Moonbox

What are you trying to say? I totally don't understand what you're getting at....

I think the left wing parties in canada are completely out of touch with what Canadians actually care about. The Green Party campaigns for primarily the environment but as we can see that's not really something Canadians are putting much priority in during a quasi-recession. The NDP and it's leader are the biggest joke in Canadian politics right now. They'll fall flat on their faces again this year and never be an official opposition let alone a government. Their policies are so directly focused on pandering to have-nots, unions or government funded workers that anyone anyone outside these groups would never even dream of voting for them. The Liberals killed themselves by following Dion down the road back to the Trudeau-era way of thinking.

I'm not ignoring that he sold off assets. Yes, I know that helped. Personally I think the 407 sale was a bad move. With that said, he DID make the most drastic expenditure cuts the province has really ever seen. Budget balancing takes time and in this case they set Ontario back on track after Peterson and Rae. The Ontario Liberals are wildly exaggerating their claims that Harris mismanaged finances. The finances just didn't work into the Ontario Liberal's plan and that's just too bad for them. Go play with the Green Shift calculator on the Liberal website. The savings are directed almost entirely towards the VERY BOTTOM income earners. It's crap for anyone with anything better than a job at Mcdonald's or without two kids. Seriously. Try it out.

Jdobbin I've already discussed this with you i'm pretty sure. I don't think Stephen Harper has any intentions of implementing ANY plan while he's in office. He made one up but I think it was just something to say. Personally I'm not going get upset about it.

I was just playing around on the Liberal website and I came across a calculator where they told you to 'calculate' your savings under the Green Shift. The Green Shift I fiddled a bit and found that if you are a family with 2 kids and a combined income of $20,000, you end up saving over $2000 under the Green Shift. If you do not have children, however, or if your income is above what a high school student makes at McDonald's those savings erode VERY quickly. Someone with 2 kids with a family income of $60,000 saves only about $1000 a year under the Green Shift and someone with no kids saves almost NOTHING. Considering now that it's widely accepted that carbon taxes WILL pass on costs to consumers, how much do prices really need to increase before your non-minimum wage Green Shift savings erode into the negative? People, this is from the Liberal's own website. Nobody can argue after playing with the calculator that this isn't just another social income equilization tax. Even if you're poor yourself this isn't going to save you a lot of money. You have to be at the very bottom of the barrell as far as income is concerned (as in pitifully low combined FAMILY incomes of $20-30,000) and have multiple children for this plan to look good to you. Nobody is exaggerating how bad this plan looks to the AVERAGE or WEALTHY Canadian. Now the question should be: Are hardworking Canadians excited about the idea of subsidizing Canadians that can't manage (for numerous reasons likely) to find a job that pays more than minimum wage?

Go to the Libera's Green Shift website. It has a calculator right there telling you how much you'll save in taxes. For a family with a combined income of $20,000 and two children it would save you $2148 in tax rebates. Pretty impressive huh? On the other hand, if you make $60,000 and have two children, you save less than half of that. With no children, you save practically NOTHING. Those with middle or higher incomes and those with no children will NOT save enough money to offset the carbon tax. I'm all about progressive tax brackets, but what I'm seeing here is just another Liberal tax and spend plan looking to take from the 'haves' and give to the 'have nots'. Personally, I have no interest whatsoever in supporting a 25 year old single mother with 4 kids. None at all.

This is true. In fact, Canada's military budget is 1/3 the size of CHINA's. With that said, we've seen a 27% increase in spending since 2001, and a LOT of that money has been spent refitting a military that has been crippled by spending cuts and military sell offs. In years to come our military IS on the road to modernization and full independant capability, but we fell so far behind for about 25 years that right now the spending increases aren't buying a lot of new equipment. Rather, it's repairing and making serviceable what we didn't maintain from before.

