Mr. Ignatieff at least re-affirms that Liberals are a ‘tax and spend’ party, with little concern for reducing or sunsetting programs that are well beyond their ‘Best before’ dates.

Liberals love power, and having money to create a huge bureaucracy and deal big contracts is how they excercise it.

We need a whole new group of leaders that understand that small and well organized is how government should be run. Just ask any small businessman how to cut costs - they know.

In your article you say that ” … to pay back the substantially increased debt from the significant deficits there are only two options; raise taxes or cut programs”. Actually, the prime means will be to debase our currency through ‘quantitative easing’ - that is, fiat money - otherwise known as inflation. That will happen in the USA and it will happen here. And it doesn’t matter who is in power.

As they say, we get the government we deserve. Few people are willing to talk about ‘doing with less’ even though we have a better standard of living than 90% of the worlds’ population.
In my city-Calgary- ‘they’ have instituted ‘forced’ recycling this month because too few people (we’re told) voluntarily took their time to recycle. Forced means you still don’t have to do it, but now we get to pay $100/yr to do what I’ve been doing voluntarily for about 15 years (recycling, composting, water meter et al). (Unless you live in a multi-unit complex).

There has been considerable negative coverage of Conservative policies and actions while the Liberals have been first to criticize they didn’t ‘do enough’ and then ‘too much’. We’ve always known the Liberals to be the first to raise taxes to balance budgets. Harper may have done too much tax cutting, but the reduced GST and business taxes help a lot of lower income people.
Unfortunately we will likely continue to be a ‘they’ society where someone else needs to take responsibility because individually we no longer have the common sense or willingness to accept personal responsibility.

Maybe if they won’t lay off Govt. employees they should tax them as they are the only people not affected by cut back and job losses.
Small business and bigger businesses are tax’d to death already
and are not making any money and many are losing.
We run a small business and have had to lay off 1/2 our employees and
as owners don’t take wages when there is no money coming in.
Our sales are off 50% from 2007 and early 2008. Goverments of all sorts
local, provincial and federal are all raising taxes, increasing spending
and hiring more it makes no sense.
Govt. should get out of trying to tell other governments in other countries
how to manage when they can’t manage their own , Polititians and Generals
are great for making wars but when it comes to paying for it either with
their dollars or lives they are not on the front lines. They get the glory
if they win and pentions if they don’t . The taxpayer and the young men
who join the armies doing the paying forever.

Oh great, in the midst of the recession the LIEberals are going to raise taxes. So this will remove more money from the economy that is already faltering. Another masterstroke of genius, NOT.

I think all levels of government are way out of hand. Spend and tax.
Bribe and then tax. Government’s get bigger; they get better than average salaries and wages and benefits while the poor sucker of taxpayers get gouged more and more. It is time for the taxpayers to revolt in any way they can. Government employees and politicians always get theirs, regardless of the fact that we are in a recession or up to our asses in debt.
We need a strong leader and a government who will work for the taxpayer and not for their selfish political parties and themselves.
Taxpayers revolt before it is too late.

raising taxes is not the solution but reducing costs is. Governments are running very inefficient and Canada is no exception. I had to experience that some government agencies only work 4 days per week.

At least Iggy is not in power yet. You have to keep after McGuinty as what he has done (specifically with the harmonized sales tax) has to be the biggest tax grab in Canadian history.

The question is not whether or not to cut services (whatever it actually means), the problem is that “government” is not increasing it’s efficiency.
I have recently experienced that some of the employees who are paid by my taxes just do not perform adequately. Until this is corrected, there is no hope for improvement in our fiscal situation. How about a freeze on government employees’s automatic wage increases as they progress with years of service? And never do I hear a present politician say “Let’s reduce our national debt” - just the opposite - “Borrow, and let us (or our children) pay later”. How much are we paying in interest? I agree with Bruce. We should revolt before it is too late.

It’s all part of the grand scheme of things. The stage has been set a long time ago (since 1913) and the play has been on-going. The Banksters and Terrorcrats are the puppet masters,m controlling the puppets (Politicians) who occasionally slip up and say the wrong things (raise taxes). The word “politician” is of Greek origin; it fits with the following philosophical concept: One who is involved in influencing public decision making through influence. People who hold decision-making positions in government, that influence the way a society is governed (controlled) or, made to think.
The Obama Deception – The Truth Strikes Back - HQ Full length version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw

i think that we should follow the ideas of Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers on spending ,these guys are smart and against bailouts .they say that we are causing a depression instead of only a recession by bailouts as compared to letting the zombies go and the thereby letting the system work the way it was meant to . harper as a brillint economist knows thats he is harming the country in a huge way and ignatief would be just as bad or worse . the bailouts are garbage and so is huge government and war on other peoples dirt . its a waste of our resourses .

