Jim Flaherty Says Boom Times Are Over. Boom Times? I Must Have Been Sick That Day.

Jim Flaherty is saying that boom times are over for Canadians. When did we ever have boom times?

The only booms were for corporations and multinationals who have received not only all of our natural resources on a silver platter, but the most enormous tax cuts in our history.

Canada’s economic boom times are over, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says. “We’re in a different world today,” he said Monday, following a meeting with private sector economists.

In a blunt assessment, the usually optimistic Flaherty said Canadians need to rein in their hopes for the economy. “This is not a time of booming economic growth, it’s a time of modest growth and there needs to be some adjustment of expectations.

But if the "boom" times are really over, does not mean no more signs? No more self-promotion? No more mini-bars? No fighter jets? No American style prisons? No loans to foreign companies?

Of course not. It means an end to social programs and more taxes on the working poor.

Jim Flaherty has made a complete mess of things and is now scrambling to blame someone.

The middle class is in crisis. The economy is slowing. Canadians are now the largest lenders of sub-prime mortgages in the world, and the employment outlook is bleak.

While Ottawa likes to boast about how well our economy is doing, compared with others, the reality is that we are not doing all that well. Indeed, complacency about the challenges we face is a real danger. Here are two reasons why we should be concerned:

First, we are not creating the jobs we need to enable Canadians to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. While job numbers have increased, we also have to look at where those jobs are coming from, and their quality. If we compare the employment picture in August, the most recent month available, with August 2006, the year before the Great Recession began, we find the number of jobs between the two Augusts increased by 727,500.

But 75 per cent of these new jobs were in the public sector, jobs that depend on tax revenues. Moreover, 64 per cent of all new jobs were part-time. In this period, manufacturing lost 348,000 jobs.

This is why you don't have a personal injuries lawyer handle your money. They fall down on the job.

OK. Bad joke.

But Flaherty's record in Ontario that left us six billion dollars in the hole, was enough to convince me that we were going to end up in this mess, with or without a recession.