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promises

Tuesday October 1, 2019

October 8, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday October 1, 2019

Promising back-to-back deficits isn’t political suicide in Canada anymore

St. Paul, 1997

The church of the balanced budget — inaugurated by Saint Paul in 1995 — has been losing power for some time now, even if it retains significant allure.

But with balance no longer universally accepted as the be-all and end-all, a more interesting choice has emerged for voters.

The first blow against balance came in January 2009 when Stephen Harper, who had once vowed never to spend into a deficit, was compelled to acknowledge that running a deficit wasn’t necessarily a bad thing — that sometimes it’s even the right thing to do.

January 26, 2009

In that case, it was the Great Recession that necessitated a quick influx of government spending. For the fiscal year of 2009-2010, the Harper government ran a deficit of $56.4 billion. Before they were done, the Conservatives ran six years of annual deficits, totalling $157.8 billion.

Still, it was considered heresy when Justin Trudeau announced in 2015 that a Liberal government would run three years of deficits to boost a sluggish economy. One newspaper described the plan as “political suicide.” Shortly thereafter, Trudeau’s Liberals won a majority.

November 2, 2016

Once in office, the Trudeau government pushed things further — first because of economic circumstances, then because of its own choices and priorities — resulting in deficits of $19 billion, $19 billion, $14 billion and $19.8 billion.

Harper’s deficits could be traced to his decisions to cut taxes — the GST in particular. Trudeau’s deficits had more to do with new spending on federal programs.

While running for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2017, Andrew Scheer vowed to balance the budget within two years of forming government. But as the 2019 general election neared — and with budget cuts by Doug Ford’s provincial government angering voters in Ontario — Scheer lost some of his enthusiasm for swift deficit elimination. In May, he announced that a Conservative government would instead take five years to balance the budget.

April 13, 2019

The Liberal platform released on Sunday nudges the goalposts again. With promised new spending, a re-elected Liberal government would run larger deficits, starting at $27.4 billion in the first year and declining to $21 billion in the fourth.

The Conservative response was notable for what it lacked. Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre’s primary argument was not that the deficits were themselves immoral or fundamentally unsound. Rather, he claimed the deficits inevitably would lead a Liberal government to increase taxes — tax hikes the Conservatives claim Trudeau is concealing now.

That attack might resonate more if the Harper government’s deficits had triggered the same consequences.

Economists like Kevin Milligan argue that the current deficit is not a matter for great concern — that government debt is not like household debt, borrowing rates are low, the situation in 2019 is not what it was in 1995 and recent deficits have been relatively modest.

November 22, 2018

The debt-to-GDP ratio — the debt as measured against the entirety of the national economy — was 31.5 per cent in 2014-2015. The Liberals now project that, even after eight years of deficits, it will be 30.2 per cent of GDP in 2023-2024. (For the sake of comparison, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 66.8 per cent in 1996, when Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were compelled to cut spending.)

In 2011, Harper’s Conservatives promised $1.6 billion in new spending, while Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals countered with a platform that included $5.5 billion in new initiatives, all of it covered by corresponding tax increases or spending cuts.

In 2019, instead of arguing within a box created by competing desires to both balance the budget and avoid broad-based tax increases, the platforms of the two main federal parties could be upwards of $20 billion apart.

That is not a small amount of money.

If the orthodoxy of the balanced budget has weakened, it has left room for a clearer choice. (CBC) 

 
 
Posted in: Canada Tagged: #elxn2019, 2019-34, Budget, Canada, Deficit, dragon, Justin Trudeau, promises, shopping, spending

Thursday May 31, 2018

May 30, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 31, 2018

All three parties spending like drunks

During the last televised leaders’ debate, 19-year-old Martin Badger, a first-time voter from Burlington, posed an audience question to the three party leaders that’s probably troubling other Ontario voters.

May 16, 2018

How do you plan to pay for the additional services that you’re promising? Badger asked.

Unless you’re dipped, dyed and butt-branded in party colours, the answers weren’t exactly comforting. The reality is they’re all spending like old-time drunken sailors, tossing free programs and tax cuts around as if the election is an extended shore leave binge.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath kicked off by acknowledging that people across the province, including herself, are concerned about the accumulated debt, now pegged at about $325 billion and rising.

May 15, 2018

To help pay for her promises, which include drug coverage for everyone, lower electricity rates, hiring 4,500 new nurses and getting rid of “hallway medicine,” Horwath said she’s “going to ask” the richest people and corporations to pay a “little more” in taxes.

What Horwath didn’t specifically mention is she also plans to borrow $25 billion to pay for these and other elections promises. Oh, yes, and then she’ll balance the books and stop deficit spending. Once that’s done, Horwath previously told The Spectator, the New Democrats “will take any surpluses … and apply them to the debt.”

