westmanguy westmanguy:
And this is a bad thing, how?
Comparatively, we're doing a hell of a lot better than most of the Western world. Still, we need to strive for better. I do think Harper is a prudent economic manager. Its a balancing act, for any party. When you're in surplus territory the responsible apolitical thing to do is put it all towards paying down the debt. Yet to the electorate that doesn't get enough credit as it should.
So I think Harper in the coming years takes a two-pronged approach. You take half to two-thirds of the surplus and put it towards the national debt, and then one-third to half towards targeted tax credits, programs and tax cuts that any political party pursues to shore up their base and woo voters.
But the thing is that Stephen Harper is
*not* a competent fiscal manager.
His GST cut failed to stimulate any kind of spending among Canadians, and
his corporate tax cuts failed to spur new investment by Canadian business, which is still jittery because of uncertainty in the economy. It's hard to tell exactly *what* Harper's tax cuts actually accomplished, besides drastically raising the national debt.
Even staunch conservative writers were burning Flaherty for that.Tom Flanagan, one of Harper's old mentors, talked about how Harper wanted to "
tighten the screws" on Ottawa to make it harder for the Liberals or the NDP to make their election promises without increasing taxes. If Flanagan is right, this is an incredibly stupid and short-sighted way of doing it, since Harper is still ratcheting up spending to pay for upgrades to the military and expansions of the justice system. How does Harper intend to pay the bills for these things, much less pay down all the debt that his policies have generated? Hell,
Don Drummond noted that the government was headed for a structural deficit even before the recession hit!And even with all this, the Harper government is still spending billions on outside contractors.Oh, and Jim Flaherty also pledged that cuts to balance the budget would be made through "attrition", not via cutting front-line services or essential payments to Canadian citizens.
Kevin Page exposed that for the hogwash that it was, pointing out that the cuts are directly affecting frontline services. More particularly, try asking any small business owner what it's like dealing with the CRA, or anyone collecting EI what it's like trying to get through to Service Canada. I had to call
*five* times before I could get through to speak to anyone at Service Canada.
And the CBC wasn't the only media outlet that picked up on this.Flaherty also claimed that the deficit would be wiped out without raising taxes or cutting key payments to Canadians.Try telling that to our veterans, who are getting nickle-and-dimed under the new "Veterans' Charter" passed in 2006. Whether or not Harper's government passed it, he's had almost eight years to fix the problem, and he's done jack squat about it.
How about a fund meant to bury impoverished veterans rejecting over two-thirds of its applicants? Or better yet,
how about federal cuts risking a program that provides jobs to medically disabled vets? Our guys now have to
sue the government in court over the way they're being screwed. No wonder
our men and women in uniform are planning protests!Civilians are getting hit too.
What about all those hardworking Canadians who now have to wait two more years before being able to get their pensions? According to the Parliamentary Budget Office,
that retirement age was actually affordable and didn't need to be rolled back.How about unemployed Canadians,
who now face a harder time accessing EI after paying into it? Not to mention that Flaherty plowed tens of billions of dollars from the old EI fund into general revenues, even as he jacked up EI premiums for the new fund much higher than the new fund was actually paying to Canadians.
Keep in mind that the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an organization not known for its NDP sympathies, is calling Harper and Flaherty out on this. So much for no increase to taxes...
You know, these changes wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue for me if Flaherty hadn't gone on about not cutting frontline services or key payments to Canadians. It either reflects badly on his honesty, or his competence.
Kevin Page predicted that Flaherty would have to take more drastic actions to balance the budget, and he was proven right.All of the above aside, is Flaherty right when he claims that we'll be back in the black come 2015?
Well, as I've said before, and I later mentioned to Lemmy in the thread, Flaherty has so far had to push the date for balancing the budget back twice already. And don't take my word for it-
Scott Clark and Peter deVries point out that so far Flaherty and Harper haven't met any of their deficit targets so far. Kevin Page was concerned that the economy wouldn't grow fast enough to eliminate the structural deficit. He's not the only one, as
Clark and deVries have also pointed out that the sluggish growth rate means that it's unlikely that we'll magically grow ourselves out of deficit this year. And as I've pointed out on this site,
entities like the OECD and the Conference Board Of Canada have been pointing out our problems with weak growth and productivity. I'm not sure how everything will suddenly and drastically surge to the point where we're back in black in 2015.
If you've somehow gotten this far, I salute you.
Don't get me wrong-I really do appreciate and salute the good work the Harper governments done in various areas (legislating the gas tax fund for municipalities, ending the long gun registry, getting tough on crime, going for Arctic sovereignty, making the Canadian Wheat Board optional, arming our border guards, fixing the holes in the gay marriage legislation, etc.) but I think that Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty have made a ghastly mess of our finances.
I really do hope that we balance the budget ASAP, but I admit I have my doubts. Even if it happens, we'll still have a huge increase in the debt, with all the increase in how much money we have to spend servicing that debt every year. We'll also have the bills for all of the Harper government's own spending priorities, and where are we going to get the money for them?
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