In another episode of the Conservative Lifestyles of Tax Dollars Rich, it has been discovered that Jim Flaherty used a governemnt jet to fly to a Party gala.
AJAX – At a time when Canadian families are struggling to make ends meet, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty secretly used a government jet to fly him and his wife to a partisan Conservative gala to honor Brian Mulroney – and even charged taxpayers for a hotel room they didn’t use, Liberal candidate for Ajax-Pickering Mark Holland said today.
“This is the same Finance Minister who told Canadians they have to tighten their belts, and yet he has no problems with asking taxpayers to pay for expensive personal social outings for him and his wife – even though they can both well afford to pay their own way,” said Mr. Holland.
So much for belt tightening. I think he's going to have to add a few notches if he's going to continue to gorge himself at the public trough.
The Financial Post is calling Jim Flaherty's latest, not a budget but a call to arms, a high-tax plan: Higher taxes, more spending and no credible plan to balance the budget.
With an election around the corner, Tuesday’s federal budget was all political spin. The Conservative government presented the next phase of its Economic Action Plan: A Low-Tax Plan for Jobs and Growth. The reality, however, is that the plan increases the federal tax take, increases government spending, introduces a host of activist economic initiatives, and fails to provide a truly credible plan to balance the budget. It will, therefore, do little to improve economic growth and create jobs. Indeed, a more fitting title for the budget would have been A High-Tax Plan for More Government Spending — not exactly the message the Conservatives want to leave Canadians with as Parliament dissolves.
This budget was an insult to our intelligence.
$1.50 per day for seniors won't buy them a large double-double at Tim Hortons. $.82 a day in homecare, won't even net a chocolate bar. And since most 'social spending' was in the form of tax credits, the impoverished will see no net benefit because the only good thing about being poor in this country, is that you are in a zero tax bracket.
Almost like a corporation but without the private jets and limos.
Kevin Page has determined that for all their bluster, Canada has a 15% chance of returning to balanced budgets by 2015-2016. And besides, as NANOS recently determined, few Canadians even care now. "Economy, economy, economy", over "people, people, people". It's wearing us down.
This budget will only add to our national debt for the sake of fighter jets, deemed unsuitable; corporate tax cuts and prisons for "unreported crime".
Stephen Harper clearly wanted this election. I say, be careful what you wish for.
Flaherty's (Mark Carney's Goldman-Sachs) budget was clearly an election budget in more ways than one.
There were enough little tidbits that they could campaign on, but with so much money going to the rich and so little to everyone else, it was also a budget they knew the opposition parties would never accept.
The Conservative budget was not a conservative budget at all, and was never intended to be. Instead, it was craftily designed with an election in mind, to position Stephen Harper in the political centre, into Liberal territory, allowing his candidates to enter the campaign as moderates, diligently managing the economy out of recession, helping the poor, helping the elderly, helping cities, helping children take art lessons, helping the Calgary Stampede celebrate its centennial. Of course, the document is more pastiche than an economic program. Call it the phony budget.
To put this in perspective, the Tories rather magically found an extra $3 billion or so in unanticipated revenues with which to buy the support of Jack Layton and keep the Tories in office. Meanwhile, the Tories will forgo $6 billion in the next fiscal year from a further reduction in corporate taxes, already among the lowest in the OECD.
The stiffer prison sentencing sought by Harper – a dubious policy, as sentencing is not a proven deterrent to crime, the rates of which are in any case is falling – will cost an estimated $9 billion in future spending on new and expanded jails. Then there’s the whopping $29 billion cost of buying shiny new F-35 fighter jets from U.S. defence contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., as estimated by parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page. The plane is unsuited to many of the tasks required in Canada, and is a form of corporate welfare – this time to a foreign firm – since that aircraft program wouldn’t be possible unless many nations besides the U.S. placed orders. hat’s $45 billion in total dubious spending, eclipsing the $40-billion deficit the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty yesterday projected in his budget for the next fiscal year.
A $45 billion corporate budget with a mere $3 billion for the rest of us. Who's he trying to kid?
An interesting story about the Conservatives and two key Toronto ridings. The fact that they are challenging democracy in their selections is nothing new. Similar things are happening right across the country with this party.
