The real Stephen Harper

[willy]

Blubber,

I think I am a typical Conservative, whatever that would be. We have a diverse party like the other three main parties but here goes what I would say on the GST thing.

This will not fix all things and it may in itself fix very little, but it is the right thing to do. Consumption taxes are paid by everyone and it is more efficient to cut it for everyone than it is to have some sort of rebate scheme.

How does a typical conservative think you can best serve the poor?

* You need different things from different levels of Canadian society. (Federal, Provincial, Municipalities, Communities, Non Profits)

* Local government need to tailor programs to fit local needs.

* You create opportunities for education and work experience.

* Local charities and community groups need access to grants and tax credits. They are better positioned to use innovation and meet the individual’s one on one.

* To actually help someone transform their life they need mentoring and relationships that they can choose to participate in.

* We need to have a health system that supports people with metal health issues.

* Drug education, prevention and rehabilitation have to be accessible to the most vulnerable.

* You don't tax them they have enough challenges.

You can't be paternal and tell people how they should be helped. You need to create opportunities to come along side individuals, learn from their experience and they can learn from yours. They have to choose knew opportunities and the opportunities have to be available.

If you build it they will not come. You have to first create the grass roots relationships that will build the change from the bottom up. You need leaders that create leaders not a benevolent dictator who claims to know best.

Rant done, from a typical Conservative.

[Guest eureka]

Stan!

The average food bank client is the average welfare recipient: the average minimum wage recipient. Can you comprehend the numbers who will not benefot one whit from GST reductions?

The cause of this is past Conservative actions. The consequence of Harris in Ontario is an effective reduction in welfare of 40% including inflation. Minimum wages wer nor increased in more than ten years: an effective reduction of some twent percent.

The same applies to Alberta where food banks first appeared under Conservative largesse.

Those two provinces account for most of the increase in poverty in Canada over the past fifteen years. Each had more than a 50% increase in poverty during the Harris years in Ontario.

It has not got much better and Harper is promising more of the same.

[lovecanada]

Stan!

The average food bank client is the average welfare recipient: the average minimum wage recipient. Can you comprehend the numbers who will not benefot one whit from GST reductions?

The cause of this is past Conservative actions. The consequence of Harris in Ontario is an effective reduction in welfare of 40% including inflation. Minimum wages wer nor increased in more than ten years: an effective reduction of some twent percent.

The same applies to Alberta where food banks first appeared under Conservative largesse.

Those two provinces account for most of the increase in poverty in Canada over the past fifteen years. Each had more than a 50% increase in poverty during the Harris years in Ontario.

It has not got much better and Harper is promising more of the same.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow can't believe those dasterdly Conservatives, started something so progressive as a food bank! Here in Alberta, walked into the Canadian Superstore, they had big billboard out, "hiring in all departments", so, why would people still be on welfare here???? A Liberal culture of "I deserve it" maybe? "Why work if I don't have to?." "Why get up in the morning to go to work if the government is paying for me to stay in bed?"

Most Canadians are hard working, want to get ahead, and be able to support their families! Can we just stop shovelling the free benefits at everyone who asks for them? I know a lady who is trying to make her way on AISH, she really needs the funds, so let's give it to her and others, as a matter of fact, she is the one who really needs the help. But I am sick and tired of people who are perfectly able to work being supported by our welfare system.

[Guest eureka]

It might not do you any long term harm to think a little instead of patting yourself on the back for your self reliance and superiority over others.

Food banks were not an initiative of the Conservatives but of private citizens tryung to fill the gap created by governments that left hundreds of thousands to starve.

Did you read anything I wrote? There are not jobs in spite of signs advertising minimum wage, no benefit positions. Even if there were enough, the situation would be the same and possibly worse since those jobs put prople in an even worse position than welfare.

[willy]

The non profit industry does amazing work. Why would we want to replace some of these fantasitic organization born out of a vision with some government drones.

[kimmy]

Kimmy, I would think it is time to put your intelligence to better use. I have not dissected your last post and I agree with much of it on a cursory reading.

