Liberal John McCallum admits Ignatieff's corporate tax hike will cost jobs.

Yesterday on the Roy Green show on the Corus Radio Network, Liberal MP for Markham—Unionville, John McCallum admitted that the Liberals plan to raise corporate taxes from 16.5% to 18 % would cost Canadians jobs.



That's John McCallum ladies and gentlemen, part of the Liberal Team!


Update:  John McCallum apologizes to Peter Donolo for telling the truth about the Liberals plan to raise taxes!  The Liberal Party of Canada, where telling the truth requires an apology.



Past posts on McCallum:

Meet your new Liberal Transport critic.

"I could be sitting here as your prime minister, but I turned it down.."

And you want to be my latex salesman Mr. McCallum

The front runner for Finance Minister under Ignatieff.

John McCallum again on the Roy Green Show. This time talking about Ignatieff signing the 2008 coalition deal. (listen as hilarity ensues)

Ignatieff's throne was a rental.

Michael Ignatieff held a little garden party yesterday for members of our ever vigilant media; the same media who have been running with the fake fake lake cost story for the last few day.

There were lots of tweets about having Ignatieff serve them food, and about the lake set up to mock that other famous lake, but not one comment on Ignatieff spending big money on a rented porta-potty so our poor media could sit in comfort after being fed meatballs along with an extra large helping of Liberal spin on extravagant spending.

The $1,500 "Taj Mahal of portable toilets with granite countertops, wood panelling and almond-scented hand soap" sat near the Liberal's "Fake Lake" which consisted of a children's wading pool, plastic ducks and a remote-control boat surrounded by plastic Muskoka chairs and a printout picture of a lake posted on a stick. Staffers boasted that the whole thing had cost them $19.95 ­ a fraction of the money the government was spending on its Muskoka backdrop.

Funny how this was missed from most comments/tweets/reports on the garden party, but as long as our media were comfortable I guess it is understandable. /sarc off

The General pays off its loan. 5 years early!

More good news.

General Motors has repaid $1.4 billion in loans it received from the Canadian and Ontario governments 5 years ahead of schedule and it expects to repay another $8.1 billion to Canada for money it received in exchange for large stakes in the company. Canada now owns roughly 12 per cent of the company and the U.S. government owns 61 per cent.

GM plans to repay both with a public stock offering, perhaps later this year.

Good news; now you can go back to watching the non stop Jaffer coverage.

More news that the OLO does not want to see.

While Michael Ignatieff is busy thinking thoughts at his villa in France.....

A global economic forecasting group says Canadian economic growth will outpace that of other G7 nations by a wide margin during the first half of 2010. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation is forecasting that Canada’s economy grew 6.2 per cent in the first quarter, well ahead of the 1.9 per cent overall growth for the G7 nations. The OECD predicts that Canada’s second-quarter growth will be about 4.5 per cent, nearly double the 2.3 per cent growth expected from the combined G7.

This guy is going to get himself fired from The Star...

Thomas Walkom is going to get himself fired from the Toronto Star if he keeps writing stuff like this.

Some excerpts from "How Harper won the recession":

"International finances remain wobbly.

Governments around the edge of Europe, in countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece, are in danger of defaulting on their debts. Questions are being raised even about Britain's debt load.

Spooked European governments are being pressured to cut back on the very spending that has kept these nations from collapsing into depression....

...However, in Canada, all of this seems very far away. In Toronto, housing prices remain hot. Interest rates are at rock bottom. Inflation is low. Unemployment, while high, remains below the levels experienced in the recessions of the '80s and '90s.

Unemployment is America's number one topic. Here in Canada, pundits fret not about joblessness but the federal deficit.

The Harper Conservatives have used all of this to shift public discussion into what they hope will be more optimistic channels.

That story, sketched out in Wednesday's Throne Speech, is that the bad times are effectively over and that the country can now set its sights on a brighter future – one in which, under the leadership of a far-sighted Harper government, Canadians will be able to replicate the achievements of their Olympic athletes and create a brand new tomorrow.....

....None of this means that Harper is necessarily fated to win the next election. Much can happen between now and then.

What it does mean though is that, barring a second economic crisis, he will not be blamed for this recession. He may even be credited for any recovery.

And that is a very big plus."

Read the entire article at the Star, and wish Thomas luck. He might need it.