But there is something worth noting. One of the candidates being questioned is a friend of Jim Flaherty's, and another Flaherty chum was involved in a bit of clever bookkeeping.
Well maybe not clever so much as dishonest, invoicing for work he never did.
Documents obtained by The Canadian Press show how in early June 2009 the outgoing board of directors for the riding — which included Ambler’s husband — voted to send $30,000 in anticipated Elections Canada rebates to the party rather than into the local association’s coffers. Ambler, who was working at the time as the director of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s regional office in Toronto, had said she would not run for the Tory nomination in Bramalea-Gore-Malton again.
“The party’s cheque for $30,000 should be payable to the Conservative Fund of Canada and sent directly to (regional organize) Karma Macgregor,” Ambler wrote in a June 9 email to her outgoing financial agent. That didn’t sit well with the new board elected only two weeks later, which immediately called for the money to be redirected back to local bank accounts.
... Ambler and the outgoing board had also made another decision in the summer of 2009, commissioning a $7,455 contract from Crestview Public Affairs for “research and analysis services.” By the fall, with no report in hand, the riding association demanded the money back. “It does not seem that Crestview Public Affairs is interested in honouring its business contract with us, by you missing another opportunity to explain to us why after six months you have not delivered our report,” wrote then riding vice-president Graham Crowson, going on to threaten legal action. The funds were reimbursed to the party shortly afterward. Messages left with Crestview president Mark Spiro, a Conservative campaign strategist and former provincial adviser to Flaherty, were not returned.
Our Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, is concerned that MPs are being asked to vote on bills with no idea of their cost. And when they try to get the figures from this government before the bills are presented, they are told that the costs are a cabinet secret.
How is giving Canadians, through their elected representatives, a breakdown of how our money is being spent, a "cabinet secret"? That is our money.
The House of Commons and its committees have two main responsibilities. One is to review legislation and make amendments as required. However the second – and less understood – role of Parliament is to review the spending plans of government departments and approve them through votes. Committees have the power to reduce a department’s budget if they are not satisfied with the plan provided, but that rarely happens.
The Conservative government is expected to speak in the House of Commons this week on a motion from Liberal finance critic Scott Brison, who is asking the Speaker to find the government in contempt of Parliament for refusing to provide the cost of its crime bills and for refusing to disclose information related to corporate profits. MPs on another committee, government operations, have also expressed frustration at their inability to get information on how the government is meeting its targets to cut spending in departments.
In his remarks, Mr. Page challenged the government’s claims that all of this information is subject to cabinet confidence. He noted that the government provided details on spending cuts in 2006 without claiming concern about confidentiality.
I'm a little frightened over this financial secrecy, because when we finally got rid of the Mike Harris government in Ontario, Jim Flaherty left us with a nightmare. His notion of "balancing the books" obviously meant that he could walk across the room with them on his head, because he left us with an enormous "hidden" deficit.
Jim Flaherty was asked about the money he gave to our banks in the form of a bank bailout and he stood up and lied, saying that he never gave the banks any money.
How stupid do you think we are Jim? It's right on the government of Canada website. 50 billion before the 2008 election and another 75 billion after.
Then they also got 111 billion from the American treasury through their U.S. divisions.
And he can be trusted with our money? Who loses 125 billion dollars?
Robert Kennedy Jr., son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK, has suggested that America is now a land of “socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor”.
And he is not alone in that assessment, as it is now shared by many progressives and critical thinkers, giving it a proper place as part of a larger political-economic argument.
Income disparity is on every one's lips these days, though American pundits believe the affliction is unique to the United States. Paul Krugman, as I mentioned before, blamed it's origin on Ronald Reagan and claims it has only happened once before outside of the U.S., in Britain, under Margaret Thatcher.
I've written to Krugman to let him know that he might want to start paying attention to Canada, because we have now replicated the Reagan/Thatcher government for the wealthy. And we are also now in a situation where a small minority hold the bulk of the wealth, while the rest of our population has stagnated, or fallen so far behind their only hope is to win a lottery.
