THeBlueCashew

QuoteThe contrast among the three major parties in the provincial election over the optimum size of government couldn't be clearer.



Wildrose wants government noticeably smaller. The Tories claim to want it smaller (and hope you won't notice they are making it bigger).



Meanwhile, the NDP are for all-out expansion, as if the current economic downturn weren't happening and as if Alberta's public service wasn't more than large enough already at 200,000 workers.



On Wednesday at a party rally in Red Deer, Tory Leader Jim Prentice, told supporters that if his party is re-elected, it will impose a three-year wage and hiring freeze on the public sector. No unionized government workers will receive pay raises until the provincial budget is back in surplus.



That's a decent move.



Alberta's public-sector wages are the highest in the country — well over the national average. Holding them steady until 2018 will help bring them more in line with those in the rest of the country.



But that is also a very slow, gradual response to a very large, immediate problem.



The alternative is layoffs. But under Prentice, the Tories have proven themselves too timid to go that route.



In the coming year, despite a decline of more than 13% in revenues, the Prentice government plans to trim the public service by only 1%. Given that the typical annual turnover rate among MUSH-sector employees (Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals) is just over 5%, that means the Tories do not plan to trim the public-sector workforce even by as much as the rate of attrition.



Prentice's announcement of a hiring freeze, may deal with that. But Finance Minister Robin Campbell's March budget would have permitted the province to keep hiring about 4% new workers every year.



In Red Deer, Prentice also claimed "we are making government smaller."



And he repeated his claim that over the next three years his Tories will trim $8.6 billion from provincial spending.



Neither of these claims is exactly true.



First, the $8.6 billion "cut" is not really a cut. Rather it is a slowing in the rate of increase. Very little real money will be saved (only about 0.6%), but if you double and triple count the amount of money the Tories would have spent if Alison Redford had remained premier (but which the Prentice government now says it won't spend) — presto! — you've saved 8.1%.



Put more simply, the Tories spent $48.7 billion last year. They will spend $48.4 billion this year, $48.9 billion in 2016 and up to $52 billion by 2019.



That doesn't sound like "smaller" government to me.



By contrast, Wildrose has already pledged to cut 1,600 managerial positions at Alberta Health Services.



That's less than 1% of AHS's 118,000 workforce, so it's manageable. It could be achieved without affecting frontline workers and patient care.



Given that AHS's budget has doubled in the past decade, and given that at least half of that (and very likely nearer 70%) has gone into bureaucrats' wages and expense accounts, 1,600 should be considered the very least that must be cut.



It could also help the government save a billion dollars or more.



On the other end of the spectrum, NDP Leader Rachel Notley has insisted she will not follow through with even the Tories' tiny staffing cuts.



Instead, she will replace the $160 million cut from the $19-billion health department in March's budget.



Then she has promised to add nearly $1 billion more, so even more public-sector workers can be added to the current 200,000.



Health care's problems of too-long waits and too-few beds are not the result of too little spending, but rather of too much government administration.



Take your pick. For once the choices are clear.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/04/15/gunter-parties-differ-on-spending

Quote from: "Shen Li"Big fucking surprise a white ideology like socialism has a white candidate in a heavily minority riding.

Sohail Quadri-PC(incumbent)

Christina Gray-NDP

Bobby Malalang-Liberal(I met this Pinoy)

Baljit Sall-Wildrose

QuoteWildrose wants government noticeably smaller.

QuoteWildrose Candidate Russ Kuykendall Punted After Anti-Gay Blog Post Surfaces



//http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/04/16/wildrose-looking-for-new-_n_7075328.html

Quote from: "Shen Li"Big fucking surprise a white ideology like socialism has a white candidate in a heavily minority riding.

Sohail Quadri-PC(incumbent)

Christina Gray-NDP

Bobby Malalang-Liberal(I met this Pinoy)

Baljit Sall-Wildrose

Quote from: "Shen Li"Everywhere where Chinese people run the government, taxes are low and public enemy number 1. If Chinese were the majority in right across Canada, we wouldn't have to worry about a socialist party forming any government. ac_dance

Quote from: "Mel Gibson"

Quote from: "Shen Li"Everywhere where Chinese people run the government, taxes are low and public enemy number 1. If Chinese were the majority in right across Canada, we wouldn't have to worry about a socialist party forming any government. ac_dance

I can help you with a one-way flight back to China, if you really want it.



You'd have to chop up your Canadian Passport, and denounce your citizenship of course, but I can make that happen!



There are lots of Chinese in China, so it should be a good fit for you!

Quote from: "Mel Gibson"

Quote from: "Shen Li"Everywhere where Chinese people run the government, taxes are low and public enemy number 1. If Chinese were the majority in right across Canada, we wouldn't have to worry about a socialist party forming any government. ac_dance

I can help you with a one-way flight back to China, if you really want it.



You'd have to chop up your Canadian Passport, and denounce your citizenship of course, but I can make that happen!