Unintended Quote of the day

Michael Ignatieff: "Canadians don't want political games played with infrastructure funding," Ignatieff said. "You can't employ people with press releases."

"Look at the field behind me, it is not getting done," Ignatieff said.

( Ignatieff was quoted above while among an old soy bean field in Burlington where they say no progress has been made on the creation of the New City Park.) (h/t Bruce. Part of the crew @ Blue like you.)

All well and good except: Burlington Mayor Cam Jackson said the Liberals picked the wrong field to stage their press conference. The park project just got environmental approval last week and wasn't planned for years.

"This project was not slated to be done for seven years," Jackson said.

He added he won't criticize the Tories or the provincial government on infrastructure spending because he has projects happening all over his municipality.

Updated with video: (Thanks Robert)

It is amateur hour at the OLO and Ignatieff is proving again that he is out of touch with Canadians and out of touch with reality.

Related: Even Ontario Liberal MPP's think Ignatieff is out to lunch on this one. (h/t Searching for Liberty)

Michael Ignatieff can't see the forest for the trees.

Gerard Kennedy, stimulus, fail

Getting it done. Early August Edition.

The conservative government continues to get the job done for Canadians while Iggy, the man with no policies, tries and fails miserably with his plan for E.I.

One new free trade deal with Peru becomes reality, with another deal with Panama just on the horizon.

Lets face it, the US economy is a mess and with their new President spending money at a historical pace, it may take more time for the US to recover from the recession than is currently believed. We can not put all of our eggs in one basket and even though the US is and always will be our largest trading partner, we have to try to look beyond our neighbors to the south and expand our markets. These 2 deals along with the recent free trade deal with Jordan are more positive examples of how the Harper Government continues to work for all of us while the Liberals do nothing but complain and get made up stories from the Liberal friendly press.

Ignatieff unites us all again.

Michael Ignatieff the self proclaimed uniter is at it again.

Since it appears that Mr.Ignatieff has no real economic polices of his own he has decided to tap the minds of others to help form future Liberal economic policy. One of those helping him in this endeavor is none other than Ed Clark, the CEO of TD Bank Financial Group and a man who recently assisted the Ontario government on its recent, and not very popular, budget.

But more interesting is that this is the same Ed Clark who as a former senior bureaucrat played a large role in crafting the Trudeau government's National Energy Policy in the 1980s.

Yup you got it. Ignatieff is asking one of the major players in the creation of the NEP to help create Liberal economic policy. Now that is a uniting idea if I have ever heard one because
if there is one thing we in the west, and in Alberta in particular, are fond of that is the NEP. (sarcasm off)

Related: A Liberal blogger's take on Ed Clark.


In Michael's defense he did move away from Canada in 1978 while Trudeau was still PM and the NEP was yet to face the light of day. Perhaps he was unaware of the dislike out west for the NEP and that it turned out to be an absolute failure policy wise.

Brison's ten-percenter vs Ignatieff's stock portfolio.

Day 3 of Ignatieff week in Canada. Juxtapose the following. (sorry Kate)

Scott Brison has sent out a ten-percenter asking for opinions from Canadians about buying stocks and the current economic situation. (see link to Steve Janke's post and please do respond to Mr. Brison's flyer)


Micheal Ignatieff proudly declares that he has NEVER bought or owned any stock.

Pulling the rug out from under the coalition.

Heard any of these before?

Stephen Harper does not understand that he did not get a majority.

The Conservatives fail to recognize the seriousness of Canada's economic situation.

He (Harper)was given a minority, and he refused to work with the other parties, he had 38% of the vote and he's trying to govern like he had 100% of the power, he's the one who's got democracy wrong, not us.

Given the critical situation facing our fellow citizens and the refusal and inability of the Harper government to deal with this critical situation, the opposition parties have decided that it was now time to take action.

The Conservatives chose partisan games based on ideological beliefs instead of considering the interests of Quebecers and Canadians.

The Conservatives must work with the other parties.

The Conservatives divisive measures that were making it hard for Parliament to work together .


Now tell me how a budget that does address the concerns of the coalition, is a real response to the current situation, is perhaps so non "conservative" or ideological that it is pissing off many so called conservatives, that the Government invited the other parties to participate in it's creation, is ready with cash immediately for the economy, is popular among the electorate, and is pretty much doing exactly the opposite of what the above quotes claim, could be voted against by the people who made the above statements?

