Gear up for 4 years of fiscal responsibility, economic policy that makes sense, and social policy that is appalling.

WHAT!? that is not true... economic policy that makes sense? Buying senseless military items makes sense? Trying to get into the UN security council? really? I believe the money could go towards a lot of better places.

"The fact that almost 60% of Canadians voted against corporate tax cuts while still voting Conservative is interesting to note" SIGH, I saw on TV that the voter turnout was 48%? Wished people would vote more.

I'm happy at least it's not NDP... if it was NDP it would've been disappointing.

Regardless... we'll see how the conservatives do now.

i presume h4 is being facetious, otherwise it makes no sense :0

39% of the vote and 54% of the seats =/ we need Single Transferable Vote!

^if we had that, we would never have anything accomplished. The likelyhood of a majority government would be extremely slim, and the parties would fracture off, splitting the vote even more, creating the need for coalitions, creating even more infighting..

I would be happier if nothing happened than if the cons get to do whatever they want

and coalitions are GOOD! it slows the government down

The purchasing of the fighter jets is fiscal policy not economic policy, although you could argue that it is social policy as well. Either way it doesn't speak to their economic policy platform.

Getting on the UN security council once again has nothing to do with economic policy, nothing to do with fiscal policy either. This is foreign policy which I would more broadly place under social policy. Do you see me defending them on social policy?

I'm an economist. I believe corporate tax cuts are a good way to go :P It is what our models say and all... I don't feel like going into a multi paragraph diatribe as to why corporate tax cuts = good, so I'm not going to.

Also, I am a fan of majorities. I like government being able to move quickly and decisively on things. If they make bad enough of a call, it can always be revisited later. How long it takes to get anything done in places like the US or most of western Europe is a real disadvantage I think.

go harper!

meh majorities suck

Corporate fiscal policy is to drive us into the ground with debt, by lowering taxes.

$100B deficit by the end of the cons term...

Economics isn't a real science; common sense says that you're wrong! Corporate tax cuts merely funnel more money to the most wealthy individuals, and out of the country.



How much later? and after how much damage? Majorities are almost ALWAYS bad.

Also, how long till they try to outlaw abortion or ban same-sex marriage...?

I am happy that the NDP are now the official opposition, if the torries mess things up enough and the NDP merge with the liberals i could see them winning the election in 4 years, and fyi i am glad i won't have to vote in another federal election for the next 4 years. 5 times in 9 years is just ridiculous.

and fyi tyug the national turnout average was 57%

Almost all of the governments we've had have been majorities, so you claim almost all of the governments we've had are bad? Its a generalization I don't see any proof to back it up.

How does cutting corporate taxes drown us in debt? Do you know how much corporate taxes generate in total revenue? How much is expected to be lost from the currently legislated reductions? How much that is as a percentage of our current deficit?

It isn't much, and to claim that all cuts just get funneled into corporate profits is left-wing rhetoric nonsense. A certain amount of it will be retained as additional profits of course, but a certain amount is passed down through lower prices. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support this. Increasing the per unit profit also makes producing more units viable. Assuming the good is normal, the price decreases should increase demand. thus the theory is that economic expansion will ensue.

None of that even takes into account the global economy and our competition for Foreign direct investment.

And trying to "attack" me by saying economics isn't a real science isn't going to work heh. Nobody denies this, and the term used for it is "dismal science" :P

Any attack on Same sex marriage or abortion is very difficult because both have constitutional rulings in the supreme court.

Good ? I am living in a country where it is a proportional system for elections and let me tell you, Coalitions are NOT good.. They are not slowing the government, they FREEZE the government to inaction... It opens the door even more to corruption..

So, we're way better with a Cons govt. than a NDP + PLC coalition.

And what would you want ?? To wait until the military equipment is completely dysfunctional ?? Go in Norway, Sweden, France.. All countries in the world have an army and it is the DUTY of the government to make sure that the Army, which is the defense of the country, is fully supported and capable.

It is about time that Canada changes its focus a bit. Social programs are costing way too much and they are at the expenses of everybody's taxes.. Too much people are working for others that do nothing. It will be a good move to cut the financial support to political parties and to cut a bit in all the social programs. It is time that more money directly stay in the pockets of the citizens.

Volter turnout was 61% of registered voters i beleive

Out of curiosity, what are some of the social policy stances of the conservative party? Limit to 1 state-funded abortion per year per person instead of unlimited?