And while Jim Flaherty and the gang are on a taxpayer funded tour, to sell Canadians on the notion that we should give the wealthy even more money, it's time to take a step back, scratch our heads and think. If their statements don't make sense to you, it's because they don't make sense.
The concept of Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor, which we can shorten to So Rich/ So Poor, is based on capitalist societies, whose policies assure that more resources flow to the rich than to the poor. This is done with transfer payments, as we've seen with the tar sands and the enormous amounts of our money that the Harper government has funnelled to them. It is also done with relieving them of their duty to pay their fair share of taxes.
And it is a capitalist state that bestows favorable treatment to corporations by the government, who adopt a wink and a nod approach to protecting the environment, by eliminating "red tape".
But perhaps the most compelling attribute of the So Rich/So Poor political thought, is the "privatization of profits and socialization of losses." When the economic crisis first hit, who got all the money? Wall Street and Bay Street gambled and lost, but still walked out of the casino with their silk shirt on their back.
It reminds me of a joke I heard from an ex-gambler, who said that he cleaned up in Vegas. "I travelled to Vegas in a $20,000 car and came home in a $100,000 bus."
We were all crammed into that bus, while the wealthy refused to part with even one of their Mercedes. And we are being told that we will have to tighten our belts even more, while the rich are at the back door with their hands out, and getting them stuffed with our money (their pockets won't hold anymore)
And this notion of "corporate welfare" and financial corruption, is not new. In 1834 Andrew Jackson said:
"I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. ... You are a den of vipers and thieves."
"Vipers and thieves", and our government is providing not only the getaway car but the safe house. It's time to get this country back for the middle class, because when the middle class dominated, social programs were brought to the table. And that's because the middle class has a heart and a soul, two things carved out of the corporate sector and neoconservative politicians.
I am not anti-capitalism and I believe in a healthy business structure. But gluttony is not healthy. It's time the rest of us were thrown a few crumbs.
His implication is that Michael Ignatieff is only posturing over corporate tax cuts, because they already went into effect on January 1, so the only way to reverse them is to raise them. I love that idea.
Akin also quotes the Ontario provincial finance minister who is in favour of lowering them. I don't care if a little green man has said we need to lower them. He would be just as wrong as Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper.
This is not a partisan issue, it is a Canadian one and a human one.
Given the greed, the idea of more tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens, has now become the eighth deadly sin, though I suppose it would also fall under "gluttony". It's become obscene and any politician singing their praises should include a warning before their speeches. 'This is not intended for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.' If there are young people in the room, shield their eyes and ears.
I would ask Akin though, that if the tax cuts have already gone through, why is Flaherty and other Corporate Party cabinet ministers, wasting our money travelling across the country in support of them? Do they have more in the offing?
This government has raised taxes on workers with an increase in payroll taxes and the HST. But they have further widened the gap between rich and poor, by pandering to the wealthy. There's something not right.
I might have sympathized with the corporate sector if they hadn't lined up with their hands out during the economic crisis, laying off workers, and then call those workers lazy because they had no jobs.
125 billion to our banks and they give their executives 18 billion in bonuses? It's a slap in the face to the rest of us.
In the video at the bottom of this page, you'll hear Paul Krugman discuss the income disparity that is threatening the health of the United States. This was in 2007, and he suggests that this is a phenomenon unique to the United States. But as we know, with our first federal neoconservative government, Canada now has the same dangerous income disparity.
We need to reclaim this country for the middle, and a healthy middle class was created by raising taxes on the wealthy, raising corporate taxes and strengthening our labour unions. It's that simple.
This is not about pulling up your socks and getting an education, and you'll do better. As Krugman reminds us, most school teachers have the same education as hedge fund managers. And yet the highest paid hedge fund manager in 2007, earned the same as all 80,000 New York school teachers put together ... for three years!!!!!
Still not convinced?
Well how about this one. Because Flaherty and Harper have lowered our corporate tax cuts to unheard of levels, now lower than the United States, the American corporations operating here, must make up the difference to their government.