It can't be, or at least it can't be honestly unless those above statements were just more of the same political rhetoric that we have seen so often in the past, and that Canadians are getting tired of reading about.

There has been plenty of talk about how the PM has abandoned the principles of conservatism, and that he should stick to his guns by not increasing spending etc. Fortunately those so called conservatives that are doing most of the criticizing are not the PM as this type of thing would be playing right into the hands of Layton and the coup crew who would be overjoyed if the PM were that stupid or that ideologically rigid. It would be spun as proving that the coalition is a good idea because the PM does not understand or care about Canadians and is not willing to make things work. They are not going to get that chance.

The opposition gets out foxed by Harper again and they have not yet figured it out.

The budget will pass, the coalition will be dead with the partners pointing fingers at one another in blame, good honest government will continue, and when an election eventually is called the proof of who compromised and was willing to make government work, and who was only playing political games will be even clearer than it was when the NDP/Bloc/Liberal hidden agenda was first revealed back in early December.

Well Colour Me Surprised.

Jack Layton and coalition partner Gilles Duceppe say they will not support the budget.



In the mean time Iggy is trying to find more creative ways to have Liberal MP's sit on their hands.

Save the Hollow Tree!

Sorry Kate, but I say we need to save Vancouver's famous Hollow Tree which stands (with much help) in Stanley Park.

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It stands as a symbol for all things that would, or perhaps should, die a natural death if it were not for taxpayer* dollars being spent. After all, we do know more than mother nature about this kind of thing don't we?






* before someone jumps in to tell me that this is all going to be private money I would like to point out the matching grant from the Heritage Legacy Fund of BC which was funded by tax dollars, and such additional costs as the cost of about $100,000 to landscape around the site and restore the roadway curbing, as claimed by Stanley Park board staff.

Screw GM, Ford, and Chrysler...

We need to bail out these guys. Come on Canada, lets save this Canadian institution.

Stephane Dion calls it a lie, but really who is the one doing the nose stretcher here?

Stephane Dion has been calling the PM a liar for the last couple of days because he does not like the way that his carbon tax has been treated by the Conservatives. It all boils down to the fact that Conservatives are not talking about the tax breaks that are going to be offered up by Dion's plan and Mr. Dion is not happy.

Well there is a good reason for that Stephane, because in the policy you are proposing, in this case it might be better referred to as bait and shift, those tax cuts are not going to even come close to the costs that the average taxpayer is going to have to shell out because of this twisted piece of bad policy.

The cost of EVERYTHING is going to go up, and if you want to talk truth why are you not telling Canadians that little fact about the fallout of your carbon tax?


Look at the following example with the results from the Liberal Green Shift calculator.

Joe makes 50K a year, lives in Alberta, is single and inherited his home.

He will get back $337 a year from those touted tax breaks under Dion's carbon tax. ( if he lived in Quebec he would only get back $282!! I wonder how many people in Quebec are aware of that little fact).

According to the Liberals: Joe is going to have to pay about $250 more to heat his home next year due to direct increases from the carbon tax leaving $87 dollars left over. But don't go out celebrating and buy up all that beer and popcorn just yet Joe, because you have not yet figured out how much more your electricity bill will be going up and the Liberal DO NOT even have an estimate for that. Any wagers that it will be well over the $87 dollars that Joe has left over?

A safe guess would be that the increase would be approaching that of his natural gas bill at around the $250 dollar mark*

So Joe gets hit with a $500 increase to his utility bills and now is $163 in the red. (The official colour of the Liberal Party of Canada BTW).

But we cannot stop there, oh no, because now Joe is going to be faced with cost increases from all over.

His property taxes are going to go up, estimate another $200 as municipalities try to recover their own massive cost increases for both heat and power. Damn city; do we really need public transit, those street lights on all night, our pools and facility buildings heated, roads plowed in winter or even to have our police or sanitation workers driving around in those costly vehicles? It is insane I tell you.

Provincial taxes would go up for many of the same reasons outlined above as well as a few more as the schools, universities, and hospitals come running to them to cover their carbon tax related cost increases.

The costs on food and consumer goods will go up as their shipping and manufacturing costs increase and the stores themselves pass on their own utility increases on to the consumer. This is already a given, but there is another reason that we can expect to see the price of everything increase and for that look to what happens to Joe next.

