Moonbox

Chrysler is done. There's not a chance in the world it will survive without pretty much a government buyout. GM and Ford are teetering on the brink. Personally, I say good riddance. I'm not against well-paying jobs for Canadians. I think Canada NEEDS these sort of primary manufacturing businesses in order to survive as strong economy. With that said, the Big Three gouged North Americans for decades with garbage cars for terrible prices. They were allowed to do this because there was no competition. Thank god to Toyota and Honda for allowing us an alternative where 30% of the cost of each vehicle DOESN'T go towards overpaying employees and paying benefit/pensions to uneducated and often unskilled workers. GM has something like a $30/hour labour cost disadvantage compared to a Toyota or Honda when benefits and pensions are factored in. Why on earth should we, the consumers, pay that? No wonder we're not buying those cars. Obviously you feel bad for the families getting laid off at the Big Three but only for how stupid they were to go along with the most disastrous and short-sighted union in world history. Message to CAW employees: Your wages and benefits are unsustainable and have been for a good long while. Next time you go to the negotiation table try and be a little more realistic.

not to mention incoming auto-industry bailouts.....

Jdobbin technicalities don't make your point any stronger. A money bill you say? It's fairly easy to slip these sorts of things into the annual budgets just like the CPC put the immigration bill in last year's budget. It's not hard to turn a policy bill into a money bill. Is that what they need to do to get any policy reform done??

It all depends on what the Liberals choose to vote against. If they vote against something small and silly that the majority of Canadians couldn't care less about, they will likely have a problem. On the other hand, if the CPC comes out with something harsh and unpopular and an election is called because of this, the CPC will likely feel the brunt of the blame. The assumptions you make Jdobbin are lacking in one very important area. They all assume that the CPC and the LPC don't understand how regular people think. As I've said already, numerous times, Canadians do not want another election soon. They will be disgusted in whatever party brings it about. Harper is going to continue pushing through legislation that is difficult to make a big issue out of. If the Liberals start being obstinate about silly little things most Canadians don't care about and try to block everything then yes, there will be an election and yes Harper will call it. The Liberals aren't that stupid though. By the same token the CPC isn't stupid enough to purposely put forward legislation that could turn into an unpopular election issue. We'll see the same crap continue from last year. CPC puts forward legislation that the Liberals might not like but can't really campaign against and nothing will change for probably at least 2 years. Harper knows another snap election would see his fortunes turn. The Liberals know if they play politics it would go equally bad for them. This isn't hard to understand.

No he won't. I think you're totally out of touch with what the average Canadian thinks and knows about politics. The multitudes do NOT know much about politics. They do NOT want another election. The voters will abandon the party that forces the next election if it comes too soon(ie whatever party votes non-confidence OR Harper if he just outright calls one). He knows this. You apparently don't. Unless I'm mistaken you seem to think he's deliberately going to come up with bad legislation for Canada to provoke an election. I think you're out to lunch on that. What's really going to happen is Harper is not going to compromise with the Liberals because he simply doesn't have to. He won't poison-pill it, but he'll ignore the opposition's protests should there be any simply because he can. Not anytime soon. Again, remember this conversation. We'll see in the summer who was right. He's going to decide not to have an election. You're going to look foolish. Maybe 1.5 - 2 years from now there will be another one, but I'm quite honestly having trouble taking you seriously when you come up with nonsense like this.

Everyone here is ignoring one very simple fact. There isn't a party out there other than the Bloc maybe that has the potential to even compete in an election over the next year or two. Unless unbelievably stupid legislation were proposed (like anti-abortion/gay rights/religious schools) or something equally as right-wingnutted, the Liberals would have absolutely no chance to win an election after a non-confidence vote. This minority is basically a carte-blanche majority AT LEAST for another year. Bob Rae is an EXTREMELY intelligent man (though his policy is generally terrible) and he's not stupid enough to crush his party's fortunes on an election the Liberals can't afford and can't win so soon after a renewed mandate has been given to the CPC. They will continue to abstain or vote with the ruling government and all of this bluster on these forums will be a total waste of time.

