Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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The era of federal-provincial bickering is over. It is now the era of federal-provincial open threats. Progress!

by Paul Wells on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:15am - 18 Comments

Kumbaya, my friends, KUM-Ba-YAAAA!!!!!

“If he’s throwing Quebec overboard, it’s really too bad for him too because he’s going to be in an election soon, and you will understand that he may need the ridings he still has in Quebec.”

— Quebec finance minister Monique Jérôme-Forget

Tags: budget09

More by Paul Wells

MJH

Duceppe complains because he can’t get more equalization from BC, Alberta, Sask., and NF.
$8 billion is not enough!

Disgusting!
Michael

I guess that there’s some guy on the east coast who is not too happy either…..does the name ‘Danny Chavez’ mean anything to anybody?

http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=215889&sc=79

http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

does the name ‘Danny Chavez’ mean anything to anybody?

No, it only means something to stupid conservatives.

MJH

Danny William’s position is almost equal to the Mayor of Regina.

David

Monique Jérôme-Forget is a wuss.

“I wish I had him on the ice, I tell you”, now THAT’S a threat.

Hockey fight!

Both she and Danny are blowhard idiots.

http://caiti-online.blogspot.com/ Transcanada

One thing is for certain, a budget that keeps you hanging on to power by your fingernails is a far, far away place from majority territory. Looks like another province is a wipeout for the Conservatives.

Why Flaherty is still the Finance Minister after the FU is beyond me. Perhaps nobody else wanted the job.

Shenping

Yup!! Ain’t no one who can run up a deficit like our Jimbo.

Ti-Guy

Please, please, please secure Afghanistan soon so I can leave this irritating country for a while and go some place with real problems to solve?

Is there any new money in this budget for training in Dari or Pashto?

Michael

Too remote………the ‘dollar-to-vote’ ratio doesn’t pass muster.

Ti-Guy

Elle ne peut croire que l’Ontario risque de devenir une province qui aurait droit à la péréquation, comme l’a déjà affirmé le fédéral. «Ces prémisses-là sont fausses», a-t-elle déclaré.

Well, I’m glad she cleared that up. Apparently, Mme Jérôme-Forget is the only Canadian who truly understands equalisation.

Shenping

As long as the Americans aren’t buying what Ontario’s making, they might not have a choice.

The only reason we’re “haves” in Saskatchewan is that we’ve been down for so long there’s no way for us to go but up. Everyone who could be laid off was — in 1992. We’re at our usual piddly growth rate, which is looking pretty good at the moment. Well, that and the fact that all the dinosaurs didn’t run across to the Alberta side of the border to die and turn into oil, knowing that there would be a communist government here in the future. I think a lot of prairie conservatives used to believe that.

Didn’t uncle Jim tell us he’d solved the fiscal imbalance thingey forever? I’d be more disposed to believing the dinosaur theory, myself. Bickering over the fiscal imbalance is as Canadian as Canada Dry & Tim Horton’s used to be, six thousand years ago, when all the dinosaurs all up and ran over to Alberta.

Nobody really understands equlisation. It’s just a bunch of numbers various politicians thought up to get other politicians go away for a while.

Don Mitchell

Quebec has an insatiable appetite for Canadian money. Here’s a thought, how about the feds say that it is all tied to population – 2 bucks a head. Now shut up!
DR

Finally, some merit to this government.
oompus boompus

This is the problem with the welfare state. Once you’re giving away free money taken from somebody else, then how you decide how much to confiscate and how much to give away? How do you measure someone’s need for government pork? Can someone who is dependent on receiving pork ever have enough? You can’t just say to someone, “Look I’ll give you $5 Billion that I stole from taxpayers in other provinces, but it’s unreasonable for you to demand $10 Billion.” Why is $5B reasonable and $10B unreasonable? And how do you decide what is a fair percentage for the middlemen in the federal government to rake off for facilitating the transfer of wealth?

By confiscating and redistributing wealth you’ve stepped away from the free market where peaceful and voluntary exchanges are the rule, and stepped into an arena where threats and force are the only negotiating strategies. You cannot expect someone to be “reasonable” when they’re participating in an unreasonable, immoral racket.

Ti-Guy

We really need to ban Ayn Rand’s books. Or least restrict them to those over the age of 50.

http://macleans.ca kc

No need to restrict or ban them. A sticker price of more than $5 outta do it!
Shenping

In case you didn’t see that this is a .ca site. We’re actually a separate country with a different system of government.

Pork refers to little thing$ added to bills in American politics in order to get senators & house-ators to vote for them. We don’t really have a Canadian equivalent, because we have parties with whips who don’t need to pay members for services.

We do have that tradition of giving little tidbit$ to swing ridings, but it’s a totally different mechanism than pork. If we’re on the Quebec-bashing meme perhaps we can call it porc. Or perhaps pourk if we want to apply it to the entire country. Canadian vote-raising or something.

Richard

Luckily when Harper throws Quebec overboard, thanks to yesterday’s budget, there’ll be new Cruise Ship facilities to accommodate them. Please.