Saturn

To collect income taxes, teh revenue agency must deal with around 15 million individuals. To collect the GST, the revenue agency deals with several hundred thousand firms. You tell me which is easier to control and audit. I agree that consumption taxes (sales taxes) are more prone to evasion than income taxes. Sales taxes are much more of a headache for the tax authorities (some more than others - eg. PST in Ontario is much worse than the GST). On top of that paying the tax and having it stolen is (seen by some) as worse than not paying taxes in the first place.

The tax rate is absolutely key to how much evasion occurs. If the business rate was 2 or 3%, considerably less companies would have dealt with the costs of converting to income trusts. Tax evasion/avoidance isn't cheap. There has to be a cost/benefit to the evasion. Tax lawyers and accountants aren't cheap, your not going to hire a firm to save you a 2 or 3 percent. You will when it saves you 20 or 30 percent though... in return to your shareholders. People are more able and willing to pay lower rates on the personal side too. It's all about individual choice under uncertainty. Push that benefit higher and higher and even the most risk-adverse people will start to bite. Your the expert. If you honestly believe rates aren't tied to evasion, tell me why basic rational actor cost/benefit doesn't apply here. If the benefit of evading taxes outweighs the probable costs, then you'll evade them. It's the reasonable thing to do. The body of research in economics supports me. Why do you differ, do you have any academic agreement besides yourself? I don't understand what your saying? I am saying that a flat tax rate doesn't produce result in the same behaviour for all people. Because a $1 for me is not the same as what a $ is worth to someone on minimum wage or to Ted Rogers. If you want a flat tax then in order to raise the same amount of tax revenue you have to lower the tax rate at the high end and increase the tax rate at the low end. This will change the incentive (or disincentive) to work. When it comes to working, the nominal tax rate is far less important than the effective marginal tax rate. As things currently are, EMTRs are much higher at the low end of the income distribution than at the high end. Flattening taxes will further increase EMTRs at the low end and they already run as high as 80% there depending on the exact income level, province, credits, etc. The result will be that many lower-income workers will end up taking 10-20 cents on the dollar home which will ultimately result in a significant number of people working less or not working at all. This is something that will have a huge impact given the very large number of people in the under $30K income range. So you may give a lawyer an incentive to work 5 hrs/wk more but you will end up putting someone else on the welfare roll. Also, you'll give a much greater incentive for lower-income people to evade taxes and again it's a lot of people we are talking about. Anyway, EMTRs in Canada are really bad as they are (in several cases the EMTR goes over 100%) and the overall disadvantages of making them worse will exceed the benefits. This is just one of the reasons why flat taxes are not all that common. The consequences of moving to a flat tax are not as clear and straightforward as one may think at first. Besides what are the tax lawyers and accountants going to do if we take away the reason for their services? P.S. This issue has been studied to death and you can find a lot of resources by googling it. Here is just one simple example: http://www.aims.ca/equalization.asp?typeID=5&id=220

Interesting points. However, women get a much higher return on education than men do. University educated women make 3 times more on average than women without university degrees. For men the difference is far smaller. Naturally, girls value univesity education more than boys do.

You are getting into conspirasy theories now. The mark of a true left winger. You are dreamy, wishing, and out of touch with reality. Listen. I'm the only one here bringing reality into this. Healthcare is like insurance, if people are using the services that they don't pay into, then the service DOESN'T WORK. Over the years, the system has slowly crumbled because there are MORE PEOPLE USING IT THAN WE HAVE ENOUGH RESOURCES TO SUPPLY CARE. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. STOP OVER COMPLICATING IT. We don't have enough resources because we don't have the money to expand the system. Why? Because people that are using it that HAVE NOT PAID INTO IT. Healthcare insurance is made to be paid into your whole life, NOT 10 years, NOT 15 years, NOT from 35 years old with jobs here and there until they get old age welfare. It's meant to be paid into your whole life of paying taxes. The same is for the US. When you sponsor in family members from other countries who have not paid into the system, then eventually over time you end up with waiting lists and insuficient care. I agree that there are other problems, but it's not the MAIN problem that is causing our problems. When's the last time you've seen a hospital get built? They don't get built because we can't afford it. There is a hospital being built just 1 km from here. Your negativism is depressing. Canada is a wealthy nation and we can afford plenty of things. Including health-care. Immigrants provide plenty of benefits and your complaints are way over the top. It is anti-immigrant sentiments like yours that are costing our economy $15 billion annually (due to underutilizing the immigrants' skills). Now you can keep complaining about the immigrants but privatizing health-care isn't going to make them go away or fix the health-care problem. Paying 60% more money for 10% more health-care doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Huge health-care bills are a burden on the economy (plenty of evidence in the US) and since employers don't partilcularly enjoy paying $5K/employee for medical insurance it will only cause more Canadian jobs to move to China where health-care is far less costly. Now obviously nothing will change your mind about the evils of immigration but I don't think that you will convince anyone of those evils either. Of course you are free to keep on trying.