However, your comments on the GST are infuriating ninsense.

The average foodbank recipient as has been highlighted in several studies, has a couple of dollars a week available for discretionary spending after rent and and food not supplied by the Banks.

Tell me how much they save from a GST reduction! Tell me that they are benfiting as much as the rich!

Do we now define "the rich" as anybody who doesn't use the foodbank?

I'm certainly not rich; my income is below the average Canadian's income. I manage my money and stick to a budget and I know that the amount of money a GST cut will save me is, while not large, is also not trivial. Who knows, perhaps enough to buy some cans of tuna for the foodbank. Or maybe buy myself some beer and popcorn.

However, if your point is that people who don't pay any tax don't benefit from a tax-cut, then I suppose you're correct.

My contempt for Harper grows with each "policy" announcement.

I doubt that; your contempt for Harper long predates this election. As we have seen with your GST flip-flop, your view of Harper seems to define your view of the issues, not vice-versa.

-k

[shoop]

Why you contemptuous of a tax credit aimed at encouraging use of public transit?

What is contemptuous in a plan to deal with childhood obesity by making it more affordable for parents to put their children into organized sports?

How is providing proper support to our veterans of the armed services contemptible to you?

My contempt for Harper grows with each "policy" announcement.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Guest eureka]

Come on, Kimmy! There was no flip-flop by me on the GST. I think we dealt with your misperception on that.

And you know that I do not say that anyone who does not use a foodbank is rich. There is somewhere around a million people in Canada who do use foodbanks at this time. Those people would not save the price of a package of pins from a GST cut.

There are a couple of million more who do not use foodbanks who might, just might, save that price plus enough to buy a spool of thread.

The last figure I saw for the poverty rate in Canada was 17.6%. How much will those people save?

[Guest eureka]

What use, shoop, is a tax credit for parents who put their children into organized sport to those parents who will not pay enough taxes to make use of the credit: to those parents who could not afford organized sport for their children no matter what the credit?

It is another sop to the complacent support of the Conservatives.

What this country needs is a whole lot less organized sport and a whole lot more spaces and facilities for youngsters to play their games without adult interference. That is an idea I have been pushing for many years to no effect except in the sports I was involved with. And that is where the money should go instead of to "beer and popcorns" for the "hockey mothers and fathers."

[Canuck E Stan]

Forget the pittance you claim that the GST reduction will do for the foodbanks, where has your Federal Government been the past 12 years to resolve some of this problem.

Don't give me the Conservative government /Harris government was the cause....12 years to solve some of this problem with surplus after surplus and nothing done by the Liberals.

The only change is the number of recipients to the foodbanks getting larger.

The GST reduction was not labeled as a solution to foodbanks as you want it to be.

Open your wallet and give if your that concerned,your Liberal government seems to care less about your concern for foodbanks or it's recipients.

Eureka,as for kids in sports,your ideas have long passed the expiry date.

Today's kids don't want your sports of yesterday.

[Guest eureka]

Federal governments have been remiss for the past twenty five years since the first foodbank opened in Edmonton. Provincial governments have been worse since they, as a matter of policy, exacerbated the poverty situation.

I do not relate the GST reduction to foodbanks. I ask someone, anyone, to tell me how a GST reduction is going to give anything to the millions who have that little disposable income.

For kids in sport, there are countries that still follow my prescription and they do not have our problems of obesity and non-participation. They also have a heck of a lot more kids able to participate.

Oh, and from my own experience in sports as a player and a coach, I can tell you that kids in organized sport are over coached and havel the spontaneity and creativity knocked out of them. They are not nearly as good as the kids of yesteryear and the result is to be seen in the dullness of professional sport.

[kimmy]

Come on, Kimmy! There was no flip-flop by me on the GST. I think we dealt with your misperception on that.

We did? You were adamant that it was regressive in November, adamant that it's progressive in December, and I saw no explanation for this change of heart other than it suited your arguments.

the sports I was involved with.

Cricket? Lawn-bowling? Falconry? Fox-and-hound chases?

