Moonbox

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.

OH WOW LOOK! How am I not surprised that Dr Greenthumb agrees with Sixpackjoe? I will have to say this though: Nothing you have posted, however ignorant, can even compare to the slop Joe here has presented. There are a lot of anti-conservative posters on this board. Jdobbin, Marksman and many others I have argued with have always been able to carry on a discussion from the other point of view. Where they would provoke intelligent and reasoned responses from posters, you and Joe here will only continue to get smirks and guffaws and maybe even a little pity because your best attempt at a reasoned and intelligent argument could get dismantled by a pre-teen.

I just think it's really unfortunate for the Liberals to have chosen Dion as their leader. Before he became the Liberal leader they were still a very relevant party with a very real base of support. From what I've seen he's shown himself to be the worst man for the job in a tough time for the Liberals and those two factors together have killed the Liberals just like Mulroney and then Kim Campbell killed the Progressive Conservatives. With that said, even IF the Liberals cease to exist as a party, another right/left fence straddling government will pop up to fill the void much like the Reform and Canadian Allliance replaced the incompetent and defunct Progressive Conservatives. A new leader and a fresh face will do the Liberals a TON of good.

but that's the thing. This was no real accomplishment. I already said it many times. Cutting transfer payments to the provinces, accumulating unjustifiable surpluses in EI and crippling our military to balance the books that largely the same Liberals ruined is like puking on someone else's carpet, cleaning it up and then saying, "HEY! LOOK I CLEANED YOUR CARPET! I DID GOOD!" You act like the monthly accounts matter. They don't. It's the average that counts. Tax cuts are good. Tax and spend is bad. Tax and spend hurts the economy and consumers and the theory has been disproven by economies all over the world. This is just rehashing the previous point. They drastically cut spending on social and healthcare systems to BELOW pre-Trudeau levels because Trudeau sent our country on its way so far into debt that we were headed for bankruptcy as a nation. At one point 40% of every tax dollar went to paying back debt. Why are we congratulating the Liberals for cleaning up their own mess? Don't even try to bring up Mulroney here either because Harper quit from the Mulroney Progressive Conservatives because he found them to be the same sort of crap that the Trudeau Liberals were.

Dr Greenthumb after replying to this quote I'm more or less going to just ignore everything you have to say. There is a lot of partisanship in this forum but at least most of the posters with differing opinions from my own have something solid to offer in their arguments. Your posts in particular make me cringe at how ignorant and biased a partisan opinion can become. I've seen no exception when reading your posts and this is another example of pure and unadultered garbage. You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't even TRY to support your opinions. Your lack knowledge and understanding of basically anything related to politics makes your posts nothing but a waste of time. For the sake of at least supporting what i just said, i'll break down your post. You have DIRECTLY linked the slowing economy to Harper politics but you clearly have no understanding of financial or international markets or anything to do with economies in general. Canada's economy has slowed down for a good number of reasons and pretty much none of them have ANYTHING to do with what Harper did in Canada. Here's why our economy is slowing: 1. The world credit crisis 2. The depreciation of the US dollar and the appreciation of the Canadian dollar in value 3. Rising worldwide oil prices. Now strangely enough, all of these factors are screwing with the economy and at the same time they are making each other worse as well. I'll give you a high five if you could explain any of it but I'm not going to hold my breath because I'm almost certain you can't and doubt you'll even try. The economy is slowing worldwide. As foreign economies slow, so will our own. If you're going to put the blame squarely on Harper's feet then you're going to have to explain how he made oil prices higher, made the Canadian dollar more valuable, crashed the US housing market and then brought the rest of the world's economy down with him. The only thing I'll agree with you on is that 8 years of Bush most certainly HAS made things worse but you can't even really place the bulk of the blame at his feet either. Telling us what you think Harper aspires to be is a waste of everyone's time. You don't like him. We get it. We don't care. We DO want to hear about things he does wrong but we couldn't care less what your clueless imagination can come up with in regards to his dicatorial Darth Vader agenda.

it's a pretty funny idea to think about. With that said, I think you're right that the Liberals will sort of fly off the radar for a good number of years if they get whomped this election. They'll be back when they have a real issue to campaign on.

I think it's the polls more than anything.

You're only making yourself look worse here. I said you can't support your own opinion and that you're just flinging useless rhetoric and scary words at us. You responded with more useless rhetoric and bigger scary words. You're 'observation' is about as useful as a poo-flavored lolipop if you can't provide any relevant support for it. I'm starting to think the more I read your posts that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about 95% of the time you post.

Oh you bet nobody is arguing that Mulroney did a good job either. Like I said before though, interest rates in the high teens, economic recessions and inherited debt from Trudeau DID make things harder for him. I'm not saying he wasn't an idiot and some of the debt shouldn't be blamed on him, but it was Trudeau's tax and spend that set us on that path. Besides, the comparison between the PC and the CPC is a lot less easy to make than today's Liberals compared to Trudeau/Chretien Liberals. yeah harper has diminishing surpluses in an economic downturn. The Liberals didn't really face a serious one from 1993-2006 other than the dot com crash which left Canada largely unaffected. Like I said before, it's good economics to run a balanced budget or slight deficit in a slowing economy. I won't bother explaining it to you because you probably don't care. Your 'spending like drunken sailors' is just colorful language again. Way to exaggerate wildly. We go back to Trudeau for drunken sailor spending. Flaherty indicated he would be increasing transfer payments to the provinces a long time ago. He said the federal surplus was too high. I can't remember who said it but it was aptly stated awhile back that "The money is in Ottawa but the need is in the provinces." What does that mean? It means it's not fair or responsible to reap huge surpluses federally while provinces run deficits from supporting an overwhelmed health care system. Besides, the budget is balanced so you're not really scoring any points there either.

The Liberal Party may be bankrupt but it is far from gone and there are enough of you around to make sure it stays for a long time to come. Maybe it transforms itself into something more relevant or maybe it just has a few quiet years but I think your scenario is getting a little too ahead of itself.