May I suggest the Greens? But yes, there is far too few parties to choose from and only electoral reform can deliver more options.

You have a grad degree in econ? Only people with grad degrees can debate you? Yes, I happen to have a grad degree in econ. I will debate anyone who shows some respect for a reasonably educated opinion. This falls outside that category: "That doesn't even make economic sense! clearly you are out of your element here. The term is 'structural' unemployment, not 'natural'. my goodness. The better measurement of REAL employment statistics is the 'participation rate'. Of which you have demonstrated here you have clearly no idea about. I pity you - as opposed to debate you."

There are many dimensions to everything and in the real world people do whatever they believe is best for them and whatever they think they can get away with. In this case, the medical associations have positioned themselves well to get away with quite a bit. I just find it rediculous when people are so inconsistent on similar issues and will argue on different sides simply for ideological reasons.

Most economists say when employment levels fall to 1%, you start getting inflation. You already see it in Alberta. Wages continue to go up, then costs start going up. Most economists say that the "natural" rate of unemployment is 3-4%, some even say 5%. 1% unemployment is something that doesn't happen anywhere (unless you use some very, very restrictive definition of unemployment). As soon as you get to 3-4% you usually see quickly rising inflation. The reason we are not seeing double digit inflation in Alberta is because the rest of the country helps keep inflation down. If Alberta was an independent country, they would be looking at hyperinflation right now. That doesn't even make economic sense! clearly you are out of your element here. The term is 'structural' unemployment, not 'natural'. my goodness. The better measurement of REAL employment statistics is the 'participation rate'. Of which you have demonstrated here you have clearly no idea about. I pity you - as opposed to debate you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rate_of_unemployment Ok, Einstein. "Natural unemployment" is also referred to as the "non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment" which is what was being discussed here. Now go back to your Econ101 textbook and read up on the definition of structural unemployment. Now keep your arrogant nose down because you can debate economics with me only when you get a grad degree in economics. Until then happy studies!

To put it midly - Your argument is flawed. At present we have ONE supplier. Two tiered increases the supply - we all win. You only need economic 101 to know this. We share a health care system in common only with stalinist countries. This is a needless waste of longetivity to only satisfy union needs. It is ridiculous and it is causing lives. And yet you still argue for the status quo. You want to handcuff medical practitioners with needless ideology. accesible medicare for those that need. Private for those that can pay. Both win. Competition breeds efficiency and yet you insist in 2006 that this is not the case.. why? And please stop comparing two-tiered medical care to the USA. They have one-tiered as well - only it is on the other side. There are many many models that we can take best practises from without going to the US model which will have liberals in the streets. Medical care is beyond ideology or midless, knee-jerk anti-americanism. Dr's are not the issue - it is the system and your typical far left ideology that is causing lives. think about it. PS: there is not a monopoly in the auto industry. Your example is absurd. And you aren't reading or you aren't thinking. The example is absurd and that's exactly the absurdity we are facing in our health-care system. If you had taken Econ 101, you'd know that a monopoly doesn't set its level of output to please you but it sets it to a level that maximizes its profit. The medical associations have set the supply of doctors to levels that are far lower than necessary, so that people like you would be willing to pay them far more than they deserve. Medical care is a matter of life and death and is above profiteering and greed. Mindless conservative ideology dictates that people should be dying on the street, so that doctors and health-care investors can make more money. In fact, many conservatives are simply driven by hatred for those who supposedly live on their backs and would pay extra just to see these evil people suffer.