So poor Joe, who believed Dion and voted Liberal is now so far into the hole on this that he has to go to his boss and ask for a raise, as do all those others who work beside him. Joe's boss gives him and his fellow employees that raise, but now has to pass on these new added wage costs along with the direct cost increases that he is already paying on carbon tax to his customers causing his prices to raise.

Out of control inflation anyone?

It is a good thing Joe has a job. Imagine what this will do to the real poor in this country who can least afford it.



Mr. Dion; the next time that you speak about how those mean Conservatives do not talk about your tax cuts, please be honest with Canadians and tell them the real lie that those tax cuts are not even going to cover the known cost increases caused by your carbon tax, and certainly will not be enough to cover the many yet unknown cost increases that are sure to follow.


Poor Joe, poor Canada; and all for an environment plan that will DO NOTHING to reduce our GHG emissions.





*By taking only the top 7 electric generation facilities in Alberta with their 2004 CO2 emission numbers and multiplying that by $40.00/tonne you get a low estimate of the real cost to Alberta facilities coming out at over 4 billion dollars. With a population of 3.5 million people that comes out to $1200 per Albertan! So I figure $250 is a reasonable and realistic number for calculating on a per home basis what the average power bill would raise under Dion's carbon tax. The Liberals haven't even bothered to try and figure this number out, or at least they are not telling us about it if they did.

Harpernomics

Most stable banking system in the world.

Record job creation for September.

Canada will lead G7 for GDP growth for 2009.


If this is Harpernomics; Ill take a few more years please.

Would Dion have pulled the plug?

With the current world wide financial problems and if the PM would not have pulled the plug on his government a little over 30 days ago, would Stephane Dion have finally got up enough nerve to vote non confidence in the government forcing an election?


I say would say that yes he would have and we would be heading into an election for the middle of November rather than this upcoming Tuesday.


What say you?

Drop off a comment or vote in the poll on the side bar.

Squandered. Lost in translation?

Stephane Dion: "They inherited a surplus of $12 billion, which they have squandered within two-and-a-half years,..."

Really Stephane; Squandered?

I know that you do not balance your own cheque book, and that your ideas such as carbon tax would harm the Canadian economy, but squandered?

Maybe I as a conservative do not understand what a Liberal thinks the "function of government" is, but it is you who do not understand that this money is not Liberal money but money that was taken from the pockets of taxpayers.

It is our money.

Money that was returned to the taxpayer through cuts to the GST and the income tax rate is not squandered.

Money that was given to the Provinces in transfer payments for such things as health care (which was decimated by Paul Martin and Jean Chretien) is not squandered money. Opps, I forgot; Liberals do not believe in any fiscal imbalance.

Money, about $40 billion, that gets paid off against our national debt and reduces interest paid on that debt by over 120 million dollars a year is not squandered money.

You see Stephane; that is what the average Canadian does when they are lucky enough to have some extra cash. We try to pay off our debts. It is simple economics and common sense, but you wouldn't know that because you have no idea about the life of the average Canadian and you do not even know how to handle your own debt.


You sir are out of touch and not worth the risk.

Dear Liberal Party of Canada.

Dear Liberal Party of Canada:

Stop trying to take away all of my hard earned money and please stop telling me what to do and how to live my life.

You are not better than me, and just the fact that you believe that you are and that somehow you know better how to live my life than myself is enough of a reason why you should never be returned to power in this country.

Thank you,

Al

Trust me. I am an economist.

John McCallum, Liberal MP and LPC finance critic, was in Guelph on Tuesday trying to sell Dion's green shift to the local voters for the upcoming by-election, but like many other Liberal MP's of late, his explanation left more questions than answers.

After reading off the usual prepared party lines; "The essence of the Green Shift is that you have higher taxes on what you burn and lower taxes on what you earn," he said. "So that you tax higher things that are bad, like pollution, and you tax lower things like your income." (is anyone else out there getting tired of hearing these same words from every Liberal who opens up their mouth about Dion's carbon tax?) McCallum goes off script adding ""the vast majority" of Canadians will find the tax breaks included in the plan will outweigh the extra costs incurred by higher energy prices." Vast majority? Just what percentage of Canadians will make up that vast majority, how has he calculated this, and more importantly who will not be included in that "vast majority"?

