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Some history for Mr. Dion, plus some news on the economy

Tim Powers, October 6, 2008 at 12:09 AM EST

In recent days, Stephane Dion has been repeating that tired old Liberal mantra that Tory times are tough times. I was reminded of some history this evening when reading the Canadian Press:

"...the 1981-83 North American recession, the worst in the post Second World War period, unemployment hit nearly 11 per cent in the United States and peaked at 13 per cent in Canada, more than twice the current level."

Who was in office during that 1981 to 1983 period? The Liberal Party of Canada under Pierre Trudeau. The last Liberal Prime Minister, who had an ill-conceived plan for the energy industry and the economy.

In the same story, CP says the average estimate by economists is for the addition of about 12,500 new jobs in the Canadian economy in September. Of course, these gains are modest. But they provide better news when compared to the United States.

In the U.S., employers chopped payrolls by 159,000 in September, more than double the cuts made just one month before and the ninth straight month of job losses. (Canadian Press, Oct. 5, 2008)

While what is happening in the United States is certainly no reason to celebrate here in Canada, the numbers comparison does help reinforce the PM's argument about the steps the government has been taking for more than a year that are having a positive effect: keeping taxes low, paying down the debt, ensuring budgets are balanced, keeping inflation low and investments to ensure jobs are created.

The Dion 30 days of meetings or Harper's actions. Tough choice!

  1. The Man Behind The Curtain from United States writes: The economy was so well taken care of the Bank of Canada has to pump 20 BILLION into the system to stop a credit freeze and there is no certainy that it will work or work for long.

    REAL good preparation of the economy,..... for a massive disaster! I suggest you pull you head out of your you-know-what and pay attention to what is happening.

    Especially pay attention to what is happening in the week to come.
  2. Michael Watkins from Vancouver, Canada writes: The only reason we are having an election now and not next year is because the economy is on a downward trajectory and the fundamentals, which of necessity must include what is happening in the U.S. and elsewhere, have been pointing in a downward direction for months.

    We are not only not an island, but we have some of the same problems that exist in the U.S., U.K, parts of Europe and elsewhere. Namely we've had plenty of money go into bad collateralized debt obligations - banks here have written off billions. Like the U.S. we have housing bubbles now pricked in a number of areas in the country (Vancouver and most of the southern interior, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, parts of Ontario and so on). Like the U.S. our bubble is regionalized - but it doesn't take more than a few large and important regions to suffer a housing collapse before we see a broader economic impact. Unlike the U.S. we've seen a disproportionate hollowing out of our manufacturing sector and an over-reliance on a few performing sectors (energy and materials namely) to hold up the rest of the economy... only they weren't holding up the rest of the economy.

    Newsflash: Almost EVERY BUSINESS SECTOR is trading LOWER today than when Stephen Harper and crew were sworn in. Good going Stevey Harper and Jimmy Flaherty!

    (The rest will be lower within a day or so).
  3. Zorg Dude from Vancouver, Canada writes: Nice selective memory there, Timmy!

    I see you didn't bother mentioning the more recent early 90s recession that so many of us do remember. Who was largely responsible due to their deficit-riddled budgets and amateurish economic management? Yes, that's right. The Mulroney Conservatives.

    And what happened to that $12 billion surplus that was left to the Harper government? Gone to economically idiotic GST cuts and other boneheaded populist spending with no long-term vision.

    As the wise man says, Conservative times are indeed tough times.
  4. Catherine Wilkie from Canada writes: Tory times are tough times.
  5. John Gzowski from Canada writes: Canada's economy has always been on a year long lag of the states.

    And look how well that policy of tax reduction and deregulation has worked down there. Yes, lets just follow that model.

    Harper's economic policy is as much his own as his foreign policy is Howard/Bush's. It didn't work for Reagan, it didn't work for Bush, why do you think its going to work for us?
  6. bob ward from Canada writes: Keep routin for a recession for political expediency only.....you Liberals are amazin
  7. Michael Watkins from Vancouver, Canada writes: And there we go... 4th worst market crash in Canadian history.... Toronto Composite Index now off more than 35% since the summer... all on Harper's watch.