When the unemployment rate drops to about 1-2% then yah, but how about the homeless people and those on reserves, get them to alberta pronto!!! I can't figure out if you agree or disagree ? You do know that 1-2% unemployment is impossible to achieve? Homeless people and those on reserves...what does that mean? Listen to dobbin....he knows. So those homeless people and people on reserves have to be screwed out of employment so Sanjay from pakistan can have his day?, no! Why should they be poor? Get those guys who are poor and don't have the opportunity out there working so they aren't a drain on social services, maybe the rate will drop to 4% with that I don't know, those reserves are a big problem, we cannot afford as a society to have an out of the way reserve like Kasechewan, where they don't contribute much to society and take tax dollars get them working and their poverty disappears. Ahh, now I get it. Its the immigrants (sanjay from Pakistan) fault for having the initiative to get his butt out the door and find a job, but homeless people and those on reserves should have job opportunities brought to them. So, should we wait for Oprah or Dr.Phil show to be over before we knock on the door and ask them if they will work? As for reserves, dont muddy the message. Save that one for another post. There are jobs begging to be filled in Alberta , but they can't find people to fill them. Well , except for Sanjay who might even work two jobs. Against a foreigner, you bet, it's cheaper on the social system to give them a job than dole out cheques for doing nothing, sorry but i think our citizens deserve the first priority over the immigrants. the less people on social assistance the better and if that means shutting the door then great. Those jobs in Alberta can be filled by the poor and those living on reserves, you can bet your ass they'd rather work than live in squalor. Jeez, with all of that tax money they'd be contributing instead of receiving maybe our medical system can get some help and our infrastructure will be able to keep up with economic growth, but yah lets flood the country and have things plugged up like they are now Wishful thinking. If all immigrants suddenly disappeared, not a thing would change on reserves. If people on reserves really wanted jobs, they would move where the jobs are. The jobs won't move to the reserves.

This is a good example. The government has been saying we need more high tech workers, yet the market has been saturated with them. Does a GP have to be that much smarter than a computer programmer ? GPs get $300-400K/year, which is 3-4 times more than a programmer with a Ph.D. in computer science. Somehow, I don't think that GPs are that much smarter and I don't think that they need to make even more. First, GP's get paid to a business. Out of whioch comes all of their business expenses to pay their staff. Yes, that's right their receptionists, rent etc etc. Our GP's are grossly underpaid. After all expenses, GPs still take $200K home. Most people with Ph.D.s make far less than that and average Canadians make about a quarter of that. This is not "grossly underpaid". This is paid "far too much". People who are grossly underpaid don't work 5 months a year like my former GP.

Most economists say when employment levels fall to 1%, you start getting inflation. You already see it in Alberta. Wages continue to go up, then costs start going up. Most economists say that the "natural" rate of unemployment is 3-4%, some even say 5%. 1% unemployment is something that doesn't happen anywhere (unless you use some very, very restrictive definition of unemployment). As soon as you get to 3-4% you usually see quickly rising inflation. The reason we are not seeing double digit inflation in Alberta is because the rest of the country helps keep inflation down. If Alberta was an independent country, they would be looking at hyperinflation right now.

Fine, I wasn't sure. However, the gov't has an obligation to see that health care workers meet our standards, why on earth would any gov't allow a foreign doctor to practice without the proper training and licensing. Unless of course you are suggesting we lower our standards to accommodate them. The first patient to have a problem would be suing the gov't for allowing it to happen. Heck, if you feel that way why have any kind of standard or licensing at all, maybe I'll just put out a shingle and call myself a doctor, buy a few tools and some tonic water and we'll be back to the good old days. I never said that foreign doctors should not be licenced. I said that our health-care system and the medical associations do not want them to become licenced and get the proper training. They don't want a sufficient number of Canadian graduates to become licenced and get the proper training either. The Americans allow foreign doctors (Canadians included) to become licenced and get the proper training, which is why American patients get treated and we wait in lines. If those foreign doctors are good enough to treat Americans, why aren't they good enough to treat Canadians? Do we need some sort of special care that Americans don't need?

