[none]

What do you guys & gals think of this? I mean they 'discovered' acid rain for crying out loud.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/comm...is-protecting-the-environment/article9940694/

 

[carverman]

With continuing gov't cutbacks, yet millions spent on propoganda (Ie: "Canada's Action Economic Plan"..basically a "warm feeling" that the Harper gov't is actually improving the economy., I'm not surprised on closure of more research and monitoring of the environment
stations.

The oil sands are one of the greatest polluters of the environment, and regardless of the pretty pictures/ads that the oil companies "restoring the environment back to original" give us on TV, .the fact remains that toxic pollutants are in the ground water around the oil sands that affect fowl, animals and fish...but the gov'ts of Canada and Alberta, hungry for oil sand dollars is trying to push the building of the XL pipeline , so that more oil can be processed and sold to the US.

Instead, Ottawa had handed ammunition to critics who can now rightfully question the government’s claim that it is a guardian of the environment.

Slowly but surely the Harper gov't is getting out of the research and evironmental business and focusing on how to keep the money flowing into the coffers in Ottawa.

 

[none]

Slowly but surely the Harper gov't is getting out of the research and evironmental business and focusing on how to keep the money flowing into the coffers in Ottawa.

I'm surprised that most people (at least people in government) don't realize that these two things are closely related.

One way to look at it is it's just poor long term business strategy. The ELA is such a massive bang for their buck that it makes very little sense on any level. These were the people who determines that it was Phosphorus and not nitrogen that led to extreme eutrophication, why acid rain was causing fish to die all over the place (it had to do with heavy metal leaching from sediments rather than the low pH water itself - something the labs couldn't figure out).

I've always tried to not be an anti-conservative but this government is making it really really hard. They seem to be anti-good business all around - very odd.

 

[crazyjackcsa]

This isn't really new news. Those closures were announced last year.

I'm a dyed in the wool fiscal conservative, but I find this government to not be. Speaking to a few people in the private sector environmental consulting business, these two examples certainly were good value.

Some day there is going to be a party for me to vote for, but I can't see it yet.

 

[carverman]

I'm a dyed in the wool fiscal conservative, but I find this government to not be.

Some day there is going to be a party for me to vote for, but I can't see it yet.

Uh..crazyjack..if you go back in history for a few years, you will remember that the current PC (aka Harper gov't) is not a true PC,
but the alliance of the Alliance party and the decimated PC. The last PC gov't was Mulroney..I believe, who besides stuffing his pockets
with the AirBus dealings, cost taxpayers a LOT of money to cancel the EH-101 helicopter deal...

Let's face it...the feds have been spending money they don't got since the 2009 economic meltdown..now 4 years later, they have a huge
deficit to contend with. Flaherty wants to eliminate the multibillion dollar deficit by 2015...but with what? The economy is still shrinking
and 1.6 million Canadians are out of work. What jobs there are out there..certainly in the manufacturing sector..have been lost..either
gone to China or hightailed it back to the US.

So what is a cash strapped federal gov't supposed to do? Even Alberta is in trouble now..they are running a huge deficit..the first in many
years and may have to impose a provincial tax.

Lets just hope that they don't think about a crazy scheme like withdrawing the TFSA and imposing a tax on people's savings like Cyprus wanted to.

 

[carverman]

I

I've always tried to not be an anti-conservative but this government is making it really really hard. They seem to be anti-good business all around - very odd.

Uh..if I may use an old cliche..."if you are up to your fiscal a** in alligators, it's hard to remember what your first objective was..to drain the swamp!
Maybe Flaherty's much touted EAP Economic Action Plan) will pull the fed's much need starved rabbit out of their fiscal hat..and create some
incentive for jobs...to get people to pay income tax again, not collect UIC.
Flaherty is also going after those that try to hide their wealth in the Cayman islands, so it's clear that this budge is more of reduce spending and
grab money wherever they can still grab it.

 

[none]

Uh..if I may use an old cliche..."if you are up to your fiscal a** in alligators, it's hard to remember what your first objective was..to drain the swamp!
Maybe Flaherty's much touted EAP Economic Action Plan) will pull the fed's much need starved rabbit out of their fiscal hat..and create some
incentive for jobs...to get people to pay income tax again, not collect UIC.
Flaherty is also going after those that try to hide their wealth in the Cayman islands, so it's clear that this budge is more of reduce spending and
grab money wherever they can still grab it.

I actually put a lot of the blame on what he did to housing. Basically all of the stimulative money went into house debt and barely stimulated the economy at all. Now we have a brutally indebted population and a sucking economy.

The thing it, there was A LOT of evidence that this is exactly what was going to happen - but they did it anyway - like cutting the GST - how was that at all helpful???

 

[sags]

Yes, cutting the gst has been described almost universally as one of the worst economic decisions of all time.

 

[Beaver101]

GST cut - who is complaining? I'm not. Actually, less waste (one small example: a bloated lifetime Senate :hopelessness by Ottawa can go a long way in preventing cutbacks like these.

 

[none]

GST cut - who is complaining? I'm not. Actually, less waste (one small example: a bloated lifetime Senate :hopelessness by Ottawa can go a long way in preventing cutbacks like these.

You should be complaining because it was bad economically for canada and was simply there to buy votes for the conservatives.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canadavotes2006/national/2005/12/01/gst-reac051201.html

The senate is another issue. Although I think a good idea in principal (far too much power currently resides in the PMO) something obviously needs to change.

 

[HaroldCrump]

The 2% GST cut should have been accompanied by a 2% reduction in govt. spending.
That did not happen.

The right solution is not to raise the GST back up 2%, but to cut 2% from spending.

 

[none]

The 2% GST cut should have been accompanied by a 2% reduction in govt. spending.
That did not happen.

