Pat Coghlan

If they're going to cut taxes, how about starting with the thousands of dollars of extra taxes paid by families which have one spouse earning most or all of the income, like they did with pension-splitting? Ignatieff spent decades in the US, so he must be quite familiar with the US joint tax return. If he puts THAT in his platform, he'll get my vote.

Have a listen to the Dec 27th interview with G. Edward Griffen (end of Part 3 - Credit Crisis). He presents a credible story about how government will eventually be the ONLY game in town. http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html

Starting with a joint tax return, to enable families with one spouse earning most or all of the family income to pay the same taxes as all other families.

Nothing *astounding* about it. You don't put a guy that didn't even run a close 2nd into the prime minister's chair. She did the right thing.

The issue is not that it is a coalition, but whether Canadians trust the coalition with their wallets and social policy. If Canada is a daughter going on a date, I'd feel much more comfortable if it was with someone who perhaps isn't perfect, but could be relied on to drive safely, be home on time etc. than a "coalition" of punks in hoodies who want to just "drive around"...and who are asking if I can spare a C-note. Dion, Layton and Duceppe are the hoodies in this case.

Well, at least give them a chance to MAKE the choice, and have an election.

If they're not sure what to do, then follow the lead of Hippocrates (sp?) and "do no harm". I think they need to try and mitigate, but that doesn't mean suddenly running a $30B+ deficit. Basically, we have to follow the US, but on a smaller scale. The government cannot prevent what is going to happen (and it's going to be nasty), only ease the symptoms a little. That doesn't mean going bankrupt in the process, and that means not turning over Canada's purse strings to the 3 stooges and their leader "Moe" who was soundly rejected by Canadians and had already announced his resignation as leader of the Liberal party.

AND, we'll do it through the electoral process, hopefully. Dion was soundly rejected by Canadians, and he already announced his resignation, so the opposition had better come up with a replacement before the fight starts again in January. Sorry Dion, you can remove your "dibs" on the next available spot for PM portraits on Parliament Hill. Ain't gonna happen.

Ah, but Canada's purse strings have been put out of reach of Dion/Layton/Duceppe for at least 2 months. Hopefully, Canadians will get an opportunity in 2009 to indicate who they want to give this HUGE responsibility to. If they think it should go to the Liberals and NDP, this will be much more palatable than putting someone who was rejected as leader by the electorate.

Maybe when we stop perpetuating the myth that bilingualism exists anywhere outside the federal government...and mostly in Ottawa. Or, did you miss the 2nd demand from Gilles Duceppe the other day re: federal workers in Quebec being allowed to speak French only?

If it's legal, and it keeps the 3 separatist stooges from controlling Canada's purse strings, I hope they go for it.

There may be a silver lining here. The 2nd thing that came out of Duceppe's mouth was a desire for *federal* workers in Quebec to speak French only. The flip-side of that change is to allow federal workers in the ROC to speak only English. Good-bye to all those billions of dollars spent on language training every year. Sign me up.

I'd be leery of any closed door sessions at the G20 etc. To pull a fast one on the currency (devaluation or, heaven forbid, introduce a new currency), you want the monied class to be holding $$$ and not hard assets. To do that, you scare them out of the market and into bonds and money market funds etc. Guess where most cash is right now?

There is an interesting exchange in the 3rd hour, part 2 of this (Nov 8th) show: http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html re: how, in the past, all fiat currencies eventually get *reset*, and usually over a weekend. The clip above starts out with a discussion of a TRILLION dollar restaurant bill in Zimbabwe, and the chat about the over-the-weekend *adjustment* of various currencies is later on in the hour. It's worth putting on the old MP3 and having a listen.

Sounds credible, but... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=19...58565&hl=es I, for one, am not interested in dumping the Cdn greenback.

What new deductions? There only deductions available for kids are related to daycare expenses. In fact, I think the only place children show up on a tax return as a line item is the Equivalent To Married exemption (a form of income-splitting for single parents). You can thank Mulroney for essentially removing children from the tax system.

