Thursday, January 09, 2014

Why the Economy Will Cost the Cons the Next Election



The other night I wrote that if the Stephen Harper and his hapless stooge Jimbo Flaherty wanted to run on their economic record, they should be my guests or be my CRIMINALS.

Because there is no other way to describe what those two Con artists have done to our country, by putting their crass politics before the needs of our economy. 

Canada’s Conservative government insists it is strengthening the economy. It is not. It is abandoning it. The reasons are political. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty, now have only one goal in mind — the 2015 federal election.

Killing jobs, slashing services, strangling the economy instead of stimulating it, just so they can have a stash of cash to bribe voters in the next election.

Even though so many Canadians are suffering.

In Canada, the official unemployment rate still hovers near 7 per cent. The Canadian Labour Congress calculates that when those who have given up looking for work plus involuntary part-time employees are added in, the real jobless rate reaches about 17 per cent.

And even though their callous policies are only making a bad situation worse.

All of this is having a direct effect on jobs. The Parliamentary Budget Office says Ottawa’s spending cuts cost the economy 12,000 jobs last year. It estimates that this figure will rise to about 80,000 by 2016.

Then there's the way they handled our dollar, which is now sinking like a stone.

But which for years the Cons let soar like an overinflated balloon, celebrating its rise, even though it was KILLING our exports.



Canada’s overall trade performance was among the worst in the world during the loonie’s manic flight. Exports plunged from 44 per cent of GDP in 2000 to just 30 per cent last year, making a mockery of the federal government’s supposed trade agenda. Combined with surging imports, this produced an enormous deficit in international payments: more than $60-billion last year, the highest in Canadian history.

And destroying good manufacturing jobs all over the country.

In 2004, I published a report predicting the loss of 400,000 manufacturing jobs if the dollar stayed above 85 cents (U.S.). It turns out my guess was conservative: Almost 500,000 have disappeared since the currency took off.

But the Cons didn't care because they were only interested in making Alberta wealthier. So they put all our economic eggs in one oily basket barrel. And now it's all going horribly wrong.

The prime minister has bet heavily on Alberta’s tarsands as key to Canada’s future prosperity; he has promoted proposed pipeline projects as essential if we are going to get bitumen from the tarsands to customers who want to buy it; and he and some of his cabinet ministers have implied that anyone who opposes these plans is close to treasonous. 

But despite Harper’s best efforts, things aren’t going smoothly. And given what is on the horizon over the next year when it comes to energy projects, things could get even stickier for him.

The Northern Gateway pipeline isn't going anywhere thanks to the people of BC...



And you can judge for yourself where the Keystone XL pipeline is probably going, by watching this video the Obama administration put out on the White House website last night.

To explain the polar vortex to the legions of deranged climate change deniers in the U.S....



But which might as well have been aimed at the climate change denier Stephen Harper himself and his ghastly gang of oil pimps.

Who were warned by Obama to get their act together, but didn't. Because they are incorrigible, and their leader is INSANE.

Oh boy. Historians will struggle to explain why it took so long for so many Canadians to understand that Cons can NEVER make good economists. Because all they care about is killing government, and making the rich RICHER. 

And the good news? As I said before, if the Cons want to run on their economic record in the next election I say we say be our guests, or our criminals.

 Or our BUFFOONS...



Because if they do we will DESTROY them. And as a bonus get to laugh at them as well eh?

The Con artist Stephen Harper is a REAL economist?

The flim flam man Jimbo Flaherty knows what he's doing?

They're leading us to prosperity not DISASTER?

Muahahahaha....

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2 comments:

Steve said...

Since 2000 the Canadian economy has gone from 30% manufacturing base to 16%.

Steve said...

Simon you got me thinking aboot, and it all makes sense if you read it all in context.

Referring above subject the huge bandwidth of today's Stepfordan panels playing melodic symphony's right sharp notes hypnotic word salad giving birth to child bearing rhetorical certainty. If Rob Ford could only play the music blowing away with Stephen Harper's instrument he would be the most dangerous publicly financed character actor masquerading as leader in Canada.