For his part, Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford basically repeated what he’s been saying before the campaign began. He intends to pay for his promises by finding four cents of savings on every dollar spent by the province and by bringing in outside auditors to find more “efficiencies.”

That’s a tall order, particularly since the platform-free Ford is promising to cut hydro rates, lower gas prices and taxes, create 15,000 new long-term care beds and invest almost $2 billion in various health and housing services, which, of course, means less revenue and more expenses. He also intends to run a deficit for at least the first year.

Liberal promises include more money for hospitals, more free tuition for post-secondary students, free preschool child care, and free prescription drugs for children, young adults and seniors. In total, it amounts to more than $20 billion of new deficit spending. Still, in a woebegone gesture to fiscal responsibility, Wynne also promises to introduce legislation directing budget surpluses be used to pay down the $325 billion debt. (Continued: Andrew Dreschel, Hamilton Spectator) 

 

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Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Andrea Horwath, cheese, Doug Ford, election, Kathleen Wynne, moon, Ontario, populism, promises, Space, spending

Wednesday May 16, 2018

May 15, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 16, 2018

Ontario election: NDP overtakes Liberals as the ‘Anti-Ford’ party, according to Ipsos poll

NDP’s Andrea Horwath is jumping ahead of Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals one week into the 2018 Ontario Election.

According to an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News, the NDP is gaining ground with 35 per cent of respondents saying they would vote for Horwath’s party – that’s up six points from last week’s polling. The Liberals would only garner 22 per cent, down four per cent from last week.

But Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives are still ahead, with 40 per cent of respondents saying they would vote PC if an election were held tomorrow. That number is unchanged from last week.

Only three per cent say they would vote for other parties (including the Green Party).

“Normally you would expect the NDP not to be a factor in that the fight would be between the Liberals and the Conservatives,” pollster Darrel Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, explained. (Source: Global News) 

 

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Andrea Horwath, axe, cuts, Doug Ford, election, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario, poll, promises, purse, spending

Thursday May 10, 2018

May 9, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 10, 2018

Killing Discovery Math

The Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s plan to scrap the province’s mathematics curriculum isn’t the answer to declining test scores among elementary school-aged children, a Toronto educator says.

September 3, 2013

“This is a very nuanced conversation and I think it gets really heated,” said Vanessa Vakharia, founder and CEO of The Math Guru, a math and science tutoring service based uptown, on Wednesday morning.

“I think it’s really easy to want to point to one thing and to place blame,” she continued, referencing PC Leader Doug Ford’s opposition to what is often called “discovery math.”

The concept, which places an emphasis on experimentation and problem solving rather than rote learning, is at the core of Ontario’s curriculum. It has come under increasing scrutiny as standardized test scores in math have steadily declined in Ontario in the last decade.

In a campaign speech on Tuesday, Ford said a PC government would develop a curriculum focused on “getting back to basics” in the areas of reading, writing and math.

“Kids used to learn math by doing things like memorizing a multiplication table, and it worked. Kathleen Wynne scrapped that. Instead, our kids are left with experimental discovery math,” he said. (Source: CBC) 

 

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Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Andrea Horwath, discovery, election, math, NDP, Ontario, platform, promises

Friday April 6, 2018

April 5, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 6, 2018

Federal infrastructure plan behind schedule: PBO

The Parliamentary Budget Officer says federal infrastructure spending created up to 11,000 new jobs over the past year and added 0.1 per cent to Canada’s GDP, falling short of Liberal government projections as the program falls behind schedule.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Fréchette also cautions that rising interest rates are starting to offset the positive economic effects of infrastructure spending.

The PBO released a report Thursday that examines the impact of what the Liberal government calls its first phase of infrastructure spending. The plan was announced in the 2016 budget and initially promised about $12-billion over five years for projects that are primarily focused on repairs of existing assets. The PBO report looks at how spending from that budget – and top-ups announced in the 2016 fall update – will be spread over nine years, bringing the total to $14.4-billion.

In an interview, Mr. Fréchette said the amount of economic stimulus and employment created from the first phase of spending is relatively modest when compared with the promises made by the Liberals.

Thursday’s PBO report said phase 1 infrastructure spending added 0.1 per cent to Canada’s GDP in the 2016-17 fiscal year and 0.1 per cent in the fiscal year that ends March 31.

The 2016 budget included estimates from the Department of Finance that the announced infrastructure spending would boost Canada’s GDP by 0.2 per cent in the first year and 0.4 per cent in the second year.

That hasn’t happened, Mr. Fréchette notes. (Source: Globe & Mail) 

 

Posted in: Canada, Ontario Tagged: Canada, day care, debt, Deficit, election, infrastucture, Justin Trudeau, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario, pharmacare, promises, servicing, spending
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