I didn't mind the rolling dice at the casino table, but the ones with the slots machines were retarded and I could have come up with something better myself in like 30 seconds. It made the conservatives look like a cheap gimmic party out of good ideas.

but this is where the difference in political and economic philosophies becomes apparent. Despite whatever any party 'thinks' needs to be done, the average human being is at least intelligent enough to understand that fuel is quickly becoming too expensive to use it the way it was once used. Corporations and businesses are also beginning to see it cut into their bottom line. Business and consumers will by NECESSITY make adjustments to their production and consumption habits because to not do so will ruin them. Gas prices are already hurting people. This is already forcing people to change. Canadians have the choice now to choose a government that is either going to ram the transition down our throats via carbon taxes or they can be allowed to naturally make the transition when it is beneficial to them (that would be the conservative choice by the way.) As fuel prices rise, people will be forced to cut back energy use at home. They will be forced to buy smaller cars. Companies will be forced to become energy efficient lest their competitors gain a competitive price advantage because of better fuel savings. All the things Dion and the Liberals are looking to FORCE will happen naturally without the immediate shock and costs of a carbon tax. The carbon tax, when you get right down to it, is nothing but a centralized money-grab to fund social services.

Well now that the thread is derailed by Joe again...

While I agree with most Harper's policies and will likely be voting for him in the next election, I'm surprised nobody has commented on how pathetic his new attack ads are. The casino-esque adds witht the slots and the dice etc are so lame they made me cringe. That's the sort of garbage dumb kids in my first year of undergrad BBA years ago would have come up with and got a D for. "Dion is a risk...what else is a risk?....ummm....GAMBLING! YEah! Brilliant! Slots! Awesome...let's keep this going! Dice! yeah great! Cheesy narrator! GooD!" Wait...no...I think maybe most Canadians are astute enough to smell the cheese on this one. Personally I'm dissapointed. These ads are ALMOST as bad as the Liberal clapping ad they used to introduce the Green Shaft.

While I can't agree that immigrants are all losers etc, I can agree that 'multi-culturalism' in Canada is road apples and immigrants have no business sitting around mooching off our social systems.

CORRECTION! It was Trudeau that screwed up well before Mulroney became PM. Before him Canada had no debt. He sent us down the road of deficit spending and Mulroney inherited the mess during a recession and admittedly made it worse.

100% Correct. This is why the economy sucks right now. Americans were too stupid to not buy houses they couldn't afford, American banks were too greedy to not provide them mortgages and banks internationally were too stupid/greedy to see how stupid and greedy the American banks and consumers were.

Not true and you have no way of proving that. Coke addicts would still want coke and heroin addicts would still want heroin because chewing a cocoa leaf wouldn't give anything near the experience.

Personally I like the restrictions. I don't want large interest groups ruling politics.

Well done? Wait no... and it didn't last more than a few months. That really doesn't mean anything unless you can come up with some reputable citations to back that up. The huge deficits, however, are wild exaggerations on McGuinty's part seeing as though he's increased spending since Harris left. because he already reduced provincial income tax by 30% and making further reductions all at once might not be prudent? Also, Ontario's economy wasn't bleeding jobs in dying industries with nothing to replace them. Because SK's natural resource industry is absorbing the effects of any sort of recessionary pressures. Ontario's economy is fully exposed to everything that happens in the US and is suffering accordingly. Saskatchewan is doing fine. I'm sure Flaherty doesn't agree with their high taxes, but there's no point in criticizing a province that is having no trouble finding investors. Corporations aren't stupid when choosing where and how to invest. They see how high taxes are and make decisions on a ton of different variables including this. Ontario's economy is not suffering because Flaherty said it's an unattractive place to invest. They already see how high the taxes are. Crying about how unfair he's being for openly criticizing the McGuinty government for being shortminded is silly. Unless you can come up with a citation where he guarantees he'll implement his plan, I'm not biting on that one. If you do manage to find one then yes, I firmly believe that his environmental plan would be left on the backburner, changed a hundred times and then slowly implemented years from now if he decides to do anything with it at all.

