John McCallum, Apr. 26, 2006. Mr. Speaker, he has confirmed that he is both incompetent and fleecing the poor. I have a question concerning a more immediate issue with regard to the budget information just released by the member for Halton. The Minister of Finance has two choices: either he will tell the House that this information is wrong or he will admit that his budget is seriously flawed and immediately resign. Which will it be?
John McCallum, Nov. 1, 2006. Mr. Speaker, let me explain to the House what the Minister of Finance offers. He offers a gross failure to manage the economy, a betrayal of investors who mistakenly took the minister and the government at their word, the single biggest blow to the wealth of Canadians ever dealt by a finance minister and a banana republic process, bringing disrepute to Canadian capital markets. It is obvious that the minister has been a disaster on this file. When will the Prime Minister fire him?
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“The Minister of Finance has two choices: either he will tell the House that this information is wrong or he will admit that his budget is seriously flawed and immediately resign. Which will it be?” LOL, quite the rhetorical question!
Reminds me of Layton’s favorite: Is-the-minister-incompetent-or-does-he-not-care? Endlessly useful for a sound bite.
That’s classic.
I wonder if you could make the two alternatives themselves loaded questions, even with positive questions?
“Has the minister abandoned his party’s policy by mistake, or has he finally come to his senses?”
that’s good!
And yet, if a CFO in the private sector predicted his or her company’s deficit for the coming fiscal year (a few months previous) and then was wrong by about 50%, you can be fairly certain the CFO would be considered incompetent and/or fired.
There’s the difference between a government run on the ideology of Business practices, and Business practices. Like the difference between theory and practice. Like the difference between having an MA in Economics and being an Economist.
I guess these three guys will be looking for E.I. benefits then.
“Warren Justin, Bank of Nova Scotia’s chief economist, warned last Thursday that the economy would contract by 0.2% in 2009. Meanwhile, both Don Drummond, chief economist for Toronto Dominion Bank, and David Wolf, of Merrill Lynch, projected a deficit of roughly $10-billion in 2009. Both economists suggested the government will remain in deficit for the next few years unless the Conservatives cut spending or hike taxes.”
Paul, do you happen to have the date for these quotes? Is it really “last Thursday”?
October 28th. Deficit has gone from $10 billion to $50 billion in less than 7 months. And to make it clear I’m not disparaging these economists nor their predictions. I’m trying to point out none of the experts have been close with their predictions, and have to keep changing them. It was pointed out today on a radio show that Warren Buffet’s CFO has missed with his projections by a country mile, and he is known as one of the best in the world.
Point taken, but Drummond argued that it was a $10B deficit without any policy actions. What’s not clear to me is how much of the $50B is based on stimulus and tax rebate stuff vs. how much is naturally occurring.
As I understand it tax revenues from both business and individuals is crashing more than anyone thought would happen. Some of the stimulus programs are proving effective, such as the Home Tax Renovation credit. The government has set aside money in the budget for the tax credits, but it’s still a guess what the final cost will be.
Chrysler being shut down here for at least another month, as well as all the parts plants has been a steep blow, and the government now has to factor in the GM bankruptcy, which will also put thousands out of work for 2-3 months. So instead of revenue coming in from these workers, funds will be going out in the form of E.I. The Chrysler shutdown alone has cut over 50,000 jobs out of the economy, mostly in Ontario.
I would imagine McGuinty and Duncan will also have to change their deficit projections shortly.
Here is a more recent column from Drummond. As you can see, it has jumped $10 billion in the two months since
Last Updated: Monday, March 16, 2009 | 11:52 AM ET Comments202Recommend63CBC News
The recession is going to force the federal government much deeper into deficit than it forecast in its last budget, according to the Toronto-Dominion bank.
“The result is [an] all-time high deficit of $39.2 billion in fiscal 2009-10 and $42.3 billion in fiscal 2010-11,” said Toronto-Dominion chief economist Don Drummond in a statement.
“[It's] well above the red ink of $33.7 billion and $29.8 billion shown in the budget. Still, as a share of GDP, the budget shortfalls will be considerably lower than the 5-8% levels recorded during the 1980s and early 1990s.”
D – this is actually not true – just like in government, private sector CFOs typically provide explanations for the misses but are not held accountable for bad projections. There are usually too many variables.
In this case, there is so much uncertainty that I am willing to give the Conservatives a break.
Fair enough. I can accept the argument that there are too many variables to make accurate economic projections, particularly given the rapidly evolving fiscal environment.
However, I won’t give the Conservatives a freebie on their boneheaded, populist reduction of the GST in recent years, that pretty much every economist across the board said was a bad idea.
This idiotic policy has helped put Canada in a much deeper deficit hole in 2009. This didn’t have to be the case.
longer than the warantee on the imaginary car for John!
What’s the difference between a Chevy and a VW?
John McCallum doesn’t know either.
Although I sure hope he has figured out Vimy and Vichy by now.
I heard him and Paul Martin went back to school and took a few courses. For example, Martin now knows the difference between Norway and Normandy.