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Spend and Tax
Yesterday’s Quebec budget was one of the most toxic I’ve ever seen. Among the highlights: -Health Care taxes and user fees-A pair of 1% increases to the provincial sales tax-An increase to the fuel tax Ouch. Those can’t have been easy decisions to make, but given the debt load facing the province and a stubborn […]
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The 6 Billion Dollar Question
As I mentioned briefly on Sunday, Ignatieff’s proposal to cancel the corporate tax cuts should form the main ideological fault line of the next election campaign. That’s not to say it’s all the election will be about – let’s not kid ourselves, we’re still going to get “Harper’s a dictator” and “Ignatieff’s just visiting” attack […]
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The 411 on 150
For those of you who weren’t glued to the online webstream this weekend, Jeff Jedras provides an excellent recap of the weekend at Canada 150. The media reaction to the conference has been (predictably) mixed. All I’ll say is that if people are going to knock the Liberals for not knowing what they stand for, […]
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Two Paths
The big news out of Ignatieff’s closing speech from the Canada150 conference is his pledge to overturn scheduled cuts to the corporate tax rate. I’m trying to find the exact figures, but I believe that would boost government revenue by 10-15 billion a year 5-6 billion a year (not taking into account any lost productivity). […]
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How Shale Gas Changes Everything: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the upcoming demographic shift
A guest post by Kyle Olsen from Can150 Montreal – If anyone else in Montreal wants to share their thoughts on the conference, flip me an e-mail (calgarygrit@gmail.com) and I’ll post them here Not enough retirement savings, out of control healthcare costs, a lack of skilled workers, the uneducated unemployed, the future of Canadian content […]
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McGuinty’s 2011 Playbook: Mr. Freeze versus The Joker
It’s hard to boil a 224 page budget down to one line item. But the early reaction to Thursday’s Ontario budget has been all about McGuinty’s pledge to freeze public sector wages. Is it good policy? It seems reasonable enough to me given the tough economic times, but then again, I might have a different […]
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Tough Crowd to Impress
With little movement in Canadian polls, let’s gaze to the south, where a new poll shows us just what Republicans think of Obama: -67% agree he’s a socialist-57% agree he’s a secret Muslim (And he can’t be doing a very good job of keeping it secret if half of all Republicans are on to him)-42% […]
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Clowns Playing Chess
From Jane Taber: How not to run an effective opposition. “It’s raining frogs across the aisle,” Industry Minister Tony Clement said. It was a gong show last night in the Commons for Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals; one Liberal MP is even calling it “clown city.” First, the Liberal motion on the Harper government’s maternal […]
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Let’s just ignore her and hope she dissapears
That’s all I’ve got to say about that.
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Wells v. Coyne: How conservative are the Conservatives?
Well worth reading: Paul Wells on just how conservative the Conservatives are. And Andrew Coyne on how they’re not. I think this exchange really illustrates Harper’s strategy. In short, own the centre and govern like Liberals, but toss a few symbolic conservative/reform gestures to the base to keep them and their chequebooks happy.