They also cut social assistance rates by 22% because it was being abused, eliminated OAC in high schools and closed down hospitals the government couldn't afford because of Federal Liberal cuts in transfer payments. They cut provincial income taxes by something nuts like 30% from what I remember reading and that helps me as a taxpayer rather than the 500,000 useless people Harris took off of Ontario's Welfare rolls. For the record, I think that the selling of the 407 was a bad decision but the bulk of Harris' budget balancing most certainly DID come from frugal spending. Nobody is claiming that the GST is revenue-neutral and that families don't feel its effect. Dion and the Liberals are saying the Green Shift is revenue neutral. This is rubbish. It's another tax and spend equalization plan for poor people.

Touché. Prentice was a federal PC since 1976. Even so, Harper quit the federal progressive conservative party in the 1980's out of disgust and his lowering of taxes really doesn't lead to a reasonable comparison of the conservatives of today compared to the Mulroney wannabe Liberals. No they didn't. They proposed a balanced budget in 1990 which ended up being a great big fat deficit by the time Bob Rae took over. I will have to admit that saying Bob Rae did any better is categorically wrong. He led Ontario to its highest deficits albeit during an economic recession but now he's a federal Liberal now so that doesn't really hurt my argument. In 1999-2000 Ontario recorded a $668 million surplus, balancing the budget one full year ahead of the schedule laid out in the government's Balanced Budget Plan. With a $3,325 million surplus in 2000-01 and an interim surplus of $58 million for 2001-02, Ontario achieved three consecutive budget surpluses. When Ernie Eves succeeded Mike Harris as the Premier of Ontario, Jim Flaherty was not reinstated as the Minister of Finance. That means that Jim Flaherty left the province of Ontario with a budget in surplus. I'm not talking about business income taxes. What difference do they really make when entire industries in Ontario are failing? Lowering income taxes on these businesses isn't all of the sudden going to make them profitable again. I'm talking about capital investment taxes, of which Ontario has the fourth highest in the WORLD. What you're effectively doing is over taxing companies that potentially want to start, grow or expand their business in Ontario. These are companies that would create jobs to replace the ones being lost by backwards thinking corporations who are bleeding money (see GM/Ford/Chrysler). C.D. Howe Institute on Ontario Business Taxes When Ontario accounts for the vast majority of Canada's economic slowdown and when the province also has the one of the most anti-investment tax policies in the world I think he MIGHT be on to something. Encourage new business. Don't scare it away with high taxes. Mulroney was a bonehead and Martin made a plan to buy new helicopters. He didn't make a plan to purchase the helicopters way over budget during an economic slowdown. All of the bidders came in over budget. Now what? The difference is that Harper hasn't made the environment a priority for this election and he's not likely to implement ANY plan on the environment in the near future. Dion has staked his entire campaign on the Green Shift. He's promising billions to Atlantic fishing fleets and for people to make their houses more energy efficient. That's cool and all, but his platform appears to be environment first and economy second and that's not striking a chord with Canadians.

People seriously. Stop responding to this guy's threads. He's got nothing intelligent to say and he's got almost nothing to back up what he does say. Arguing with him so he can repeat his ignorance to us is a waste of time.

While this is certainly something that would make you raise your eyebrows, quoting a blog and then saying that elections Canada is in the Liberal pocket book really just defeats anything you would otherwise be trying to say.

I think it's a silly tactic used to influence the lowest common denominator. It's the same crap the republicans are trying to use against Obama. It would be nice if the politicians can just stick to the issues but unfortunately most Canadians can't be expected to understand 25% of the issues at hand.

