Categories: Need to know

Tories back away from pledge to cut deficit a year earlier

Government now says budget won’t reflect savings promised on campaign trail

by macleans.ca on Thursday, May 12, 2011 11:18am - 6 Comments

Barely a week after the Conservatives were re-elected with a Parliamentary majority, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is backing away from a campaign trail pledge to eliminate the deficit a year earlier than planned. Flaherty now says the revised 2011 budget won’t show a surplus for 2014-15. A spokesperson for Flaherty says the savings promised in the Conservative platform “will get us to balance a year earlier, but [are] not part of the upcoming budget.” The Conservative election platform explicitly promised that “Through accelerated reductions in government spending, a re-elected Stephen Harper government will eliminate the deficit by 2014-15.”

The Globe and Mail

Tags: Budget

Phil King

Say it isn’t so Jimmy!

I’m so utterly shocked.

Oh wait, no I’m not. Neither is anyone else I imagine.

Which is probably why they feel so comfortable backing away from it only a week or so after the election eh?

Sheesh.
Ottawa_Centrist

If they want to balance the budget earlier and keep crime rates lower at the same time, they could break their promise regarding the omnibus crime bill.
Anonymous

zzzzzzzzz
Anonymous

Promise-keeping and truth-telling are ^NOT Conservative strong suits. If people voted for them because they believed campaign promises, they have a rude awakening in store.
http://twitter.com/SisterSebaceous Timmy

Tories talking out of both sides of their mouth, as usual.

I’m sure that the Tories’ penchant for overspending reduced Flaherty’s credibility today, when he told America to stop having a deficit and move to surplus.

See:
“Flaherty urges debt reduction to U.S. lawmakers for good of global economy”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hPEpsALlgZfdrfk6gtABDWGn_-xQ?docId=6821448
“Canada’s finance minister shook hands with a congratulatory John McCain, sat down with other Republican lawmakers to urge debt reduction …”

And:
“Get handle on deficit, Flaherty warns U.S.”
http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2018426.html

We hear the rhetorical phrase “tax and spend liberals” so much that people have come to believe it. But if you take the time to research the timeline of Canada’s debt, you’ll see that most of it was from the Mulroney era, and that Chretien & Martin had been paying it down with regular surpluses.
By the end of the Mulroney era, 30% of your tax dollar went to INTEREST on debt. At the end of Paul Martin’s government, that was down to about 18%.

Also, before the 2008 crash, the Tories had been pushing to deregulate Canada’s financial industry, to make it more like the US.

Now the Tories have been taking credit for the stability provided by Liberal policies, while at the same time, putting us deeper in debt again.

The crazy thing is that most people just take in the rhetoric and forget what really happened.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Noyb/100002053380023 Alex Noyb

What the hell is wrong with Canadians these days? The conservatives could take a bus load of babies into parliament, slaughter them on tv, and they’d probably still win the next election. It’s completely pathetic.