What use, shoop, is a tax credit for parents who put their children into organized sport to those parents who will not pay enough taxes to make use of the credit: to those parents who could not afford organized sport for their children no matter what the credit?

Where is this notion that organized sport is financially out of reach for poor families coming from? While hockey and figure skating, for instance, are pricey propositions there are many possibilities that are not expensive. I have participated in soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball, and track and field, some of them at a very competitive level, and none required particularly expensive equipment or unreasonable registration fees.

I think the tax credit would probably be of use to all but the poorest families.

And, I think the intention should be recognized. I don't believe the idea is intended as a cure to all of society's ills, just to provide some encouragement to a healthier lifestyle.

-k

[PocketRocket]

Gotta go with KIMMY on this.

I'll gladly take a cut on the GST, even if it comes from a man with a boiled-dog's-head-smile <(My Harper imitation)

[Guest eureka]

Kimmy, you are being disingenuous (a favourite word on these forums). I stated quite clearly how the GST can be regressive or progressive depending on whether there were exceptions and exemptions.

I have been involved in a number of sports at a high level, including one of those you mention, and some other more violent. I could have been a professional in a couple except that in my day, no one with hopes for a career would have been content with the rewards or the social stigma of professionalism in one of them.

Even sports such as soccer, which I have coached, are out of the reach of a significant portion of the population and the facilities for the game are woefully inadequate. Any fees are too much for many and there needs to be grounds where kids can simply go and play the game without organisation and without reservations of the fields. That is how talent develops as in all the countries where that sport is King.

When I came to Canada, I wanted to continue playing tennis as one of my interests, but there were only two tennis courts within a reasonable distance of where I was living. It was necessary to be a member of a club to use them and the club had a long waiting list so I dropped that sport. Facilities improved over the years but are still inadequate - and I had a hand in improving them in one area.

Only the prror may be excluded from the less expensive sports but is tht not the point? No one should be excluded and, if all those poor and the nearly poor who would still find the costs too much, were to be enabled to participate, the existing facilities for all sports would be swamped.

That is where the money needs to go not to Harper's obsession with tax policy as the end of existence.

[Guest eureka]

shoop, I notice that I did not respond to your suggestion that Harper is doing justice to veterans.

The answer is that he is not and his position is another cynical bit of electioneering.

The question of veterans pensions has been festering for a long time. The Mulroney government refused to deal with it as did the Liberal successors. It has, however, been before the courts for several years and Harper is doing nothing but say that he will abide by the decsision of the courts - which any other party will also do.

It has been a legal question all along that should have been resolved long before the last Liberal government took office.

[Argus]

Come on, Kimmy! There was no flip-flop by me on the GST. I think we dealt with your misperception on that.

And you know that I do not say that anyone who does not use a foodbank is rich. There is somewhere around a million people in Canada who do use foodbanks at this time. Those people would not save the price of a package of pins from a GST cut.

So what? Everything has to benefit food bank users? How do you even know those food bank users are actually in need?

I recall a Jamaican woman deported a couple of years back. She was outraged that she couldn't bring her SUV or big screen TV with her, just all the gold chains and jewellery and clothes. When asked how she managed to afford an SUV and big screen TV on welfare she was quite open and honest and not the least ashamed. She lived in public housing, she said, so didn't have to pay much rent. And she got clothing for herself and her kids at the goodwill and food at the food bank.

What a lot of mushy liberals don't seem to understand is that if you come from a hardscrabble existence, from a culture where you grab anything you can to survive, there is absolutely ZERO shame about taking things which are free. If you offer free food they will most certainly take advantage of that. They would be utterly confused if you suggested they shouldn't. Even if they can afford to buy their own food. Getting free food allows them to spend that money on other things.

I have no doubt that many people who use food banks need to. I have no doubt that many people who use food banks don't need to, but spend the money saved on booze, cigarettes, drugs or whatever.

[shoop]

You also didn't deal with the tax credit for public trasportation.