Jdobbin you're being silly. The conservatives will say the Liberals can't criticize their budgets effectively UNLESS they opposed them. They can't squarely blame the Liberals for the budgets altogether. Your whole argument here is devoid of any sort of solid rationality. You and I have discussed on many occasions how Harper has shown himself to be a bit slippery when it comes to his promises. With that said, he's not an idiot. We all know that Canadians don't like unnecessary elections. At least with the last one people with a head on their shoulders understood why it was necessary for Harper to call an election politically. It would have been disastrous not to call one given the economy would be tanking shortly. Why feed the Liberals ammo for what they declared was the inevitable defeat of Harper's government? Anyways, now that the election has come and passed, NOBODY will be calling an election within the next year and probably at least the next two. Why? Because Canadians get tired of it and it will look negatively on whatever party triggers it. For the next year or two, Harper has a defacto majority. He'll make everything into a confidence vote because he can and because he doesn't have to cooperate with the Liberals. It looks good on the Liberals, frankly. We'll see how he governs over these next two years but there's not a chance in the world that he'll force another election before the LPC leadership convention. Remember this conversation so that later on when you're claims turn out to be total balogna we can all have a good chuckle. Maybe by then you'll 'revise' your prediction again after it turns out to be impossible...kind of like your election predictions....

Maybe people need to understand what taxes Flaherty is talking about. It's NOT corporate income tax rates that are in question. It's CAPITAL INVESTMENT taxes for businesses. These are taxes which businesses must pay when trying to build and grow their businesses. When our auto sector is tanking and we're losing jobs by the tens of thousands, please explain to me the wisdom in OVER taxing companies that will be potentially investing money to create jobs????? Ontario's capital investment taxes are the 4th HIGHEST in the WORLD for any state/province/country. Only places like China and Brazil have higher. Oh WoW!

Flaherty was the only responsible finance minister we've had in Ontario for 20+ years. I'm totally against his selling off the 407 but aside from that he was excellent and was needed in Ontario. Now we have cry baby McGuinty whining about a deficit after something like 16 Billion in spending increases. I'll take Flaherty over anyone else in recent memory thank you very much.

I don't dislike Dion as much as a lot of people do. I think he had good intentions and gave it an honest try, but his priorities were different from most Canadians. The main problem I have with him is how he complains about Conservative propaganda against the Green Shift, but his entire Green Shift campaign was propaganda. If he would have went out and honestly said, "Yes, the Green Shift will make things more expensive for most people and your income tax cuts will mostly not offset this, but this is necessary to save the environment." I would have had more respect for him. Instead, he spins that the Green Shift won't cost Canadians a dime and that revenue neutral means that everyone will get back what they pay in taxes. Unfortunately for him, this was an outright lie and he was called on it. To whine about being caught BS'ing is deplorable.

The Arrow was costing tax payers so much money it wasn't at all worth it. The fact that nobody could find foreign buyers for the project really shows you how much spin Canadian media put on it as to the merits of the project.

The best way for Ontario to get a fair shake is to make it a campaign issue during an election. Vote for a party that is going to help Ontario out. The Liberals and Tories will always be in contention for your vote so if enough Ontarions are vocal about it the promises and pledges will start flying. Ontario got the rawest deal of all under the Liberals. This is why the vote has swung so dramatically away from them.

This will cost us nothing extra. We will likely make money on it. There is a risk we could lose double what we were on the hook for to begin but if the lowest risk mortgages in Canada go down then we'll have a lot more to worry about than the 25 Billion from this plan.

The money goes to whichever party receives votes. It doesn't make sense that the Liberals or Conservatives should be the only ones getting money. I'm not green supporter but under current legislation it's almost impossible for a party to break out into the open and it'd be even harder without this fair and equitable form of funding.

