Saturn

The drooling idiots were Harper and co. when they were screaming their heads off in QP over Chretien's use of jets. Harper and co. were much bigger drooling idiots over a pack of gum. You are either too quick to forget or a similarly drooling one.

I thought the CPC was left in sending "childcare" welfare bucks to parents and considering even more don't-wanna-work mommy welfare, which you support. Or when the welfare state gives money to you it's not welfare? It's welfare only when it goes to people other than yourself.

The interesting twist on this one (I read it somewhere. Can someone confirm?) is that not long after they took that "surplus" they increased the employees' contributions by 50% or something, either to make up for a deficit in the plan or to build up another surplus to take and use for other purposes. Secondly, the Liberals didn't balance their budget. They had large surpluses that exceeded the pension "surplus" and the EI surplus. Thirdly, I wouldn't worry so much about next year's budget. They will be suing each other and appealing decisions for the next 5 years at least.

Next time the Fraser Institute puts out an anti-Kyoto report written by Ross (an economist) and a bunch of geologists, you are going to dismiss it outright, right?

Harper uses a 120-seater jet to fly around with 8 or so people, which uses as much fuel in 1 day as Suzuki's bus in a year (or 2).

That, or their jobs will go to China in search of lower wages. How so? You're talking as if it's physics "it will change"...

I really don't think I am. There is a considerable increase in capital gains and taxes on disbursements from companies. There is also a considerable increase in taxation on corporate profits and the savings from less RRSP contributions have to be considered. Ok, so you start with a flat tax system. You convert income taxes from progressive to flat (with a large exemption at the bottom). You eliminate most regressive taxes. In other words, you cut taxes at the low end of the income distribution and the high end of the income distribution. What does your "flat" tax system look like now? It's bell-shaped. The middle class gets to pay substantially more taxes than it does now. The middle class is also the backbone of the workforce and the economy. Why exactly is telling the middle class that they have to pay 40 cents on every additional dollar earned in taxes beneficial to the country? Your anecdotal evidence doesn't work for 2 reasons: 1) Alberta is somewhat of a tax haven in Canada. The reason tax havens work is that there are very few of them. 2) 30% of the Albertan budget comes from oil and gas royalties. There is no provincial debt to pay interest on. This means that the prov gov't can afford a low flat tax rate. Federally, this means that if you set a flat tax rate at 18-20% (corresponding to Alberta's 10%), you'll still leave a $80B shortage. Which means that you have to set your flat tax rate at 30%. Now implement an even larger exemption than Alberta's and you are looking at 35-40%.

"Between 2006 and 2026, the number of seniors is expected to increase to 9.8 million from 4.3 million, the report says. Their share of the population is projected to increase to 21.2 per cent from 13.2 per cent." (Statistics Canada) 2006: Number of seniors - 4.3M. Cost of OAS/GIS - $29B. Health-care costs of treating seniors - $100B. Total - 9.3% of GDP. 2026: Number of seniors - 9.8M. Cost of OAS/GIS - $66B. Health-care costs of treating seniors - $230B. Total - 21.5% of GDP. Now, I've heard a lot of ideas on how to cut taxes - primarily for the babyboom generation. I've also heard that we should blow our entire surplus on military toys and baby bonuses. Have you any ideas on how to pay for the above?

Some Web SiteVan Loan was right; Turner was wrong. There you go again! Canada has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 2 years, far more than any other sector. And 200,000 jobs is a LOT of jobs. So Garth was right your big mouth should stay closed.

Sorry, but in this country the individual is the basic unit of society. If you don't split your work with your spouse and you don't split a jail sentence with your spouse, you can't split income with your spouse either. My family includes my retired parents and my student sister. How's that?

That figures. Which is why you don't want to spend. Neither do I, nor anyone else. We are all sitting at home, growing our own food and raising our kids. Welcome to the 19th century.

Are you deaf or just stupid? I told you the Conservatives don't have better projections than SPSD/M can produce. If they claim they do, they are lying. Dude, you're hopeless. Will you stop making stupid claims when you really don't have a clue?

When Garth Turner asked why Harper canceled the training agreements with the provinces instituted by the previous government, you responded "Awww. Poor Garth." Good luck finding skilled tradespeople in Germany.