As discussion in the other thread, http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index....showtopic=11820, this might have been the only chance Dion had at coming close to beating Harper, assuming Liberals don't have a problem with charging all families with the same total income the same amount of taxes.

In the 70s/80s you did all right because prices - including home prices - were in step with the salary of the major breadwinner. For example, I bought my first home for $71,400 on a $33K salary. Today, that same home costs $280,000, while the same job pays $66K (home price increased 4x, while the salary increased 2x). My point is that it is even MORE of a struggle today for a family to get by on one salary. Still, they receive much less assistance than families who put kids in daycare. The current recession is more likely to last until 2030, rather than 2010.

Exactly whose cooking and cleaning are you going to tax? When your cleaner/cook goes home and cleans her own house, is this *income* that needs to be taxed too? I'll give you this: I think brute-force income splitting does give too much of an advantage to couples vs singles. However, if you're going to treat everyone as an individual for tax purposes, shouldn't that mean that each spouse must be allowed to claim 50% of child benefit payments based only on his/her (vs the family) income? Doing nothing isn't an option either...at least one that I would support. Either go the whole route and treat EVERYONE as an individual, regardless of marital status, complete with benefit sharing with the other spouse, or introduce a US-style joint tax return which lumps together the incomes of both spouses and taxes them as a unit. In the mean time, I'm voting Green, since they are the only party supporting income-splitting.

I thought the employer and employee were 50/50 partners, so there would be even *more* incentive to opt out unless someone is expecting to be out of work. Whatever happened to UI (EI) being an insurance plan for *unexpected* job loss?

Okay, I've just had a look. It certainly is being sold as a plan to give access to parental/maternity benefits, but there are no disclaimers that it would be LIMITED to such benefits. The CBC article states "his party will give self-employed Canadians the chance to opt in to the employment insurance system, providing them with parental leave and other EI benefits". I would interpret this as the genie being out of the bottle. Practically speaking, though, my guess is that most opting-in will occur in cases of pregnancy. What is unfair about this is that, once benefits are claimed, the self-employed can simply opt-out...forever. No matter how you look at it, the proposal is a scam. Note that most employees who take maternity benefits will probably return to work and be required to continue paying EI premiums...forever, and will repay those benefits 2 or 3 times over during a career. Not so for the self-employed. Once their family is complete, most will never opt in again.

The *rate* would be the same as for employees, except that the employer also pays an amount equal to what the employee pays, so the employee is only paying 50% of the total premium. Self-employed people would have to pay the full freight, i.e. double the premium. This is how CPP works as well. Self-employed people - like employees - can't opt out of CPP, but they WOULD opt out of EI...especially considering the $300/month premium. At least most self-employed people who aren't involved in seasonal-type work would. So, back to my original question: what is the problem Harper is trying to solve with this idiotic proposal???

I really want to hear how this helps families. Are they going to force all small business owners to pay their 200% share (business+employee portion)? Isn't that the only *fair* way to do it? I can guarantee you that 80% or more of small business owners will OPT OUT of this proposed scheme, just as most employees would opt out unless they EXPECT to be out of work. Now, if you're going to say that the government wants to encourage more women small business owners to quit working for a while to have children, why give this group financial support for this?

Hmmm, what is going to motivate all those "low income earning women who operate a small business" to pay $3,600 per year in EI premiums? For most of my career (employee), I certainly would have NOT paid into EI given the choice, and saved myself about $36,000 and instead invested in my own EI "fund", e.g. in the shares of any Cdn bank. I see much more potential to abuse this thing to "milk" the system, rather than as employment "insurance". Please show me a typical small business person who is going to ante up $300/month to participate in EI. I think this is one of the first really dumb suggestions from the CPC.

I'd like to see an explanation of the problem Harper is trying to solve here. Why is there suddenly a need for self-employed people to participate in EI? If it is managed like CPP, the self-employed person is going to have to pay both employer and employee portions, or about $3,600 per year. This thing is going to be open to all kinds of abuse. For example, you can't quit a job and collect EI, except under certain circumstances. Are seasonal self-employed people going to pay EI for 6 months and then collect for a year??? This is nuts!