Coalitions (esp with the loony left) are crap fullstop.

What Australia has now is a combo of fiscal irresponsibility, shortsighted quick fix economic policy and loonly left social paralysis.

Wow, you guys are getting more and more like us every day.

The CPC has never been fiscally responsible.
The media missed key points (as usual for them).

1) The "vote splitting" that let the conservatives win in toronto was because of anger directed against the provincial AND federal liberals.

2) The NDP gains in quebec are probably not permanent.

3) regarding social issues the CPC isn't that stupid. They won't touch the abortion/gay marriage/capital punishment issue unless they want to commit political suicide. They might disband the wheat board which would be kind of funny since the key proponents of this would actually be hurt by it. It doesn't affect most of us anyway mind you.

The CPC has one shot to prove they are competent or the GTA will turf them just like they turfed the libs and mulroney before them.

Revolver: most social programs in canada are provincially funded and/or provincially run (constitution). The federal government doesn't really have a lot of leverage except via transfer payments.
EI is the exception but I wouldn't call that a social program except if you live east of Quebec.

More likely what will happen is the CPC will try to devolve more power to the provinces (ie cut the fed money transfers and tell the provinces they are on their own), especially since they have no real support in quebec. This will benefit Ontario and Alberta the most which is where their core support appears to be now.

What is most interesting is that for all the "east-west" bashing that goes on, the solid conservative base is essentially alliance between the southern ontario (minus hammerton and windsor) and alberta (bulk of the support). Contrary to all the propeganda and crap spewn by the media, those two blocks actually have a lot in common and form a stronger power base than mulroney had trying to balance quebec and alberta.

"It isn't much, and to claim that all cuts just get funneled into corporate profits is left-wing rhetoric nonsense. A certain amount of it will be retained as additional profits of course, but a certain amount is passed down through lower prices. "

There's no solid evidence of lower prices or higher employment resulting from that. When the manufacturers tax was replaced with the GST, under your argument prices should have fallen but in fact they didn't.

PS corporate rates are less than 1/2 of what they were in 1990 yet our employment rate is no better than what it was prior to the 1990 recession. Neither are real wages.

I like how this election was sparked by Harper being found in contempt of parliament and Canada responded by giving him a majority. Dammit.

lol. sad but true.

^ Agreed...

Oh voter turn out increased from before I went to bed and last looked at the results. Guessing the majority of the West voted, since last I looked the East part wasn't doing so well.

As for my comment on the UN Security Council, it wasn't really a proof to against their economic policy. It's quite improbable for Canada to be a part of the Security Council. Canada doesn't have a big enough population to do international security and keep Canada, itself, safe.

I know the military jets needs to be replaced within the next 2 elections, but what was their justification for buying the most expensive jets? They haven't really given out proof other than the fact that they funded the JSF program along with a lot of others. Until the actual maintenance cost shows up, I wonder if it's a smart idea to buy new jets.

err, but there IS solid empirical evidence to show that it happens, there IS empirical evidence for the introduction of the GST. Did prices continue to rise? Of course, tax reductions aren't going to stop inflation. What it did was decrease the rate of inflation.

The evidence is a lot more clear when examining the maritime province's transition from PST to HST. Tons of empirical support for price reductions there.

Oh and real wages have went up quite a bit since the 1990's actually, I don't remember the exact figures but when I worked in labour/income analysis at Ontario Finance, I remember all those graphs having clear upward trends.

Arguing unemployment now compared to then is a smokescreen arguement. There is no basis for comparison. In order to compare you would have to conduct an analysis of what path growth would have been expected to follow carrying forward the original rates as though no reductions have been made. But the fact is that there is a correlation between tax rates and FDI, although taxes are of course not the only thing they consider (labour supply that meets their needs, access to desired markets etc. etc. all play a part).

In anticipation of the pushback on the numbers, I put in an email to a friend/old collegue in Ontario finance about the real wages. Hopefully she will get back to me with the data soon!

Regarding the UN security council: We've been on the security council before, many times actually. In fact this is the first time we've ever tried for a seat and didn't get it (if you want to attack the conservatives on the security council issue, attack them on that fact).

Overall I was very disgruntled with this election. I supported the conservative economic policy, but hate their social policy. I for the most part agree with Liberal and NDP social policy, but I couldn't support either party on their economic platform.

