Canadian Election

[Canucks_fan18]

Feel free to go read the platforms of the major political parties and your answers are right there.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elec...rty-platforms/

"The party had pledged to keep deficits under $10 billion and said its government would balance the books by 2019. It hasn’t. The Liberals’ election platform includes $9.3 billion in new spending in 2020-2021, with the deficit rising to $27.4 billion that same fiscal year. Given current trends, the finance department doesn’t predict a return to balanced budgets until at least 2040." Sounds like more debt and spending to me...

[GretzkysMullet]

How do we pay for this transition into a greener country?

The problem is we are already paying not to. Subsidies to fossil fuel companies in Canada amount to billions of dollars each year, and most of these companies are not even Canadian. If this industry is so good for Canada why do we have to prop it up?

[doulos]

Anyhow, it should be interesting to see how it all shakes down.

I suspect a Liberal Minority government, which should give the NDP the chance to get a few of their own goals met as well.

Possibly a Conservative minorty government, but not sure how that would work since the NDP has flat out said they will not work with Conservatives, so things could be messy in that case.

Kind of fun to see a close election.

[doulos]

The problem is we are already paying not to. Subsidies to fossil fuel companies in Canada amount to billions of dollars each year, and most of these companies are not even Canadian. If this industry is so good for Canada why do we have to prop it up?

Not to mention the long term costs related to climate change are very likely to be way higher than the costs to actually address it (though it's obviously complicated on a global scale).

You make an excellent point though.

[Auston'sWilly]

Harper ran deficits to try to spark the country out of recession. Trudeau doesn't have that excuse. And fake climate emergencies certainly don't count as one.
By the way, sure would be nice if one of the enviro-friendly parties would implement a federal tax credit for using public transit. Can't imagine why that hasn't been done - seems like a no-brainer.
***checks notes
Oh, right, Harper actually did that.
And Trudeau cancelled it.

[Axeman33]

Harper ran deficits to try to spark the country out of recession. Trudeau doesn't have that excuse. And fake climate emergencies certainly don't count as one.
By the way, sure would be nice if one of the enviro-friendly parties would implement a federal tax credit for using public transit. Can't imagine why that hasn't been done - seems like a no-brainer.
***checks notes
Oh, right, Harper actaully did that.
And Trudeau cancelled it.

Wait, I thought Harper balanced the budget?? LOL!

[blayze]

The only dude I find tolerable is Jasmeet Singh.

Too bad a strong showing from him helps Scheer more than anyone.

[doulos]

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elec...rty-platforms/

"The party had pledged to keep deficits under $10 billion and said its government would balance the books by 2019. It hasn’t. The Liberals’ election platform includes $9.3 billion in new spending in 2020-2021, with the deficit rising to $27.4 billion that same fiscal year. Given current trends, the finance department doesn’t predict a return to balanced budgets until at least 2040." Sounds like more debt and spending to me...

The Green Party plans to increase the corporate tax rate, increase a financial transactions tax, bring in a sugary drink tax and (if I remember correctly, though would need to confirm this - I know it's part of the NDP plan) bring about some sort of tax on the ultra-wealthy.

I actually agree that the Liberal party, in general, has been light on details this go round - same with the Conservatives.

These revenue generation ideas are things you might hate, but they are the suggestions put forth.

[doulos]

The only dude I find tolerable is Jasmeet Singh.

Too bad a strong showing from him helps Scheer more than anyone.

Yeah, he came across quite well in the last English debate that I watched. It was refreshing.

[Canucks_fan18]

The problem is we are already paying not to. Subsidies to fossil fuel companies in Canada amount to billions of dollars each year, and most of these companies are not even Canadian. If this industry is so good for Canada why do we have to prop it up?

Like Bombardier and SNC? How about this each province just keeps what they earn and we get rid of equalization payments. Give it a decade and Alberta will look like Saudi Arabia and the rest of the country will be like Syria. Quebec in the history of these payments has taken $198 billion. Alberta? 92 million. Quebec has taken over 50% of the payments. So here lets do this. How much would we save if we didn't have to do everything in french and English? Might not be popular idea but would that make Quebec want to separate again? If they separated how much would Canada save? Sure we couldn't claim Lemeuix, Roy or GSP anymore but small price to pay. Heck they have a whole political party dedicated solely to them, shows what they prioritize.

[doulos]

Like Bombardier and SNC? How about this each province just keeps what they earn and we get rid of equalization payments. Give it a decade and Alberta will look like Saudi Arabia and the rest of the country will be like Syria. Quebec in the history of these payments has taken $198 billion. Alberta? 92 million. Quebec has taken over 50% of the payments. So here lets do this. How much would we save if we didn't have to do everything in french and English? Might not be popular idea but would that make Quebec want to separate again? If they separated how much would Canada save? Sure we couldn't claim Lemeuix, Roy or GSP anymore but small price to pay. Heck they have a whole political party dedicated solely to them, shows what they prioritize.

Do you honestly believe the country is going to be like Saudi Arabia and Syria in 10 years? I mean really?

[Canucks_fan18]

Do you honestly believe the country is going to be like Saudi Arabia and Syria in 10 years? I mean really?

Obviously not but I was trying to highlight the gross equality issues among the contributions of the individual provinces. There's no denying based on overall contribution to the economy that Alberta is #1 and from a resource drain Quebec is by and far the worse.

[doulos]

Obviously not but I was trying to highlight the gross equality issues among the contributions of the individual provinces. There's no denying based on overall contribution to the economy that Alberta is #1 and from a resource drain Quebec is by and far the worst.

I would say it's not obvious based on how this thread has gone. Just full of over the top language. Guess I needed to doublecheck.

There is so much misinformation when it comes to how transfer payments work that I've given up trying to explain it to people.

[lobo1969]

Hmm here's a link to view...

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...sters-2019.pdf

and a quote from it "Justin Trudeau is projected to be the largest debt accumulator among prime ministers who did not fight a world war or experience an economic downturn during their tenure".

There is a lot of caveats in that statement. Trudeau is PROJECTED to be the largest debt accumulator of debt but has not actually done it yet. And will the Fraser institute give Trudeau a pass if the economy goes into recession in the near future like they did as an excuse for the record deficits that the Harper government ran up? Again, does this report also not display debt spending history happening from both left and right centric federal governments even though it tries to slant it as exclusively a Trudeau/liberal problem?

The Fraser institute is famously right wing biased and this 'report' reflects as much, thanks for posting it.

[ACC90]

Stop making it a 'Left' problem. Conservative governments at every level have gleefully contributed to debt level spending. Provincial conservative governments in Alberta have been doing it for decades. The Harper government has added to the federal debt in record amounts.

Out of control debt spending VS planned debt spending within a certain % level of national GDP to 'help' the economy are often confused and heavily debated about.

I really don't want to associate this to the Left, but I never saw a left party saying that they will have a balance budget.
I saw this morning that the NPD will have a deficit of 32.7 billion in 2020... and people will vote for that because they want services and don't want to pay for them and it's really selfish.

We can cut in a lot of places without affecting directly the services to the citizen.
One good example is the two income tax returns (Quebec and Canada) : When Scheer proposed that Quebec could do only one, the only argument from the Union was that people would lose job... Nothing about the "add value" of those two tax returns. We can see a lot of those inefficiency in our public system and the only solution that parties are giving to us is "More and more money in the public system" and I'm sooo tired of that! It's normal that Union want to protect their members jobs, but it's anormal that taxpayer lose money for something useless specialy in a severe shortage labour at this moment.