The number of tax loop holes have no connection to the number of tax brackets that exist. I am saying that a system with 2 tax brackets is just as arbitrary as a system with 6 tax brackets. I feel it is a mistake to get hung up on number of tax brackets and if you want to reform the system you are better off focusing on the what really matters: the total tax bill paid.Personally, I think marginal rates that exceed 50% are excessive and reduce the incentive to work and are bad for the economy. However, I also think that any tax scheme that increase taxes on middle income earners in order to reduce the marginal rates for high income earners hurts the economy as well. I realize that you probably will argue that cuts in government spending could ensure that the taxes on the middle class do not go up but I feel that is a totally unrealistic point of view. Almost all government spending today is either mandatory (i.e. interest on public debt) or pays for services that have to paid for one way or another (i.e. health care, education, police and the military). So any significant cuts to gov't spending will increase the cost of living for the middle class which, in turn, will hurt the middle class in order to give the wealthy a break. That is why pure flat tax systems are a political non-starter in almost every country. That said, some countries like the UK have kept the tiered tax brackets but eliminated most deducations and created something that has many of the benefits of a flat tax system but does not screw the middle class. Exactly. The rich in Canada have been getting huge tax cuts over the last 15 years in order to offload more "user fees" onto the middle class. A flat tax will just further increase the burden the middle class for the benefit of a select few. Then those select few are allowed to take their multi-billion tax cuts out of our economy and invest it overseas. In the meantime our infrastructure is decaying, our investment in education and what makes an economy tick is falling further and further behind other developed countries. Pure unequivacle BS. This proves two things. You are not rich as you claim to be and 2) that you have no idea about the tax system. Tell me how many low income people were directly affected by getting rid of the capital gains tax? What? I never said that I was rich. And I know a heck of a lot more about the tax system than you can imagine. You aren't making any sense.

What kind of screwed-up, biased math is this? A child in Canada costs us close to half a million bucks from birth to graduation and that's before s/he can contribute anything to our society. Immigrants are grown people, over a third of them with university degrees, who even pay to have their applications processed. We haven't spent a penny on raising them and educating them. So why is a Canadian-born child, who already cost us half a million more entitled to services than a brand new immigrant, who hasn't cost us anything? Of course many immigrants don't find a job right away. Do you think that Canadian graduates find a job the day they graduate? Of course some immigrants take time to upgrade their language and professional skills when they come to Canada. What, no Canadians ever need retraining when jobs become obsolete (due to advancement in technology, etc.)? Immigrants pay taxes like everyone else - they pay income taxes, they pay sales taxes on everything they buy, they pay property taxes where they live. And what's the last time you saw a Chinese or a Sri Lankan homeless bum drunk on the street? I've never seen one. All the homeless people I've seen were whites and natives. Get over it! All your problems are not caused by the immigrants. In fact, seeing that only 3-4% of the population is native, the remaining 96-97% of us are immigrants.

It all comes down to this: the provincial medical associations are monopolies that do not want us to have good health care unless we give them a lot more money. It is extortion, nothing else! The medical associations are nothing more than trade unions with special powers. In each province, the medical association sits down with the government at the barganing table every 3 years to negotiate a contract just like any other union whose members are paid by the government. Their business is not to provide health care or defend the interests of the health-care customers. Their business is to get more money and more priviledges for their members. And they have the power to restrict the number of their members so that the customers are forced to shell out more money. The law of supply and demand applies and the shorter the supply, the higher the price. If the CAW had the power to licence every car dealership in every province and restrict the number of cars sold in the country to 20% less than what we need so that you had to sit on a waiting list for 8 months to get a car, you'd be going nuts and you'd want Buzz Hargrove hanged. But instead you are going "Oh, Canada is not rich enough to afford enough cars.", "The immigrants are using too many cars.", "Foreign cars are not up to our standards", "We should pay 60% more for cars. Then the CAW may be tempted to let us buy more cars and the waiting lists for cars may get shorter than 8 months.", "We demand the option to pay 60% more for a car, so that people who can pay extra do not have to wait so long to get a car." This is stupid, yet the medical associations and their friends have convinced you that the only way to solve the problem is to pay them more. This privatization approach is absurd and it DOES NOT address the problem. Whether a MONOPOLY is public or private makes no difference whatsoever. What matters is that we a facing a monopoly and how far we are willing to let that monopoly go to mistreat us. Don't talk about economics here! What economic theory tells us is that competition is what's important if you want better service, not the type of ownership (public vs private). Don't confuse privatization with competition - a private monopoly is no better than a public one.

There's a cause and effect reason for everything. Yes, there is a cause and effect for everything. French physicians make about 55,000 per year. Source: http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/...h_care_fra.html But according to the same source, France also spends "way less" than us, so it would appear to me that with our higher funding we ought to be able to afford higher salaries and still have comparable health care. The French spend about as much as we do. But they have 60% more doctors and French doctors make about a quarter of what our doctors make. So the French get more health care and we get crap.