The best platform was the green, although they wanted to reduce CPP contributions, which single handedly made them unpalletable

I don't like that he did that parliament thing.. prorogue? Also don't like conservative social views. Seems very "religious", ew.

I do like that he wants to focus on economy and crime. I can't speak for most people, but those 2 things matter most to me. We need jobs. Bills gotta be paid, people need to live.

He's got his opportunity, who knows, if things start to get better, I might just vote for the first time in my life when the next one comes around.

Seriously though can someone tell me the social platform of the conservative party?

Similar to Republicans.

But I can't tell the difference between the liberals and NPD.

H4: given what happened economically after 1988 it's hard to show that the sales tax thing actually had any impact on prices at all.

"Oh and real wages have went up quite a bit since the 1990's actually,"
Yes. It does if you start at the low point in the early 90s and plot a recovery after a property value crash/economic crash. Start with 1988 and go from there. Remove the top 5% of wage earners and repeat. In order to prove the relation, go back further and show that the previous corporate tax hikes had the opposite effect in the 1960s.

Probably my sales tax argument isn't the best since that's not an income tax anyway. Better would be to focus on those companies who are most affect by the corporate tax rates and go from there. Banks/telecoms for example. Proprietorships/partnerships are unaffected.

the cons are closer to the US democrats sadly except for maybe a couple of things:P

I would argue that leaving corporate tax rates alone and cutting the personal tax rate is much more beneficial since that would create more demand for goods and relieve pressure on wages.

THey are a typical conservative party. Just think republicans in the US, they ideologically are very similar.

They have a big tough on crime agenda (and will legislate much tougher sentencing, minimum sentences is on their agenda).

They are big on ramping up our defense spending, and exerting our sovergnty in the north via a bigger navy.

They are big supporters of the oil sands in alberta, and expanding oil development and market access. For example:

The oppose banning oil tankers off the west coast (something the other parties supported).

They strongly support the keystone XL pipeline project.

THey strongly support development a pipeline to the west coast for transport to asian markets.

As a result of their feelings on oil development, they tend to have a very lax stance on environmental issues.

They are pro family values/nuclear "traditional" families. They are against same sex marriage and abortion (although I don't expect them to open either debate right now).

They are, for the most part, anti public universal healthcare. But this isn't an area they can really move on given that healthcare is provincial jurisdiction.

So Conservative government in canada = lower gas prices in US... count me as a member.

Yeah I got the info back from Ontario, apparantly real wages have been cyclical so there hasn't been much growth, however real average weekly earnings has increased. Implying that the "per hour" wage for people has stayed relatively the same in real term, but the amount of hours people work has increased, meaning that overall their has been a net increase in income.

But impacts on real wages has never been used as an argument for corporate tax policy anyway.

The problem I have with the arguement that decreasing personal income taxes increases demand is this: Most of what we produce we don't consume anyway, we export it. Most of what we do consume we import.

From my perspective decreasing income taxes is positive because
a) it is equivilent to a wage increase (as you mentioned), which benefits employees and employers (employers don't have to offer as much in wage in order to keep people "whole"). It also provides incentive for more people to choose employment over leisure, as marginal gain to working more is increased.

Proprietorships/partnerships very well could be effected by corporate tax decreases. Whether the corporate tax or the small business tax applies is a function of profits (if you make over a certain threashold, the corporate rate applies). It isn't specific to the structure of your operation. However, small business taxes are also being reduced.

Some of my biggest problems with the conservatives (and the liberals even) was their copyright reform & "digital economy" stances; ie their complete lack of comprehension of "the internet age"; I just hope by the time they're done ramming through their legislation that it's still legal for me to use a CD in Linux (Bill C-32 would have made that illegal).


I am also 100% against minimum sentences; it costs taxpayers $96000 per year to keep a male in prison; it costs $125000 per year to keep a woman in prison. That is a fluff-ton of money to waste, especially when minimum sentences lead to all sorts of weird situations.

(there was a case in the states, for example, where a cop of 20-something years was found "in posession of child pornography" because he had had an affair with a 17 year old, who sent him pics on her phone -- minimum sentence 4 or 5 years... without the minimum sentence, the judge could have said that it's clearly not what the legislators meant, and given a fine or community service or something; but with it, prison time; and in canada that would mean about half a million dollars that taxpayers have to pay + waste of a man's life)


I'm personally of the opinion that a couple percentage points here or there for taxes won't make much difference (though i think lowering taxes during a deficit should be illegal).

