Now, convince your Liberal Party to incorporate that into a financial statement. Why not ?  What have they got to lose ?

Just for the record, as a manufacturing busines owner I have seen first hand the results of various economic downturns. There is no precident in my own lifetime that compares even relatively closey to the current global situation. Put things into perspective people!

Right now having a deficit is the right play. Once the economy starts recovering, that’s when you start dealing with the deficit by cutting services and raising taxes.

The U.S. government’s highest civilian award is the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It goes to people the President believes have made “especially meritorious contributions.” Why, then, did President Clinton recently give this prestigious award to John Kenneth Galbraith? The official citation says it’s because Galbraith “has made complex economic theories and processes comprehensible to a wide audience and highlighted the social and ethical impacts of economic policies.”

In fact, Galbraith has spent his career peddling nonsense. His work, long scoffed at by serious economists of all political stripes, has been utterly discredited by the experience of the past several decades.

His influential 1967 book, The New Industrial State, declared that Western corporate managers and Soviet planners were doing basically the same thing: maintaining the economic certainty that large-scale investment requires. Market competition is dead, he said, killed by technology and large-scale development …. 

http://dynamist.com/articles-speeches/forbes/galbraith.html

Well.  At least he got that part right.

Now, I’m HIGHLY dubious, but MAYBE the Tories’ increased spending on crime will make our crime rates drop even faster than they’ve already been dropping for well over a decade, which would be nice, but I’m still not sure that makes large increases to crime spending during uncertain economic times, when crime rates are already dropping under the current policies, the wisest use of money ever. It also wouldn’t shock me in the least if the Tory policies end up costing us more money, and yet we simultaneously start seeing crime rates going back up again.

I half expect the next Liberal campaign four years from now to be a lot of candidates saying things like “Remember when we were in charge and there was a $13 billion surplus, crime rates were falling and not rising, and our front line fighter jets were capable of operating north of the tree line???”

OK, so I threw a military spending dig in there too, lol.

The Tories are traditionally great at campaigning on fiscal responsibility, but their most recent history of governing involves slashing taxes (including slashing the WRONG taxes, like cutting the GST instead of deeper income tax reductions, and giving out niche tax breaks to any group who might think of voting for them) while simultaneously increasing spending, and creating deficits.  The Liberals, meanwhile, are traditionally great at campaigning on spending, but their most recent history of governing is one of controlling spending, keeping consumption taxes while cutting income taxes, and creating surpluses.  Now, there are a thousand ways that things are more complicated than that, but regardless, I’m not sure why I should put any faith in the government’s estimates as to how quickly they can get the deficit under control, considering that this is the same team who said we’d never go in to deficit again, and who’s leader said that if we were going to have a recession we’d have already had it, on a day that turned out to be AFTER the recession had already begun.

In the meantime though, even before the recession that Harper the economist couldn’t recognize,Flaherty had erased the surplus and while he was saying the books would balance, many said he’d engineered a structural deficit. So we were already digging ourselves a hole when the bottom fell out.

Harper’s cabinet is one of the largest in history (if not the largest). The bureaucracy has ballooned on his watch. Despite all his claims while in opposition, a fiscal conservative he most definitely is NOT.

If Harper at least ran as a reformer, mini-bush I would have no problem, my issue is that he cried through the 90′s about government spending only to come to power and spend even more. And really, I’m not even that mad about the spending, but why cut the taxes with no hope of ever coming out of the increased spending?

Its a disaster waiting to happen. Where will you be when the music stops?

In fact, if harper had just kept the gst at 7 points, you’d have 9 years at almost 10 billion dollars per year is about half of the 200 BIllion.

But enjoy your 2cent savings on your tim hortons each morning, your kids will thank you for it.

However, I do recall that when Paul Martin was Finance Minister and made sure to put aside a contingency fund, that allowed Canada to withstand the contagion from the Latin-American and Asian currency crises back in the 90s.  All while continuing apace to eliminate the deficit and pay down the debt.

The stability we are currently enjoying vis-à-vis our banking system is due to Paul Martin NOT listening to likes of a Stephen Harper back in the 90s.

If only the media had pressed Harper on this issue during the election … oh, wait, they weren’t allowed to because they were only given five questions per day and one had to go to a local reporter to ask about the local hockey team and any others were drowned out by Conservative supporters.

As Ontario finance minister, Flaherty yapped about eliminating deficits here, too, (the Harris Cons even made deficits illegal) but they left one behind to the tune of several billions when they were finally kicked out by the electorate.

Same game, bigger stage.

Please tell us where you would reduce government spending now to significantly lower that 200 billion figure.

I mean really, by 2016 we will be a full 200 billion more in debt then when Harper took over consecutive surplus budgets!

That means that 1/3 of our national debt will have Harper’s mits on it, I’d say he approaching Trudeau levels with his spending!

There may have been a time in a simpler past when economists and governments could make accurate forecasts but in this complex, interdependent, and rapidly changing global world we now live in it is just not wise to place future numbers next to future dates.

Just give us a competent government that promotes non-government job creation and growth  with wise tax policies, and for crissakes go easy on the stupid spending.

Projections on the economy, of course, are only projections.  No one can predict exactly how events – domestic and foreign – will play out, and how they will ultimately affect our economy.  Government’s can enact policies all they want, but have to be able to react to changing conditions.

Economics is an entire scientific discipline of not knowing what you’re talking about