The number of tax loop holes have no connection to the number of tax brackets that exist. I am saying that a system with 2 tax brackets is just as arbitrary as a system with 6 tax brackets. I feel it is a mistake to get hung up on number of tax brackets and if you want to reform the system you are better off focusing on the what really matters: the total tax bill paid.Personally, I think marginal rates that exceed 50% are excessive and reduce the incentive to work and are bad for the economy. However, I also think that any tax scheme that increase taxes on middle income earners in order to reduce the marginal rates for high income earners hurts the economy as well. I realize that you probably will argue that cuts in government spending could ensure that the taxes on the middle class do not go up but I feel that is a totally unrealistic point of view. Almost all government spending today is either mandatory (i.e. interest on public debt) or pays for services that have to paid for one way or another (i.e. health care, education, police and the military). So any significant cuts to gov't spending will increase the cost of living for the middle class which, in turn, will hurt the middle class in order to give the wealthy a break. That is why pure flat tax systems are a political non-starter in almost every country. That said, some countries like the UK have kept the tiered tax brackets but eliminated most deducations and created something that has many of the benefits of a flat tax system but does not screw the middle class. Exactly. The rich in Canada have been getting huge tax cuts over the last 15 years in order to offload more "user fees" onto the middle class. A flat tax will just further increase the burden the middle class for the benefit of a select few. Then those select few are allowed to take their multi-billion tax cuts out of our economy and invest it overseas. In the meantime our infrastructure is decaying, our investment in education and what makes an economy tick is falling further and further behind other developed countries.

I take it that you are in favour of eliminating the basic deduction that ensures that people earning less than 8K pay no tax. I see where your going with this. But I disagree that this makes it two tier. This allows everyone a little bit of moonlighting that doesn't need to be forced under the table. River, another thing that you and others don't consider is the evasion factor. The more complex the system, the more people will avoid paying taxes because there is invariably loopholes created. A flat tax that applies to everyone is nearly unavoidable. Where as complex brackets encourage wacky tax planning and outright avoidance/evasion. Consumption taxes are by far the worse in evasion... you know that 5% cash discount the plummer gave you... ya, think about it. Oh, come on. You know it's not the tax rate that is the reason for evasion. Tax evasion comes from reporting less revenue than you really have and reporting more expenses than you have. It's not tax rates that create the loopholes. The loopholes are created by overly-complex rules on certain types of income from arrangements that seek to avoid having that income taxed as income. Sometimes those loopholes are intentionally put in or allowed to stay open when they should be closed - like income trusts or offshore tax havens. Your argument about consumption taxes proves my point - sales taxes have generally the same rate (0 or 7% for GST and 8% with a few exceptions for Ontario PST). But a huge portion of the sales taxes you pay just end up in the vendors' pockets and that's not because there are a lot of tax rates.

It's not a matter of fair or equal. It's a matter of rights. That child born to a drug addicted mother has no right to steal the money from my wallet to pay for whatever he's buying. I don't see why you encourage the government to do the same. You claim the Walton kid should pay more in taxes... I disagree (well, he should pay more in taxes, but not punitively... the rate should be the same for him or a homeless bum). He provides hundreds, thousands, maybe more... with jobs, and an income. That's a considerable contribution to society. And then you want to tax him even more. I don't get it. The Walton kid isn't providing a damned thing. He can't even change his diapers. That's not much of a contribution to society. For all you know he could turn out to be a mass murderer and the poor kid could be the next Einstein. If you get cancer tomorrow and you need a $500,000 treatment, should we kill you or should we try to treat you? You haven't paid for it yet and if you end up dying anyway, you'll never pay for it. Or maybe the surgeon who operates on you came from a poor family, so he stole money from my wallet to get an education and save your life - so you stole from my wallet. Geez!

Your argument against two-tier health care is that we already have two-tier health care? If we already have two-tier health care, then let me ask you, why would anyone be opposed to two-tier health care? Why would anyone be opposed to something we already have and can't prevent anyhow? Because Americans pay 60% more for a health-care system that doesn't work either. Because the cost of health-care is a very serious problem for US employers and doing the same in Canada will push more of our jobs into China where health care is free. Because more Amercans declare bankruptsy because of health-care bills than anything else. Improving health care doesn't mean that you have to throw your money away. We pay plenty as it is. The right solution is to take the medical associations monopoly over health care away, not to pay more for nothing. It is the shortage of doctors that is imposed on us by the medical associations that is the problem, not the lack of private health-care. Heck, the doctors' offices are private businesses as it is. It's the shortage of these private businesses that causes the problem. This shortage results from the fact that every damn province has one and only one association that lets people into the health-care business. That's a damn monopoly that doesn't want us to have enough doctors. Hell, most developed countries have far more doctors than we do and they also have a lower proportion of private health-care in their systems.