The Progressive Conservative government of years past was crippled and largely destroyed. There is I think maybe ONE MP from the federal PC's in Harpers new government. Actually, I loved Mike Harris and Flaherty at the provincial level. The Liberals in the 1980's followed Trudeau's example and sent the province spiralling into debt. It was so bad that the province ended up electing an NDP government of all things. While Rae did better than the provincial Liberals, it was Mike Harris and Flaherty that had fix the province's finances. Now we have a whining Liberal sop as our premier and his backward economic theory is just making Ontario's economic slowdown worse. The taxation on capital investment, which is one of the biggest factors in determining where a company will invest their money, is VERY high. In Ontario, which is responsible for something like 40% of Canada's GDP, the tax on capital investment is 42% and only trails Congo, Argentina and China for the highest in the world. Way to go McGuinty. Now seeing as though Ontario is literally BLEEDING jobs, why is it that the provincial Liberals are discouraging companies from investing here? Do we need to remind you that we have soldiers in Afghanistan (that the Liberals sent) under equipped without helicopters to move themselves around in? Do I need to remind you that thanks to Trudeau and Chretien the poor men and women in Afghanistan are fighting with equipment from the 1960's? Our military has been so sorely neglected under the Liberals that NOT investing in it would have left it impotent. It's despicable the Liberals would send them to Afghanistan in the first place with the sort of equipment they're using right now. I'll tell you one last time. In an economic slowdown, BASIC economic theory is to spend (invest) money in the economy to smooth out short term fluctations. Increasing spending while revenues are decreasing MAY seem silly to you, but it's sound economic theory tried and tested for the last 100 years. Running an enormous deficit a la Trudeau/Mulroney days would be bad. Bookmark this thread. If Harper runs a great big fat deficit I'll be switching camps. I can't justify that and I wouldn't even try unless something completely ridiculous were to happen (like a plague or a nuke). With that said my background in economics and finance would make me EXPECT the government to be spending with a cooling economy but feel free to ignore that point again. I'll repeat again: Thank you Stephen Harper for lowering my taxes. I prefer having my taxes lowered than having them back where they were under the Liberals and I much prefer this to an indirect tax on my wallet via the Green Shift.

The problem is that things like cocaine are extremely extremely extremely terrible for your body. To be honest, I'm not really against the legalization of marijuana because it's a pretty inane drug but cocaine and heroin and any other family of hard drug is something only an idiot politician would support. Regardless of whether marijuana should be legalized or not, the people in question in this thread are not marijuana crusaders or anything of the sort. They are the scum of the earth and that a Liberal MP would support it just goes to show you how entitled they feel they are in their positions and how far they'll go to pander to their ethnic communities.

but comparing the Tory governments of the past to today is really not a fair thing to do. Mulroney PC's were NOTHING like Harper's Conservatives. Mulroney is widely considered to have been more a liberal than a conservative. I'll remind you again that Harper quit the Progressive Conservative party in the 1980's out of disgust for their policies. Canada is considered the world over as an over-taxed country. This is thanks to Trudeau and Mulroney and their deficit spending. The Chretien Liberals ran a balanced budget by governing through 11 years of almost unprecedented prosperity throughout the WHOLE world and by DRASTICALLY cutting social services throughout the country. Liberal economic policy over the last 30 years has been to tax over-heavily and spend the money where they think it's needed. Lately that's been to pay back the debt they accumulated while the Canadian economy was booming which in itself is an alright thing to do...but that's not the point. Conservative economic policy, that is REAL conservative economic policy and not thinly disguised Mulroney liberalism, is to tax lightly and let the people decide where to spend the money. This is what Harper has been doing. We are paying less taxes than we would under the Liberals and the budget is still balanced. This is good. Our economy has been cooling for a good number of years now too so it's even more noteworthy as far as I'm concerned. Either way, spending during a recession is a GOOD thing because it to some extent smoothes out the shock of a collapsing economy. It saves jobs. Your failure is that you hugely exaggerate Harper's spending record. Yes, he has been spending money, but he has been doing so within the confines of his budget. Spending the money you receive in revenue and putting that money towards areas that sorely need it (ie our troops in Afghanistan, the unprotected North and Canadian industry right now) I would say is responsible governing. If he starts running huge deficits, THEN i'll agree with you. Until then, you're just exaggerating everything he does and putting a negative spin on it. Our social services have not really been affected and I'm paying less taxes. Thank you Stephen Harper. I much prefer this to having my taxes raised back to where they were and spending extra money on consumer goods under Dion's Green Shift so that he and his government can give hand outs.