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could elect a government that could talk straight , no lies , no excess spending and use our money properly e.g. help the poor ,get the loafers off welfare stop spending etc !! What a waste ,what a crime ! Can we not get a petition going or something that would stop this stupidity ??

Canadian voters know by now or should know that Liberals love taxes and enjoy raising taxes. They are covinced that big government and high taxes is the way to govern. Tax payers must strive to keep them out of power at all cost.

Ignatieff, ofcourse is bang on as to how we are going to pay down our ever expanding national debt. What is needed are leaders who really and truly understand that there is only one tax payer. What we really need are government leaders who will really control government spending. Not an easy thing to to I grant you. However maybe in the future we will be profoundly lucky and find just the right group of parties and leaders who will guide the electorate and do what Paul Martin did and CUT out the spending and actually bring the total federal debt down.

The feds will not cut program spending - too many trotters in the trough! As for raising taxes, that’s so politically unpopular that any increases will be minor (perhaps a few tax cuts being reversed.) The most likely scenario is that the feds will just print money - the same as “clipping the coinage” in days gone by (hencing the milling of the edges of our coins.) Both are theft, one by government (printing money) the other by the coin clippers.
I am a control systems engineer. For “minimum time control” (getting a system from state A to state B in minimum time, e.g. an economy from “recession state” to a so-called “full employment state”), you apply full, saturated control action one way (money supply stimulus), hold it (for a prescribed period of time), then reverse it to full saturation the other way (minimum money supply - also for a prescribed period), then bring it back to equilibrium position - all calculated. The timing and amounts depend critically on the dynamics (gains and lags) - the feds don’t know them! Thus, the feds can’t make the timely reversal of the control stimulus, neither in the the amount needed, the timing, nor against the politics. Once “given” (not! It’s our money!) they won’t be able to claw it back by the required huge, temporary, reduction in the money supply. The only degree of freedom left is currency devaluation and a massive increase in the price level to the “new equilibrium… for a while, until next time…
I don’t know why we older wage-slaves never figured this out and, over the years, bought gold with, say, 5% of our after-tax dollars (as dollar-cost averaging.) Too late for us but not too late for the younger ones!

Ladies and Gentlemen, my apology to enter the discussion again. Why? I am afraid that we are all talking to the converted. What’s needed in my opinion is civic involvement at the ballot box. As long as we will be re-electing today’s politicians, not much will change. In other words, we must be active in pre-election times, everybody as much as he/she is capable. I see no other way.

I am against the auto bailouts. They haven’t been making competitive products that we, the consumers have wanted for years and the spineless leaders have let the unions get out of control. We run a small company and we have never faced a situation where several of our small company clients delay payment as they do today. Everyone has his good excuse and the legal system is a joke when it comes to trying to collect and we all know it. Little companys end up settling for less than the agreed amounts because we can’t afford to wait for a legal proceeding and we can’t afford the lawyers. We don’t lay good people off because of the cost of training new staff - the result is that we often just aren’t able to pay ourselves. Busy and getting poorer - whats wrong with this picture?

I never met a politician I liked.

I have never met a Liberal who knew anything about economics. They think it has something to do with baking cookies,learning how to cook,and house cleaning.

typical liberal policy approach of tax and spend, delivering unnecessary programs and bloated bureaucracy. not a fan of stimulus spending either, considering market correction is a fact of the law of supply and demand. i agree though that we have been spared a worse fate by what we have in power now vs what we would have had should socialists have been given the chance to write the budget.

It is a very difficult task to draw the line between too much and not enough in a stimulent package. One thing missing though, there is nothing for the three million poor among us.Sooner or later Government is going to have to come to grips with the poverty situation, now may be a very good time to do so.

Tax their land, tax their wage, tax the bed in which they lay.
Tax their tractor, tax their mule, teach them taxes are the rule.

Tax their cow, tax their goat, tax their pants, tax their coat.
Tax their ties, tax their shirts, tax their work tax their dirt.

Tax their chew, tax their smoke, teach them taxes are no joke.
Tax their car, tax their grass, tax the roads they must pass.

Tax their food, tax their drink, tax them if they try to think.
Tax their sodas, tax their beers, if they cry tax their tears.