But all the law & government changes that the conservatives have the opportunity to mess with now are scary.


Also I want a goddamned national broadband plan. And consumer protection from ISP's and cellphone companies... DOWN UBB!

Sweden wishes Canada welcome to ze club!

"The problem I have with the arguement that decreasing personal income taxes increases demand is this: Most of what we produce we don't consume anyway, we export it. Most of what we do consume we import."


Well in terms of consumer goods that is true. But even so the importers and retailers weather Canadian owned or not are providing jobs and economic benefit. Also most services are not imported. It's pretty safe to say that most Canadians spend the vast majority of their disposable income in Canada (even the cross-border shoppers).

lol, love how he's being called a dictator, what rubbish.

Dictators can't be voted out of office by the people when they've had enough.

nah, he's not really my first choice as prime minister but calling him a dictator etc is rather over the top. He won according the rules in a free and more or less fair election. I say more or less because the riding divisions are not really fair (drastically different sizes) but that's not his doing and in this case if they were actually more equatable I suspect that he would have an even bigger majority..

He might sometimes act like a dictator, but it won't take a military coup or a violent uprising should there be a desire to turf him in 4 years:P

well, often in politics they say that a Prime Minister with a majority government is an "elected dictator".
It is a phrase that has been used in the past...

i dont know but the last 14 years in Canada for me felt exactly the same, no matter what political party was in power...i feel in the end it is wealthy powerfull people that control everything anyways


anyways when i became a citizen of Canada i pledged my alegiance to the queen of England, not the prime minister of Canada...

independance my ass

You pledged allegiance to the Queen of Canada and all her heirs, crazyserb. That is not the same as pledging allegiance to the Queen of England.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

We don't pledge allegiance to anybody!

"I, [name], do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors. So help me God."

It's required in order to fill many government positions, be a member of the armed forces or join the RCMP. It's also the beginning of the Oath of Citizenship, required of all naturalized citizens of Canada.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

It's true but you can request an alternative pledge both because of the God part and the Queen part.

Also it's symbolic only. The "queen's representative" in appointed by the prime minister (elected politician) and can be replaced by the prime minister too (theoretically with consent from the queen but the moment there is no consent the tradition will end.)

It's pretty much one of the last remaining British traditions n Canada.

Historically Canada became completely independent from Britain in steps and was (mostly) very pro-British up to the 1960s and although is less so now, it's still a fairly cordial view.

Canadians sang "god save the queen" up until the 1960s for example.

Martian, what's the text of the pledge which does not mention the Queen? I'm not familiar with one, and a brief online search hasn't revealed one either.

There's The Oath of Allegiance, which I quoted above in full. Persons are permitted to "affirm" rather than "swear" and omit the phrase "So help me God", but the mention of the Queen is mandatory so far as I am aware.

There's also a separate oath for Parliamentarians, and an equivalent affirmation which they can choose to take in abeyance of the oath. However, both of these also reference the Queen.

Could you provide a source for a valid Oath of Allegiance which does not contain a reference to the Queen?

While I'm at this, I also take issue with your other comments:


This is patently false. The Governor General is appointed exclusively by the reigning monarch. Since 1935, the Monarch has deigned to seek (and follow) the advise of her Canadian Ministers exclusively, however this does not change where the power resides.

Should the Monarch wish to appoint some other person to this role, such is the royal prerogative. This could only be changed by an amendment to the constitution which would require the assent of all 10 provincial legislative parliamentary bodies as well as the Federal one.


It's a Canadian tradition.


I don't understand the relevance of this. The last vestiges of British control over Canada came to an end in 1982. It certainly did happen in stages (with 1947, 1935 and 1867 being years of key changes) but what that has to do with the institution of the Canadian Monarchy is somewhat unclear.


Canadians still do sing this song. Frequently.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Foog is correct about the Oath. I currently work for the Province of BC, and I've previously worked for the Province of Ontario and the Federal government. As such I have had to sign them a few times.

You have the option between swearing/affirming, which differs on the presence of god in the statement. There is no option to leave out the Queen.

I stand behind the rest of Foog's analysis as well.

australia has the same thing

resulted in this

http://en.wikipedia.org/...ian_constitutional_crisis

but to change it you need to change the constitution, so theres no guarantee it will change

heres a canadian one, 1926:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King-Byng_Affair