More on Deficits

The proper deficit figures, presumably from more current GDP information:

Canada: 3.3%
U.S.A.: 13.6%
Japan: 9.9%
Britain: 9.8%

The same editorial concludes:

It is time to stop these juvenile exchanges and move on to an adult conversation on what should be done after the recession to bring the budget back into balance. Ignatieff has said he would be open to the idea of raising taxes. Harper isn't. Would he undertake massive spending cuts or continue to run deficits? Canadians deserve an answer.

I couldn't agree more. Ignatieff made much of his intention to respond to personal attacks by attacking the CPC's record, which he has done. But the criticisms reported so far haven't contained much substance at all. Perhaps his demand for Jim Flaherty to be fired just made a better story than anything else he might have said, but until I see those other things, I'll remain unimpressed.

Speaking of Deficits...

From here:

[Stephen Harper] added that, despite a deteriorating financial situation across the world, the Canadian deficit is a third to a quarter of the size of the shortfalls faced by the United States, Britain and Japan and that the money is being borrowed at historically low interest rates to help create jobs and build infrastructure.

Projected Canadian deficit: $50 billion CAD = $44.6 billion USD
Projected U.S. deficit: $1800 billion USD
Projected U.K. deficit: £175 billion = $279.3 billion USD
Projected Japanese deficit: ??? (anybody?)

But these things are usually measured as percentage of GDP, I gather.

IMF 2008 says:
Canadian GDP: $1.510 trillion USD
U.S. GDP: $14.265 trillion USD
U.K. GDP: $2.674 trillion USD
Japanese GDP: $4.923 trillion USD

Thus:

Canadian deficit: 3.0% of GDP
U.S. deficit: 12.6% of GDP
U.K. deficit: 10.4% of GDP
Japanese deficit: ???

Yup, Steve is telling the truth.

For once.

Conservatives Raising Taxes?

Here

In short, the following words by Stephen Harper:

“What we’re not going to do, is every two or three months, come up with another economic policy, another budget, until we need to raise taxes.”

Are misinterpreted by Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale as meaning that the CPC has a secret plan to raise taxes. I'm as happy as anybody to pick on the CPC, but this herring is as red as they come.

I mean, Conservative deficit spending and tax hikes? Steve would never live it down.

Rules are for other parties

... especially our own rules.

Fixed election dates? Sure, we campaigned on 'em and pushed 'em through. But we can still call an election a year early.

Elected senators? Maybe next time.

Parliamentary review for Supreme Court appointments? It's not like we have a Parliament anyway, so nyah nyah nyah.

Seriously. How can you re-elect these people?

There are other parties, you know

Here, Stephen Harper tells us,

"In the past few months, and particularly over the summer, we have seen increasing signs that this Parliament is really not working very well any more. It is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Quite frankly, I'm going to have to make a judgment in the next little while as to whether or not this Parliament can function productively."

Let's see how far back our political memories go: In 2007, which party was caught red-handed distributing 200 pages of Parliament-disrupting-dirty-tricks to all of its MPs? Which party is systematically evading or ignoring Parliamentary summonses? Who answers pointed ethical questions in Parliament with lawsuits? It's pretty clear that this entire scenario has been brought about deliberately.

The Conservative party simply doesn't want to make do with a minority government. They don't want discussion or compromise. They want their majority. Increasingly it appears their strategy is to bring Parliament grinding to a halt, blame the Liberals, and call a new election before their funding scandal from the previous election really hits the fan. And then blame the Liberals some more. I'll bet you $100 (I'd bet more, but I'm only a student) that they've got an ace in the hole for election time, they're going to produce something newly scandalous about the Liberals at a key moment, to try to secure their majority.

I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: How long should we go on picking between two corrupt parties on the basis of who was less corrupt in the last 4 years?

Openness and Accountability

That was the Conservative platform, yes? Sorry, Stephen, but there is no way you can mash words together so as to make that compatible with having your party members systematically evading and ignoring ethics committee summonses. Calling the committee a kangaroo court doesn't explain why members of your own party quit and accused you of dirty tricks. Obviously you did something wrong, and you're making it impossible for us to learn the details. That's pretty much the definition of closed and unaccountable.

I've decided to start making a list of all ways in which your party is open and accountable. I'll be fair and keep both positive and negative examples, and I'll do it for the other parties as well. Then when it's election time I'll ignore the attack ads from all sides, and just consider my list.

I think everyone knows that one of the underdog parties will win in that case, though, right? They simply haven't had the chance to sully themselves in public. Which reminds me of an argument I keep hearing for why we shouldn't elect the New Democratic Party: "They have no administration experience." Well no wonder... you never elect them. By that logic we should just switch to the two-party system, and spend the rest of our elections trying to decide whether the Conservatives or the Liberals are less corrupt.