52%, 60%? Higher? Come on big John, give us a real number. ( hint to the press: please start to ask these types of questions. It is your damn job.) Your guess on the numbers will be as good as McCallum's because nobody really knows for sure what the actual costs will turn out to be after the carbon tax inevitably gets passed down on to the consumer. Prices are going to raise on most everything, and unless you know just how much, you cannot make wild claims about how far these tax breaks are going to go. As for those left out of that "vast majority", no matter what the number turns out to be, logic says that they are the ones who are going to be least able to afford it such as the elderly, students, low wage earners, and all of those on fixed incomes. The plan is going to punish the poor.

McCallum, not to be out done by the many other Liberal MP's who have contradicted Dion on his green shift, had the following to say: "the Conservative anti-carbon tax campaign is promoting "two myths" about the Green Shift -- first that it won't be revenue neutral, and the myth that the Green Shift will raise the price of gas at the pump." Directly contradicting Dion who has already grudgingly admitted that the price at the pumps is going to raise: "We know that they will pass on part of their costs to their consumers because they cannot eliminate the emissions overnight, with all the goodwill of the world. We know that."

So why should anybody trust what McCallum has to say over his leader? Well, in response to comments made by the Executive Director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association, Peter A. Nelson, about the cost of lettuce going up to $8 a head, McCallum said "That's just crazy, totally out to lunch. And I'm an economist, so I know a little bit what I'm talking about. It doesn't make any sense."

Did the economist tell us just how much he thought the price of lettuce would go up, how much the rate of inflation would raise, or give us ANY real numbers at all about anything?

Well no, but not to worry because he is an economist after all; an economist who knows a "little bit" about what he is talking about.

Source story.

Ralph Goodale and the mystical Liberal money fairy.

Fighting for his political life in his home province, Liberal MP Ralph Goodale takes his attempt at selling the carbon tax to the people of Saskatchewan and invokes the mysterious Liberal money fairy in the process.

What Mystical Liberal Money Fairy am I talking about you ask. Well the one that is going to have to come up with the real money for the Liberal promises and claims of increased spending on, R&D both in private industry and universities, alternative energy, new green based business', public transit, an Office of Petroleum Price Information, emissions reducing technology, special funds, and other assorted promises made by Dion and his band of inept Liberals.

Just how big are these Liberal promises? Lets see what Ralph Goodale had to say on that.

"And those investments are going to bring literally billions of dollars in new business activity to these two provinces. While we had the initial problem of the largest bulk of emissions, we have ultimately the biggest benefit of the largest amount of the new investment that is going to be made to deal with those emissions and the order of magnitude could be about the size of building the St. Lawrence Seaway and that will come into Alberta and Saskatchewan over the course of the next 10-15 years".


Now that sure sounds big to me, but there remains an issue that the Liberals have seemed to overlook, or are purposely omitting in their efforts to deceive Canadians.

Just where is all of this money going to come from?

It cannot be from the taxes collected via the green shift because that is promised to be revenue neutral and "that every dollar that is raised from carbon pollution will be returned to Canadians in tax" cuts." and the Liberals are planning to write that into law and have it monitored by the Auditor General.

So if not even $1.00 of taxes collected by the green shift will be going into either directly reducing CO2 emissions or into ANY of the programs/spending promised by the numerous Liberals out trying to sell this fraud of an environment program to Canadians; where will those big promises of investment money come from?

You guessed it; the mystical Liberal money fairy.


All of this talk about the money that will be flowing into the economy are nothing but empty promises and very wishful thinking on the part of Dion and the Liberals. There is no basis in reality for these claims and again the Liberal Party of Canada are showing us their arrogance and contempt by taking the voters and taxpayers of this country for idiots by trying to convince us otherwise. Nobody is buying it, the plan is a dud and the Liberals will be rewarded for their contempt at the ballot box.


That is unless they happen to have a Mystical Liberal Vote Fairy on standby as well.

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A quick afterthought: If PM Harper made the very same dubious claims about alleged billions of dollars of investment money that would magically come rolling into Canada as a result of his governments environment plan (and he could because the claims are nothing but pie in the sky wishful thinking not based on reality); how long do you thing it would take for those claims to be chewed up and ripped apart on the front pages of every news paper in the country?

So why the silence from the MSM?