There are lots of Chinese in China, so it should be a good fit for you!

Quote from: "RW"I'm laughing too while hiding behind cc.  



Hahaha

Quote from: "cc la femme"I must admit that I laffed @ what mel said. You did set it up for him.



Forgive me for I have sinned

Quote from: "gbb"Perhaps Shen Li should move to China - where taxes are low, and the people always smile

QuoteA justifiably self-satisfied federal Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, rose in the House of Commons late Tuesday afternoon to bring down Ottawa's first balanced budget since 2007.



Oliver even took time to fire a snide tweet in the direction of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. Last year the Grit boss insisted that as PM he would not have to worry about deficits because budgets balance themselves.



On Tuesday, Oliver quipped "I assure @JustinTrudeau that this budget did not 'balance itself.'"



While that was a well-deserved jab at the lightweight Liberal leader, Oliver should also have taken time to tell the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to shove it.



Last week, IMF director, Christine Lagarde, a former French finance minister, urged world governments to ignore balanced budgets and growing national debts, and spend, spend, spend to stimulate their economies, even if that means raising taxes and going further into debt.



Unless they are broke, she urged, governments need to "use fiscal policy" to grow their economies. That is code for spending like drunken economists.



Her remarks mark a mad return to Keynesian economics – the dominant economic theory of the 1970s and 1980s that landed most Western governments eyeballs-deep in debt. It's a theory that sounds really appealing to politicians who want to believe they can ride in like saviour-knights and prime their countries' economic pumps without suffering any adverse consequences.



The problem with Keynesianism is, of course, that governments are second-rate pump primers. Or even third rate.



In order for governments to get the money for Lagarde's scheme, they have to squeeze it from individuals and corporations – both of whom are better primers – in the form of taxes. Or they have to squeeze out investors by borrowing heavily in capital markets.



No thanks, Ms. Lagarde, Canada will be much better off sticking to Oliver's plan.



Following the Lagarde strategy – ignoring basic fiscal and economic rules – is how a country gets to be Greece.



Fiscal conservatives have not always been pleased with the Harper/Flaherty/Oliver approach to budgeting. The federal Tories didn't cut government fast enough (or at all) after replacing the Chretien/Martin Liberals nine years ago. And they increased spending too much and too fast following the fiscal crisis in 2008. (You'll recall, though, that at the time then-Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, NDP boss Jack Layton and head separatist Gilles Duceppe were threatening to overturn the results of the 2008 election if the Tories didn't open the public purse.)



On balance, though, the government of Stephen Harper has for the past nine years spent far less and managed public finances far better than any other party would have.



That's not a ringing endorsement, but it's not faint praise either.



As Oliver asserted in his Trudeau tweet, getting to the point where Ottawa is running a surplus has been tough economic <BEGIN ITAL>and<END ITAL> political work. Most of Canada's chattering political, academic and media classes would be only too happy to follow Lagarde's spending-money-we-don't-got formula.



But the Harper government has raised spending enough as it is. Since coming to office in February 2006, the Tories have grown program spending from $175.2 billion to a staggering $288.9 billion. Even after accounting for inflation and population growth, that's a jump of 29%. Not very small-c conservative.



They have also jacked up the national debt from the $481.5 billion left behind by the Liberals to about $617 billion by the end of this year.



That sounds outrageous, but it is really one of the great successes of former Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and current FinMin Oliver. Adjusting for inflation and population growth, that is just 0.3% more per capita than when the Tories came to power.



The Tories have been lucky with interest rates. Previous governments have been double-bitten by rising debt AND higher interest rates. But because interest rates have been low for a decade, the Harper government has managed to bring debt-servicing costs down from $34 billion a year to $26 billion despite adding more than $135 billion to the nation's credit card.



Indeed, despite ramping up spending, the Tories have managed to bring the federal debt down from 38.3% of GDP when they took office to just 30.8% this year, on its way to 25.5% by 2019. And interest charges on that debt, which were 2.6% of GDP are now half that – 1.3%.



Even personal income taxes on a per capita, inflation-adjusted basis have risen just 0.8% under the Tories.



The Harper government's budgetary record could be better. But if Canada followed the IMF's advice (or the NDP's or Liberals'), the record would be much worse.

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/21/a-fine-balance

QuoteWhile it is obvious in Edmonton that the NDP are heavily concentrating their politics of envy with apparent success, this provokes thoughts of a possible scary reality. In Canada, the NDP have always used the promotion of hatred for corporations and the rich to gain a foothold in bad economic times. By serving up onerous information that only promotes their hidden socialist agenda, which is light years away from economic reality, this results in the swaying of an eneducated electorate. The problem with this in Alberta is ramping on resource revenue rates with increased taxes on an already depressed oil industry will only discourage any further investment, which in turn has an even more negative impact on everything that generates the province's revenue. This being true should make one wonder how Rache Notley's could possibly balance the budget by 2017.