciences, Director of Physical Sciences, etc) which comes with a significant bump in pay - this is absolutely hilarious considering, in the case of Biology, there are only two Bio teachers (and they basically take turns being the Director). And people say governments are shady...... Depending on the specific CBA, the school boards pay from 92%-96% of all benefits costs. That's right, the poor teachers have to come up with anywhere from 4-8% of this cost from their own paychecks!!! Poor dears. edit--> Had to add that with a faculty of around 42, there is a Principal and THREE Assistant Principals (one for each grade plus an "Empowerment Coordinator"...there's that word again!...for each grade). Wow. Must be a stressful workload.

This budget is much ado about nothing. There's nothing particularly spectacular about what's in the document from what I see. He promised a balanced budget by 2015 and we got a balanced budget by 2015. Of course he backloaded the crap out of it - name any government that doesn't do that (it's called getting reelected). If anyone thought the budget was about getting left-leaning voters over to Harper's side, they were dreaming. The whole "stealing from the rainy day fund" is a bunch of fluff. Every government has "stolen from this or that" to make the numbers look the way they want - nothing new there. Martin did it to the tune of between 48-60 billion by skimming the EI overfund, the CPP overfund and the Government Workers Pension Plan....IN ONE YEAR...but I don't hear any anti-conservatives bringing THAT up in this thread. The Cons moved money around to show a "surplus" which is total bs, but so did every single Liberal government before them. Surplus = over taxation and/or underpaying your debt. Simple. As long as this country owes money on the debt, we will never have a true surplus. That's like saying you take home $5000 a month but only spent $4000 so you must have a household surplus of $1000. Never mind that you owe $400,000 on a house. In reality, you're $399,000 in debt if you actually pay some of it off. The TFSA amount increase might benefit me (possibly) but not my kids. They don't have the cash to save more than $5500 a year (as it stands now), but it's nice to know it's there if they do manage to. The fact that TFSA growth isn't taxable is the only good part about the program (otherwise it's just called a savings account), and it's about damn time I got to keep a little of my money without having it dispersed to those who don't pay any tax at all.

Perhaps you should actually read the CRA rules about how TFSAs are handled when the holder dies. The only part that gets taxed is earnings above the value at the time of death IF it isn't transferred by the year's end. Talk about fear-mongering from the uninformed.