    Markets will bounce from here or near here but that will not be the bottom. Canada's economy is broken, like many around the world, but in a world where recession is a certainty, if not worse, we will fair worse than many. On the way up we get to outperform, on the way down likewise our resource centric economy, which Harper and Flaherty trumpeted not so long ago, outperforms to the downside.

    Harper wanted to wear our economic performance on the way up; he gets to wear it all on the way down too.
  8. John Gzowski from Canada writes: Only good news in the paper today is that Harper is now at 32%.
  9. Kevin Lafayette from Saskatoon, Canada writes: Why do so many Liberal supporters support for profit government in this country? That is what a surplus is, government profit. If the profit motive is so despicable in the private sector, why is it any better in the public sector?
  10. John Gzowski from Canada writes: Hey Kevin,
    check out how much of government spending goes towards paying interest on previous debt before you posit such a stupid question. Its like Canada ran up the credit card years ago and had been adding to the debt with conservatives government. Chretien just paid that 'profit' towards paying down the debt, and thereby making it so the country pays less interest on the remaining debt. All Harper wants to do is make the minimum monthly payments forever, like Harris did in Ontario. Only Harris was worse, as he wasted the good times of the 90's to pay down any debt for Ontario and just started cutting services and taxes until Ontario was running deficits again. And now his finance minister is the one to lead us through troubled times?
  11. Kevin Lafayette from Saskatoon, Canada writes: Oh, I do check numbers before I post, unlike you John. Skip on over to taxpayer.ca, they have all the numbers you don't know about. This fiscal record of the Liberals you are so proud of, you know nothing about it. The Liberals did very little paying down of the accumulated debt; they went on spending binges with all the "surplus money". I know you won't check it out, that you prefer to look through your rose colored glasses at the reality that the rest of us live in.

    The facts: Liberal governments added tens of billions of dollars to program spending between Mulroney and Harper, far higher than the rate of inflation and population growth. They paid down the debt in the single digit range if at all during their 14 years of so called fiscal restraint. Basically, Liberals made interest only payments all those years.

    I would tell you to get a clue, but I don't think you would. You knock Harris, but he saved Ontario (and probably by extension Canada), after the Rae fiasco. Without Harris, you would still be having Rae Days, but none of that matter to your partisan mind.
  12. Kevin Lafayette from Saskatoon, Canada writes: And just to prevent any more misunderstanding, here are the actual numbers.

    Accumulated debt in 1993: 487,524 billion
    Accumulated debt in 2006: 481,499 billion

    All those Paul Martin/Jean Chretien surpluses? Yep, they managed to pay down 6 billion in debt. The rest went into brand new spending. This is fiscal restraint to the Liberal mind.

    There was a 19,891 billion surplus in 2000/2001. Clearly, John is wrong. All that surplus did not go anywhere near debt reduction. Now by all means, go back to spreading misinformation.
  13. John Gzowski from Canada writes: Ok Kevin.
    So according to StatsCan, the liberal government came into power inheriting $42 billion in debt. It took them until about 1998 to eliminate this deficit and start paying off the debt, a not unremarkable change. Since them, according to Canada's Chartered Accountants (I'd get the numbers from statscan but don't want to spend $3 to verify my point), the debt has been reduced $95.7 billion. The debt to GDP ration has dropped from 78% to 32%.

    I'd trust statscan and CCA over taxpayer.ca. I notice they don't believe in global climate change, evolution or the need for women's votes. They also had a nice section in there about brake lines and car maintenance.

    If you'd like to quote stats, use verifiable ones, please.
  14. John Gzowski from Canada writes: sorry, please correct the first line in the previous comment to-
    So according to StatsCan, the liberal government came into power inheriting $42 billion in annual deficit.

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