In a bizarre twist of fate, some of the money saved by American companies operating in Canada simply gets transferred to the U.S. Treasury. Their rules require that foreign operations pay taxes at no less than the U.S. rate, or make up the difference to Uncle Sam. Studies by economist Erin Weir show that money not collected by Ottawa is instead taxed by Washington for the benefit of Americans. Instead of helping to solve the massive infrastructure backlog in communities across the country, Flaherty is giving away billions to his U.S. counterpart.
Mad yet?
So the next time you hear any one say that corporate tax cuts will create jobs, they could be right. Just not for Canadians.
In the U.S. they now allow corporations to buy politicians, without having to hide it. I guess that's next. I mean Stephen Harper even sued us when he was with the corporate financed National Citizens Coalition, because we wouldn't slap a price tag on a candidate.
Jim Flaherty has been bought and paid for, as he's on his 'Corporate tax cuts are good for you' campaign. The Corporate Party of Canada at it again.
Canada's budget officer, Kevin Page, has come out this week denouncing Flaherty's notion that he can ever balance the budget, or at least not within the time-fame he suggests.
Budget watchdog's barbs? These are not 'barbs'. Mr. Page works for the public and it is his duty to inform the public when the Harper government is blowing smoke. Flaherty should not be shrugging anything off.
Canada's budget watchdog says Ottawa is fiscally off track, but Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was having none of it as he emerged Thursday from budget consultations in Kamloops. In his most recent critique, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page says the government has yet to unveil a strategy for the deep cuts it needs to achieve to balance the budget in five years.
Over the next five years, Ottawa wants to cut departmental operating budgets by $6.8 billion. But Page, who has the task of providing a non-partisan, independent analysis of the government's budget and spending, said the math doesn't add up.
Smarten up. If the budget officers finds discrepancies, Flaherty must explain himself.
2. Special investigation: How high-risk mortgages crept north: The untold story of how elements of the first Conservative budget in 2006 encouraged big U.S. players such as AIG to make a push into Canada, creating our version of subprime mortgages, By: Jacquie McNish and Greg McArthur, Globe and Mail, March 31, 2009
Canada averaged a 1.7 per cent advance during the period, beating out Italy's 1.5, but below every other country in the G7. Germany tops the list with an impressive 6.1 per cent in growth.It's even worse if the calculation is on a per capita basis — a truer measure of economic strength. By that scale, Canada is dead last with a 0.9 per cent gain per person."We should stop patting ourselves in the back," says Stanford. "Yes we've had a couple of decent quarters, at the end of 2009 and in the beginning of 2010, but now we're running below capacity."Stanford also tries to shatter another "myth" of the recovery — that Canada's labour markets have performed superbly, recovering all the jobs lost during the recession, and then some ... "Less than one-fifth of the damage done to Canada's labour market by the recession has been repaired," he says.
Anyone living in Ontario during the Mike Harris years, know all about Jim Flaherty's lies concerning his financial prowess. He just hid everything.
As Harper and Flaherty are trying to defend Canada going deeper into debt, so that they can give our wealthiest citizens another tax break, Canadians are waking up to the realization that these folks don't need anymore money. We do.
The recession may have hammered the average Canadian but a new survey suggests CEOs weathered the storm in fine form. An examination of the 100 fattest pay packages handed to executives at publicly traded companies in Canada shows they pulled in an average $6.6 million each in 2009. That's a far cry from the $42,988 the average Canadian makes and it dwarfs the $19,877 a minimum-wage worker would earn in a year.
The study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says Canada's best-paid CEOs made 155 times more than the average Canadian. "Canadians may still be feeling the pain from a worldwide economic meltdown caused by reckless financial speculation but Canada's business elite has preserved its privileged position..."
That should be illegal. We give them enormous tax breaks and instead of using them to hire more people, they fill their own pockets. Enough already.
If you forgot to wish the boss a Happy New Year, don’t worry. He’s already had one. By about mid-afternoon Monday, the 100 best-paid chief executive officers in Canada will have already earned the equivalent of an average full-time salary in this country. The gap between the executive suite and minimum-wage workers is even larger. The average CEO had earned a full year’s worth of minimum-wage work by about 3:15 p.m. on New Year’s Day.
... “You could ask how motivating is it for the average employee, who is actually the person who generates the income for the corporation, to see that their CEO is making 300 times what they are. I would think that would be kind of demotivating.” The CEO pay figures may even be underestimated owing to a change in the way stock option compensation is reported, according to the report.