Tax their bills, tax their gas, tax their notes, tax their cash.
Tax them good, and let them know, that after taxes they have no dough.

If they holler, tax them more, tax them till they’re good and sore.
Tax their coffin, tax their grave, tax the sod in which they lay.

Put these words upon their tomb: “Taxes drove them to their doom!”
And when they’re gone, we won’t relax, we’ll still be after their inheritance tax.

Accounts Receivable Tax, Airline surcharge tax, Airline Fuel Tax, Airport Maintenance Tax, Building Permit Tax, Cigarette Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Death Tax, Dog License Tax, Driving Permit Tax, Excise Taxes, Federal Income Tax, Employment Insurance Tax(EI), Fishing License Tax, Food License Tax, Gasoline Tax, Gross Receipts Tax, Health Tax, Hunting License Tax, Hydro Tax, Inheritance Tax, Interest Tax, Liquor Tax, Luxury Taxes, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax, Mortgage Tax
Personal Income Tax, Property Tax, Poverty Tax, Prescription Drug Tax, Provincial Income Tax, Real Estate Tax, Recreational Vehicle Tax, Retail Sales Tax, Service Charge Tax, School Tax, Telephone Federal Tax, Telephone Federal, Provincial and Local Surcharge Taxes, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax, Water Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Workers Compensation Tax, etc, etc, etc.

Not one of these taxes existed 92 years ago, and our nation was one of the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, had a large middle class, and
Mom stayed at home to raise the kids.

Mr. Ignatief is no different from the other tax loving Liberals. He’s not smart, as he claimed, to say raising taxes during this hard times. He has no concept of what Canada should be or what Canada is because he’s been away for thirthy years and came back to be annointed as the Liberal leader with a “vision” of real Canada. Give me a break. He’s just an opportunistic hypocrite like the rest of any Liberals like Bob Rae.

Where have all the leaders gone?

We are well-mired in the “suck and blow” era wherein politicians have imbued voters with an acceptance of their hypocrisy to the extent that their double standards are at worst endorsed and at best ignored by a fawning public.

Formula Approach: Iggy (new, without warts and therefore worthy of being heard)incites sufficient panic in Canadians to believe that the Cons are not spending enough on stimulus (ie, ratcheting up the future tax liabilities of taxpayers whether from increased income or via increased tax rates, to be determined, ultimately, by a crapshoot, namely the fate of the future economy) thereby panicking Harper into greater spending (”What’s a billion”).

Then, Iggy cleverly criticizes Harper (who has lost all hope that Canadians still love him) for profligacy with our money through mindless spending on all the wrong things. (”What wrong things?” you ask. “Never mind.” he answers.) Harper responds by promising more spending to save us from ourselves, from unpatriotic Canadian industrialists and from evil foreigners.

And Canadians buy Iggy’s pronouncements (Liberals are positively orgiastic over the prospects of regaining their rightful ruling status!) and Harper et al panic some more by catering to every capitalist with his hand out.

A classic example of an entity in motion, accelerating through increasingly concentric circles until it disappears up its own posterior orifice.

It’s a sad situation when we are saddled with the likes of Iggy. Overly educated beyond his capabilities. When I typed this, why did I imediately think of Bob Rae?

It is a sad day when a Conservative like myself thinks that their party might serve the country better as the Opposition. As it is we have the party in power (who claim to be Conservatives) spending recklessly, and the Opposition saying they are not spending enough. At least when they were the Opposition the Conservatives criticized this legalized theft.

I think Mr. Ignatieff is a loose cannon and he continues to reaffirm this belief. Also, Canadians are at fault. Canadians expect governments to do everyting for them and take little responsibility for their own actions and accountabilities. Governments respond in election campaigns and hence, the burocracy grows. I agree that governments need to step back and start cutting programs with corresponding tax cuts. Canadians need to mature and not expect the governments to bail them out of everything. I would like to see a true “reform” party take control of our politics as we are operating in a system that is far outdated and one which recognizes only an Upper and a Lower Canada.

“raise taxes” how else would the Liberals pay off their debt?

Speaking of taxes and Liberals why hasn’t this government ie. Harper/Flaherty made any issue out of the missing actually “spent” fifty plus billion dollar Canadian E.I. surplus? Not only is this a theft of E.I. funds (taxes) by the Liberals, it is a national disgrace and to not make an issue out of this over the last two years or so is just a further insult to all Canadians?

Which Witch is Which

Until the taxpayers who will actually pay off the debt understand
that many many can pass on the cost of government,we will never
see a change.NCC and all of the comments you get do not get it.