$200M down the toilet. Will need another $200M to unplug it.

Here is your government in action. Get an empty bucket and watch today's (Feb 26) MPTV. This is what we are paying them to do. http://www.garth.ca/mptv/

Less qualified public servants, pure and simple. Bilingualism becomes THE major qualifier for all senior jobs, thus disqualifying 95% of applicants. And given a second language is usually peripheral to the actual tasks of the job, you wind up hiring and promoting people who are not very good at those tasks. I have to agree with this analysis. From what I hear, most or all public service positions beyond the junior levels are bilingual, which means that 95+% of Canadians living outside of Quebec and 50+% of Quebeckers would not qualify for them. That's 5/6 of the population. Reducing your pool of potential employees to 1/6 its original size just based on language seems pretty dumb. I presume that many of these employees are analysts, researchers, etc. who 1) never see a customer and 2) have a specialized set of skills that are in short supply.

I have a lot of comments but I don't know where to start. Overall, this will produce a great shift in taxation from the lower and upper levels to the middle-income levels. You are looking at a federal tax rate at around 30-40%. Ouch! I'm moving to the US (unless my employer can increase my salary enough to make up for the 40% tax).

It's way more than enough for a family of 4. Just do a math. I think I could pull it off for a family of 2 but 4 is a bit too much. What's your math?

No, that's the last place to start looking. Thanks to extensive government transfers and series of tax credits for seniors that keep the low-income seniors above poverty and pad the incomes of seniors who earn more than the average working Canadian. Only OAS/GIS costs us $30B/yr (14% of the federal budget) and growing very quickly. In the meantime, less than 20% of RRSP room is used up - what's the point of saving for retirement when OAS/GIS will be there for you when you retire? But can you guarantee that it will be there 15-20 yrs down the line? I'm at all convinced it will. So stay home, don't earn, even if your husband dies in 30 years the government will ensure you'll have comfortable retirement income.

Do they involve going from 0% tax on the first X dollars to 25% tax on the X+1st dollar? What's the value of X that will fit your example? Speaking only on Federal taxes (you can apply provincial brackets as well if this is the case in the province of choice).... That's pretty obvious. Sorry, I misread your earlier post. Actually, I'm not at all convinced that flat taxes will increase productivity. I can see that some people will be compelled to work longer (increasing the length of the workday and possibly reducing the number of workers) but it isn't clear to me that that will increase productivity (since a worker's productivity goes down as the day progresses and chances for making mistakes increase). Also working longer causes more stress and burnout - do we throw those workers out when they crash? I can't say much without seeing some data but I can't argue that a flat tax will increase productivity more than I can argue that it will decrease productivity. I certainly know why Bernier would passionately support a flat tax though.

I couldn't agree more. By showing that these measures cannot guarantee secrecy (the RCMP leaks whenever it feels like it) and that those who are supposed to use them wisely are using them for cheap political gain instead, Harper has demonstrated why his government and the RCMP cannot be trusted with these measures. They effectively shot themselves in the foot.

It is a great idea to triple their taxes. Do tell us about those cases. I'm not aware of any but you're the tax expert. I thought we were supposed to give them more money to stay home and procreate?

A lot. Child poverty on reservations, among new immigrants and among single-parent families is 40% to 50%. That's always the case - everywhere.

The lowest wage the federal gov't pays is something like $9.90, so who cares? It's not a real change - the NDP just want to brag about doing something about poverty and the Liberals and Conservatives will oppose it just for ideological reasons. A lot of noise about nothing. Poverty levels in Canada are not that bad compared to other developed countries but are quite high for children. That 1 in 6 is the poverty rate for children, not overall rate for all Canadians. The 2005 LICO for a family of 4 living in a city of over 500K is $32,556, for rural - $21,296. http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/75F...2MIE2006004.pdf Do you think that's enough for a family of 4?

Oh, governments love having more powers and so do police forces. Who wouldn't? But these powers are far too much and are an excellent opportunity for the abuse of power and since neither the feds nor the RCMP are transparent or accountable in any way, shape, or form (despite all their pronouncements to the contrary), I'd be far more comfortable knowing that they have less powers to abuse.