Corporations used to report the amount of income that executives actually realized when they cashed in their options. Beginning in 2008, rather than reporting the amount their executives realized during the year by cashing in options, they reported a statistical estimate of what the options might have been worth in the market when they were granted.
No more corporate welfare. It's time for the good guys to win.
The Harper government has been releasing a lot of new policies the past few days, hoping everyone is too busy with the Holidays to notice. But one of them should be getting our attention.
He and his colleagues did the same in Ontario when with the Mike Harris government. Valuable prime real estate was almost given away to his party's campaign contributors. Real Estate that we cannot afford to buy back.
A couple of examples from the Ontario Legislature debates at the time:
... I believe people should take responsibility for their actions, and today I want to speak to you about your actions in connection with some land deals in Ontario. In particular, on June 16, 1998, the Ontario government sold a piece of land in Brampton for $1.27 million. Six days later, that property was flipped for $3.92 million. That meant the taxpayers lost out on over $2.5 million in connection with that deal alone.
... Let's go on to the next deal. On March 29, 1999, the Ontario government sold land in Mississauga for $1.92 million. In November, that parcel was flipped for $4.39 million. From the speculator's perspective it was a flip, but from the taxpayers' perspective it was a flop. In that particular case, they lost out on $2.4 million.
... Here's another deal now. On March 3, 1999, you approved a sale of government property for $5 million. According to industry standards, that property should have been sold for $10 million.
I don't believe that this is the way to go, but we already know that what the neocons want, the neocons will get, so we must make a few demands, before the gavel is dropped. Not that they'll listen to us, but we should at least try.
1. That the Crown corporations are sold only to Canadian buyers.
2. That all jobs are protected and the unions kept intact. We are losing all of this country's good union jobs and it's going to have a devastating affect in the long term.
3. That all sales are transparent and Canadians are kept in the loop.
4. That prices given reflect fair market values, not fair to Conservative contributors' values. Canadians are not interested in Flaherty's buddies having a "flipping" good time ... again!
If anything defines our current government it's hypocrisy, so it's always fun to dig up old media stories, and make them eat their words.
Cowboys for Social Responsibilityunearthed an old Globe and Mail where Stockwell Day suggested that running deficits should be made illegal.
He claims to be taking a page from Ralph Klein's play book, but Mike Harris did the same thing. That's why Jim Flaherty had to hide a six billion dollar deficit back in the day. Otherwise, I guess Mikey would have hauled him off to jail, where he could break bread with the homeless.
And before you claim that the recession made them do it, Canada was in a deficit long before the recession hit.
Jim Flaherty's latest economic update makes him sound like he might know what he's doing. But the sad truth is, he doesn't have a clue.
Market News International questions his judgement, when he says he'll balance the books by 2015.
They may be balanced by then, but only if we can get rid of Flaherty by 2011. Otherwise, we're toast.
The Canadian government boasts this week about the great shape Canada's finances are in compared with the United States and other distressed advanced economies, but critics at home beg to differ or at least to amend.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty took to the speech circuit this week while his Finance Department issued a 42-page Fiscal Update extolling at every turn how superior is Canada's financial and economic state of affairs to that of the United States, particularly. The minority Conservative government, which took office in February 2006, sits atop the greatest federal deficits in Canada's history, after inheriting a dozen years of federal surpluses culminating in a C$42 billion annual surplus ....
TD Economics's chief economist David Burleton has lower medium-term projections than the Finance Ministry, and he said the government will have to actually follow through on restraining expenditures. Opposition parties and other critics note that the minority Conservative government was a high-spender before the recession began and its stimulus spending only increased the level. They also call for spending restraint, although some would extend the infrastructure stimulus part of it. The Fiscal Update offered no policy or significant program spending changes.
Those spending restraints have to include: no more signs, no more taxpayer funded self-promotion ads, no more corporate tax cuts, no fighter jets, no more photo-ops, etc., etc., etc.
In another episode of the Conservative Lifestyles of Tax Dollars Rich, it has been discovered that Jim Flaherty