People use the largest amound of health-care services at the beginning and the end of their lives. I was born in a hospital, I got tonnes of immunizations as a child and paid many visits to the family doctor (babies have to go regularly for check-ups), all of which must have cost quite a bit of money and I sure didn't pay into the health-care system for 20 years prior to that. I'm not sure why elderly people should be allowed into the country unless they bring a lot of money (like wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong). This seems like something that should not be allowed. But I still think that it is not the elderly immigrants who are the problem with our health-care system. Sure they add to the problems but I think that our health-care system has a lot more and bigger problems than that. But the majority of immigrants have university degrees, work in Canada for many years (and pay into the health-care system) and also bring children who are more likely to go to university than Canadian born children and will contribute to our society all life long. In fact, we don't need the immigrants themselves as much as we need their children. Because our own population pyramid doesn't look like a pyramid at all - it's more of a rhombus than a pyramid. We need a large number of young people to take over as the babyboom generation retires. But we don't have enough children in the right age group as we need. So what we want is immigrants in their 30's with as many school age children as possible. Or well educated immgrants in their early 20s. The reason we have to do it now is because if we don't do it 200,000/year now, we'll have to do it a million per year in 10 years time and that's just not feasible.

Some stats on OECD countries: Country Health care as % of GDP Practising Physicians per 1000 pop'n United States 15.3 2.4 Switzerland 11.6 3.8 Germany 10.6 3.4 France 10.5 3.4 Iceland 10.2 3.6 Portugal 10.1 3.4 Greece 10 4.9 Canada 9.9 2.1 Norway 9.7 3.5 Australia 9.6 Austria 9.6 3.5 Netherlands 9.2 3.6 Sweden 9.1 Denmark 8.9 Italy 8.7 4.2 New Zealand 8.4 Spain 8.1 3.4 United Kingdom 8.1 2.3 Hungary 8 3.3 Luxembourg 8 2.8 Turkey 7.7 Finland 7.5 2.4 Czech Republic 7.3 3.5 Ireland 7.1 2.8 Mexico 6.5 1.6 Poland 6.5 2.3 Korea 5.6 1.6 Belgium 4 Japan 2 Slovak Republic 3.1 http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,2340,en_...1_1_1_1,00.html Note that Canada is near the middle on expenditures on health-care as % of GDP but we have the third lowest number of practising physicians in the OECD. France for example is close to Canada in terms of expenditure but has 60% more physicians, even though as noted earlier French physicians make under $60K/year compared to Canadian physicians who make about 3 times as much on average. Americans spend 60% more than we do on health-care and have only 14% more physicians. So the above data suggests that we need more doctors, not more private health care.

Well, no. It would cost more money, yes, but it wouldn't cost nearly twice as much. I would support a two-tier system. I think it's pretty ridiculous that you could be dying or ill and the government tells you you're not allowed to pay someone to cure you. Most of us live within 100km of the US, so you can always go to the US if you want to pay. If you really want to be treated in Canada, then you should pay for the health-care system you want. You can't expect tax cuts and better health-care at the same time. Better health-care costs more money, not less.

I don't look up to people to vote, I look to baseline principles. Is there a reason you don't like the conservative party? Is it the GST cuts? The federal accountability act? Paying off our debt by 2015? Lowering income taxes each year? The investments in healthcare? The investments in cities? The income splitting? The $100 given to each family with children? Taking a firm stance on issues? What is it? There are plenty of reasons I don't like the conservative party: The GST cuts amount to nothing. The federal accountability act is an oxymoron - it does not provide for any kind of accountability, quite the contrary. Paying off our debt by 2015 would mean surpluses of $50 billion/year. If the conservatives continue to pay it off as they currently are, it may be paid off by 2150 or so. Investments in cities??? The income splitting isn't happening either. $100 for families with children is wasted money - it in no way provides for any kind of economic growth, just for more junk made in China and more trips to Florida. And I guess buying votes. Firm stance? On what issues?