A report done by the Finance Department under the LIBERALS indicated that the Income Trusts were costing the federal and provincial governments hundreds of millions. This is why Income Trusts taxes were re-evaluated. Appointing Senators is status quo then huh? Well good thing for the conservatives then that Trudeau and others set the precedent in appointing senators to cabinet. It's a terrible thing when Harper does it though...just terrible. What's also particularly hard to swallow is that you are outraged at the conflict of interest in Senator/Cabinet appointment but somehow it's okay because the 'system was set up' so that the major check and fail safe on our ruling government is run by people who were appointed by the ruling government. This is one of those cases where I'm not impressed with Harper. Drummond implied, but went pretty much as far as saying that the consequences of cutting government spending in an economic downturn would be a bad thing to do. He didn't argue against a short term deficit. He argued against long term deficit running a la Trudeau/Mulroney. There will not be another election for at least another 1.5-2 years. Who will oppose them? I don't think he cares if he makes friends in a whiney parliament when he knows he doesn't have an effective opposition. Why would he play nice? He practically has a majority government now and the threat of the Liberals doing something is very unlikely to materialize any time soon. The economy has been slowing since mid-2007. This is when the banks started showing huge losses. This is when the Canadian dollar started approaching par. The economic crisis has come as no surprise to a lot of people. As for the spending, it doesn't have to be directed at manufacturing to be effective. Throwing money at manufacturers only encourages them to be inefficient. The important thing is to just get money flowing in the economy. More money in the economy means more spending. It was cancelled in the first place because money was hidden and siphoned through it for the sponsorship scandal. It didn't look good on Paul Martin's books to be increasing funding for an organization party to corruption. Haha. First off, he's predicting a budget deficit four years forward with no spending cuts. If Harper runs multi-billion dollar deficits 4 years in a row he'll have lost my support as well. As of yet, we haven't seen what his 2009 budget is and we don't even know if he's going to keep his recent spending promises. You'll probably be outraged if he doesn't keep his spending promises though too. For a few years, yes. For many years? No. Referring back to Chretien Liberals of the 1990's for their good fiscal management also loses some of its effect when the current Liberals are promising to do a bad job themselves.

I agree they should get the per vote money. I don't understand how anyone could dispute that. I don't think they deserve any seats though. If you can't garner enough support for even a single community to elect you in a federation then you'll continue to strike out.

The income trust was a giant tax loophole for corporations. It was unfair to leave it as it was and anyone who held onto these investments recovered their money in short order because the law didn't take effect immediately. As for appointing Senators, the Senate right now is dominated by partisan Liberals right now. It would be silly to leave the Senate that stacked for the Liberals. If we were to have an entire new Senate elected that might be a better idea. He basically encourages the spending. I said I'm being pragmatic. I mean that I acknowledge Harper's failings, realize he is a hypocrite, but vote for him anyways because his policies have benefited me and the opposition was promising less money in my wallet and just as much if not more spending. The Liberals had been threatening for a year to bring his government down. It's not 'bullying' to call these threats out as cowardly rhetoric and advance your platform in the face of an extremely weak opposition. We will see more of the same. The Canadian economy depends largely on the manufacturing sector. It has been slumping for years now as the dollar has risen. The only thing that was 'bubbling along' in the Canadian economy was resource based. As for the 'outrageous' spending increases you've mentioned, the only one I agree with is the UFO museum. Total waste of money IMO, but for some reason there are fools out there (hey Quebec) who think this sort of crap is important. As for military colleges, if you can link how much that is costing us maybe we can discuss what it's worth to have well-trained officers for our soldiers risking their lives around the world. VIA-Rail spending is NOT new spending. It is reinstatement of Liberal funding that was planned but cancelled under Paul Martin because of the sponsorship scandal. Could some of it had been spent better? Likely it could have been. The Dion/Martin Liberals certainly wouldn't have done any better. A deficit over the next few years is good economic policy. Don Drummond says so and so do most economists out there. I find it interesting how you'll quote Don Drummond as an expert supporting your opinions but then when we read further into what he's saying and find something contradicting your point of view, all of the sudden he's no longer the expert and you disagree with him.