The right solution is not to raise the GST back up 2%, but to cut 2% from spending.

Or if the 2% of spending was providing a lot of value to taxpayers then keep the $0.02 of GST.

Some things are worth paying for.

I personally think they should start taxing capital gains on houses over the inflation rate - or at a minimum gains over 100K.

 

[HaroldCrump]

Or if the 2% of spending was providing a lot of value to taxpayers then keep the $0.02 of GST.
Some things are worth paying for.

Nothing is worth over-paying for, though.
Cutting spending does not always mean reducing services.
The cost of services can also be reduced.

I personally think they should start taxing capital gains on houses over the inflation rate - or at a minimum gains over 100K.

I completely agree that we need some form of capital gains tax on personal residential RE.
It is high time to either eliminate, reduce, or modify the capital gains exemption on personal residence.
In addition to your suggestion of a peg to inflation or a cap of $100K, another possibility is to allow only 1 claim for every 5 or 7 years.
i.e. you can claim the CG exemption only once in every 5 or 7 year period.

IMHO, it is also high time to get rid of the HBP program.
And many other RE pump schemes.

Any and all of them will have a significant impact on the revenue side of the balance sheet.
Combined with spending cuts, it will allow us to eliminate the deficit.

And then we can cut the GST another 2%.

 

[none]

Haha, well we can agree to disagree on the GST cut. I believe the government can play an extremely positive role in making a society a better place to live. There are some things only a government can do (and do it well) compared to private industry. The opposite is also true of course.

As we've discussed in other threads countries with higher tax rates and more on the 'socialist' side generally have happier and healthier populations. That's the whole point isn't it? Not to just being able to buy bigger TVs from China.

Regardless, I think you have some good ideas on Res RE. The massive over-inflation of the market serves very few people well and something needs to be done to remove, at the very least, some of the volatility in the market.

 

[HaroldCrump]

As we've discussed in other threads countries with higher tax rates and more on the 'socialist' side generally have happier and healthier populations.

You mean like the countries of the current European Union?

Regarding the GST cut, I'd be ok with raising it back up to 7% if and only if it is accompanied by an immediate, across the board, cut to income taxes.
Public policy advocates believe consumption taxes are more efficient than income taxes - fine, whatever.
So raise the GST 2% and cut income taxes by 5%, since the GST is more efficient.

Anyhow, what we cannot have is higher taxes (of whatever kind) not accompanied by real and significant cost cutting by the govt.
What ends up happening is that the new/higher taxes are imposed now, while the cost cutting is postponed for later - like 5 years or 7 years later.

To me, all these debates about which tax and how much % tax is pointless unless and until there are real and significant corresponding spending cuts.

 

[none]

I totally agree: increase GST and lower income taxes and give GST tax credit to lower income individuals.

As for spending cuts I agree to a point: cut wasteful spending cuts but keep government programs that provide a lot of value to Canadians. That was the point of this thread. The ELA was such a massive bang for your buck cost that it's a really short sighted project to cut.

 

[Eder]

The 2% GST cut should have been accompanied by a 2% reduction in govt. spending.
That did not happen.

The right solution is not to raise the GST back up 2%, but to cut 2% from spending.

Thankfully you posted this before I posted and thereby you helped prevent me from offending all the lefties here. I thought this was a money forum...not the Globe & Mail comment section.

 

[none]

I don't see how this is a 'lefty' argument. Indeed, more often than not 'conservatives' are the ones who institute short term financial plans that end up being absolute disasters and by what most people think of as 'left' or 'right' the loony right is generally fiscally liberal.

Any way you slice it, the ELA has saved the Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars for relatively small financial investment. To cut it out is the classic short term economic thinking that is currently par for the course for Western hemisphere conservatives.

To boil things down to the level of simply 'taxes bad no matter what' is juvenile and ignorant.

 

[HaroldCrump]

I totally agree: increase GST and lower income taxes and give GST tax credit to lower income individuals.

Just to be clear : I am not suggesting we increase any taxes at all, without a substantial cut in spending first.
Governments are ever-ready to raise the tax, and always defer the spending cuts for later.
That later never happens.

The Ontario govt. is a classic example.
They have been raising taxes since 2004 (starting with the health tax), and more aggressively since 2009 (since the HST).
Yet there have not been any true or significant spending cuts.

The spending cuts simply get pushed further and further out.

The latest projections claim the budget will not be balanced until 2018.

It is almost certain that by 2015, that date will move further by another 5 years.

As for spending cuts I agree to a point: cut wasteful spending cuts but keep government programs that provide a lot of value to Canadians.

Well, it could be argued that many/most programs have "value" for some or other Canadians.
So what to cut and what to keep - that is the question.

One of the biggest drains for the govt. is over-valued labor costs i.e. the retention and compensation of 3 levels of govt. workers.
Unless and until that 800 lb. elephant-in-the-room is addressed, there cannot be any significant govt. spending cuts.

If you consider the program cuts at the federal level in the last 2 years, all of those have been front-line services, such as officers of Parks Canada, Service Canada, etc.
These types of cuts have minimal deficit reduction benefit, but lead to less services for the citizens.
However, at the same time, there are hordes and hordes of over-paid bureaucrats, figure-heads, and paper pushers throughout 3 levels of govt.

Because all levels of government are primarily a labor intensive organization (vs. capital intensive like the industries), they cannot have any meaningful spending reduction unless they incorporate fundamental changes to the compensation structures.

 

[sags]

Harold..........

You really don't expect the top level civil servants to cut their own wages............do you?

That isn't how it works. The government tells the department to reduce spending by 10% and the bottom people on the totem pole (usually front line workers) get their lay off notices............and services invariably do suffer as a result.