Sunday, September 20, 2009

Can you spot when the Conservatives were elected on this chart???


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you think the chart might compare to any other country in the G20? Do you think they might look pretty similar?

Backseat Blogger said...

silly lawyer... didn't the liberals actually support the budget when it came down? didn't they actually argue for a bigger deficit?

and now you're trying to spin the deficit as a purely conservative creation.

pull my other leg.

wilson said...

But for a true comparison picture, you have to include a few more Chretien/Martin years.
see chart link below

Remember too, from the years 2001 - 2005 and additional $54 Billion from the EI surplus was raided and put into general revenues,
so those surplus' were artificial.

Plus, conservatives reduced GST revenue by 2% and still maintained surplus', for 2007 pre-recession, and 2008 with the recession already taking hold.

see chart on page 24 of this pdf:

http://www.cga-canada.org/en-ca/ResearchReports/ca_rep_2008-07_fb-surplus.pdf

Savant said...

Those dastardly Tories! Damn them for throwing the entire world into a recession. See what happens when you vote Conservative?

kitt said...

Yes those Sorry Tories will spend and spend into deficit every country that ever voted them in as government. That`s why other countries have thrown the bums out. Time for Canada to do the same.

Stephen Downes said...

Harper was elected in 2006.

The black continues until 2008, when the world was hit with a global downturn.

Blaming Harper for that is stupid. Seriously now.

Harper will claim - with some accuracy - that Canada has weathered the storm rather better than most.

The Liberals, rather than criticizing Harper and saying he wrecked the economy, should be taking credit for Canada's solid position.

Our survival during this downturn is a genuine Liberal accomplishment - everything from the solid finances (such a contrast to the Bush spending spree) and reasonable banking laws (remember when the Tories were calling for deregulation)?

Ignatieff should be saying things like: if we had voted for the Tories back in the good years, we'd be facing the disaster that Iceland (or Ireland, another Tory pet) has faced.

Remember, he shoudl say, Brian Mulroney's 'made in Canada recession'. That's what we would have gotten, in spades.

He should say that Harper is doing what he has to do, what he is being forced to do by a minority government, and taking advantage of prudent Liberal management which is a good thing.

Nobody - NOBODY - believes that Harper will overspend and run up huge deficits if he gets a majority. Exactly the opposite.

They fear he would cut back spending, choke off the recovery, slash social services, while giving tax breaks and handouts to his buddies the rich.

Attacking Harper on the defincit is playing right into his hands.

It's this sort of thing that Ignatieff is getting exactly wrong. Being out of the country for so long does have an impact, and it appears to have robbed him of the Canadian common sense a Liberal opposition would otherwise have.