That's your opinion. Harper has to contend witht the fact that he's still running a minority. You can disagree all you want with Drummond, but he's one of the finest economists in the country and I'd love to hear why you disagree with spending in an economic slowdown. You regularly cite him as support for your opinions but you tend to leave out the full story of what he's actually saying....such as with the Green Shift...but we've already gone over that at length. No, and that's the difference between you and I here. I have agreed that a great many things Harper has done have not been good policy. I preferred an income tax cut to a GST cut. It's simple math that makes me feel this way. I find his personal views on abortion and gay rights narrow-minded and stupid. I'm dissapointed in some of the hypocrisy he displays and I shake my head at how he's been throwing money at Quebec in attempt to procure more votes. In that sense he's showing he's no better than the Liberals have been for 30 years. The reality, however, is that I disagreed more with the policies of the other party. I'm not a hard-core Tory. I have voted Liberal in the last 4 years. I voted for McGuinty (who I despise) in the last provincial election because I felt John Tory was a buffoon. I see the story both ways. I have admitted on many occasions Harper has made mistakes. You seem to be of the opinion that EVERYTHING he does is wrong. Things weren't good for very long. The economy has been slowing for over a year. He ran a 9 Billion surplus last year. Like I said, I think he could reign in spending a little, but I would not at all be upset if he ran a deficit this year, because I know how an economy works.

The government isn't buying our banks at all. They're buying specific investments the banks hold and giving the banks cash for it. That equates to 0% new government control over the industry.

You act as if it is somehow shocking that a politician would make promises that he doesn't/couldn't keep. "...but Harper said!" is not a good argument against what is generally considered the wisest course of action by economists. Your esteemed Don Drummond indicated a deficit is probably the best and an unavoidable course of action. The economy has been slowing for over a year now. Increased spending, like I said, is GOOD policy, as long as a surplus in a good year would more or less erase a deficit in a bad year. It's called stablization policy, and every economist worth a lick advocates for smoothing short term shocks to the economy. Your consistent and repeated declarations that Harper is bad because he breaks his election promises is noted. We are filing it along with the broken promises of every PM we've ever had. Harper is a politician. Thus far, I'm finding his decisions to be entirely pragmatic and mostly beneficial to me. That's how I vote. I prefer to leave emotion out of the equation because it generally makes fewer good decisions.

The Merrill Lynch economist you're quoting is generally considered to be one of the most consistently pessimistic out there. Further, when he was doing his deficit projections for the year, he basically assumed that Harper would continue to announce spending increases like he has an would not tighten the wallet. Don Drummond said that Harper would have to either cut spending or raise taxes to avoid a deficit. This is not breaking news or rocket science. Also, Drummond almost went as far as to recommend a deficit. I don't have a link to show you but if you really want to see it go pick up a Globe and Mail because the article is in there. Like I've been saying for months: A deficit is probably a good plan right now as long as it's reasonable. As long as we're not running Trudeau/Mulroney sized ones then the long term impact of running a deficit would be negligible but the short term benefits would be tremendous.

Bob Rae would be a disaster. He ran Ontario's biggest deficits ever and had the lowest approval rating of any premier in Ontario ever. It wasn't that long ago. We all remember. Making Bob Rae, who is held in contempt by the majority of people in the Liberal heartland, leader of the party would put the nail in their coffin. Maybe the Liberals would do well again in Toronto, but that'd be about it.

Harper called the election because it was politically advantageous to do so and because parliament was a joke as it stood. It ensured he stays in as PM for likely another 2 years. Nobody is going to be eager to bring him down now. Who cares? If they didn't vote then they don't get a voice, and neither myself or the conservatives care whatsoever. It's their own stupid fault. A better indication would be that the Liberals got largely shut out everyone EXCEPT the big cities. I wonder which matters more. Until the Liberals stop thinking they can 100% ignore the west and expect to do so they'll not be forming a majority anytime soon....or a government for that matter. There are enough people in Ontario who identify with western Canada to continue the trend we've seen in the last 2 elections.

That's sarcasm right? Either way, a tax cut is a tax cut. I liked Martin's tax cut better than Harper's in the 2006 election and voted for him in 2004, but at least Harper cut taxes too. This is better than higher effective taxes under Dion IMO. This is kind of an worthless point. The Martin Liberal government was the highest spending government prior to that. It seems there is an upwards trend. Hopefully that gets reversed but I think it was unlikely to happen under Dion/Bob Rae Liberals.

This is exactly why it failed in Ontario. The big cities get pandered to enough already.