Funny how the majority of the condemnation in your post is for a government that last sat 12 1/2 years ago. While you, reluctantly, through in the Liberal government's failing on the issue as well.

shoop, I notice that I did not respond to your suggestion that Harper is doing justice to veterans.

It has been a legal question all along that should have been resolved long before the last Liberal government took office.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Argus]

What use, shoop, is a tax credit for parents who put their children into organized sport to those parents who will not pay enough taxes to make use of the credit: to those parents who could not afford organized sport for their children no matter what the credit?

Not everything good has to benefit the impoverished. Not every election promise, not every government program, not every tax break, not every benefit should be designed solely with the impoverished in mind. Just because you pay taxes that should not mean the government should entirely ignore your needs.

[shoop]

True. There are lots of ways for lower income families to get their kids into sports.

I am also shocked at how little knowledge their is of the Canadian tax system. Lots of poor income families, even those who use food banks, still pay some income tax.

Not everything good has to benefit the impoverished. Not every election promise, not every government program, not every tax break, not every benefit should be designed solely with the impoverished in mind. Just because you pay taxes that should not mean the government should entirely ignore your needs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[mowich]

Stephen Harper’s attempts to crowd the centre of the political spectrum are belied by his stand on gay marriage. That is Harper’s social conservatism at his basic hard core. The rest of Harper's agenda is totally social conservative as well.

The Tory day-care scheme, like all the tax relief Harper is promising, is part of Harper's social conservatism. Harper is arguing that we must trust individual Canadians to do what they want and we must regard the state as a collective bully always sticking its nose in the private affairs of its citizens.

Everything from the shaving of the GST by a couple of points is geared by Harper to Canadians as individual taxpayers and not as members of that dreaded alternative, the state.

Harper's two-tier medicare position is the same. Political expediency made Harper seem to support medicare, but if there’s any waiting time that’s a bit too long well then go to a private clinic and medicare will pay for it.

Harper has been "a lifelong opponent of public medicare." When Harper headed the National Citizens Coalition he was overwhelmingly against public medicare. Harper is a prot é g é of Preston Manning who was, and is now, the leading opponent of public medicare.

Harper's stand on childcare is part of his social conservatism. Harper was "a career opponent of publicly funded childcare." Now he’s posing as "the working parents' best friend."

Harper is trying to help stay-at-home moms in preference to moms who need to work and need day care for their children. Harper is like Bismarck, saying a woman's place is in the kitchen and at home.

Harper's law-and-order stand is also very socially conservative. Harper would abolish the gun registry, but has no plans to outlaw handguns. Harper sees handguns as a gun collector's individual right over the need to control handguns and their use in crimes and killings.

Harper's cut in the GST is a tax break that mainly benefits bigger spenders in upper income brackets. Harper's GST cut favours the rich over the ordinary Canadian.

"Your country and particularly your conservative movement is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world." Canada, said Harper, "was a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of that term."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_zolf/20051219.html

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Stephen Harper’s stand on gay marriage to is to call for a free vote.

You don’t trust individuals what are you a collective?

The government given the first opportunity would be sitting right next to you now telling you what to do, when, for how long and with no reason why.

And your point is?

And being able to get the care you need NOW is a bad thing?

You go Stephen and thank the Goddess for Mr. Manning.

Sheesh following the various machinations of your mind is well boggling to mine. He opposes public funded day care, good. However he sees the need for families to have access to same and proposes to give them the money to do so. Good.

Handguns are already regulated, enough said.

Bullshit, a cut in the GST will directly effect someone such as myself, hardly a Fat Cat, just a struggling individual.

Canada is a Welfare state; government intervention in our lives is at an all time high. Where do you think our tax dollars go? They are used to create public sector jobs dedicated to poking their way into every aspect of our lives. Yet for all that we are a welfare state we lack the funds for decent health care, education, children go hungry and still we are asked for more money.

Until governments are administered in the same way as private corporations, until they are held accountable for the funds they disperse, until they set budgets with set guidelines for spending, until they are run with moral and fiscal responsibility we will remain a welfare state.