Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Peace in our Time - Day 3

"The long, tiring, unproductive era of bickering between the provincial and federal governments is over."

-Jim Flaherty


Calvert Calls Budget a Betrayal

Budget unfair to Ontario: McGuinty

Equalization plan unfair MacDonald says

The political wrath of Premier Williams

Federeal budget fails: Boudreau

BC blasts budget for favouring Quebec

Provinces slam Tories fiscal gap cure

Budget's Central Canada solution splits regions

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posted by calgarygrit at 2:51 PM

18 Comments:

  • You good.

    By Blogger JJ, at 4:12 PM  

  • "Historic action" that held up for exactly the amount of time needed for the press to find a provincial Premier.

    He may not have given us tax cuts, but give this to the Finance Minister. He gave us entertainment!

    By Blogger Lord Kitchener's Own, at 4:15 PM  

  • I completely forgot he said that - you're right, of course, and it was silly of him.

    Hopefully it may be a step towards that day, but I'll wait it out rather than take the gov't at their word.

    By Blogger Jason Bo Green, at 4:16 PM  

  • Jim said that "unproductive" bickering would stop; this is all productive bickering.

    By Blogger IslandLiberal, at 4:17 PM  

  • Hopefully it may be a step towards that day, but I'll wait it out rather than take the gov't at their word.

    How? By giving Quebec money for tax cuts while screwing over BC, Sask, and the Atlantic provinecs?

    Yesterday's frontpage headline in the Chronicle Herald was "No fiscal fairness for N.S." and today's is "Atlantic Tories running for cover". What's more, when MacKay was asked to defend this budget in the House, he remained seated and Harper answered for him.

    By Blogger Josh Gould, at 4:32 PM  

  • It is over.

    Bickering between the feds and the provinces is finished.

    Some provinces can be bitching.

    They just won't find a dance partner for that particular tango.

    By Blogger Chuckercanuck, at 4:56 PM  

  • Lol, IslandLiberal. Funny funny.

    By Blogger Jason Bo Green, at 5:12 PM  

  • Any province (except Alberta) that complains about a 10-province-standard for equalization (which now includes Alberta), and includes 50% of Alberta's oil revenues is clearly braindead.

    Alberta is the only province being screwed. Funny that it is not Alberta doing the whining. Albertans never get credit for being big-hearted.

    Saskatchewan is complaining that it has become a have province.

    Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are complaining that they might one day be have provinces.

    By Blogger whyshouldIsellyourwheat, at 5:20 PM  

  • "Alberta is the only province being screwed. Funny that it is not Alberta doing the whining. Albertans never get credit for being big-hearted."

    Nice try - I have lived here all my life. This has nothing to do with being happy with the budget, and everything to do with the "Conservatives good, Liberals bad" that permeates each and every political discussion in this province.

    If the liberals had tabled this budget, you would be hearing plenty of screaming from Alberta.

    Unless you meant this as a joke - because that "big-hearted" thing was pretty funny.

    By Blogger Gayle, at 5:29 PM  

  • VOICI NOTRE CANADA!

    By Blogger Kirk Schmidt, at 5:30 PM  

  • BC was screwed over with the inclusion of our property values in the equalization program. Anyone with any sense of British Columbian history would know thats stupid and unfair.

    People seem angry here but we obviously don't bring enough seats to the table and we lack a seperatist party to give ourselves a better bargaining position.

    By Blogger Demiurge, at 5:53 PM  

  • Who would have thought so many provinces want to be have nots!

    To not receive equalization is the sign of prosperity and proves how good the government of the day is doing. Receiving equalization should be a shameful condition. I would want to work towards HAVE status than whine that im not getting enough in handouts.

    By Blogger renegadejet, at 6:27 PM  

  • From this Globe article:

    Some Tory MPs from other aggrieved provinces acknowledged that they're getting some heat over the budget from their constituents. But they predicted the anger will subside once voters understand the complicated details of the cash transfers.

    If that's not wishful thinking, I don't know what is. Complicated details almost by definition are ignored or otherwise unclear to most voters - why else would so many people believe that equalization involves direct transfers from one province to another?

    By Blogger Josh Gould, at 7:20 PM  

  • The problem is equalization is so damn complicated that it really comes down to who you believe. I would tend to side with Williams over Harper, but I really cannot say. Perhaps if we made equalization simpler and easier to understand there would be less bickering as whoever took the wrong side with suffer at the polls.

    By Blogger Miles Lunn, at 9:36 PM  

  • Stockwell talked a lot yesterday about how equalization is complicated but now that they have built a standardized equation for it, at least there's no "adhoccery", as he said.

    Whether you believe that or not, I do think that more and more complicated equations are going to become more commonplace... I know I did a bit of a test on "income tax brackets" and instead of having 4 different brackets with different % of taxes, I built a nice logarithmic equation... I was able to reduce taxes a lot for lower incomes without increasing a lot for higher incomes and made more money for the gov't...

    I guess what I'm getting at is: Are we in favour, in general, of going with more and more complicated systems, if they can be potentially very beneficial, even if we don't understand them? Like the equalization formula, as they would have us believe?

    By Blogger Kirk Schmidt, at 10:51 PM  

  • Hmm. A logarithmic tax rate? Makes sense - I'd be interested in seeing your proposal (though I'm sure it would be called "too complex" by people who don't know what a logarithm is...).

    By Blogger Josh Gould, at 11:10 PM  

  • Kirk, you sound like Data taking over Revenue Canada -- which makes me a big fan, natch.

    By Blogger Jason Bo Green, at 11:29 PM  

  • I don't think this will register with voters because their attention span is remarkably short, and nobody knows/agrees if a fiscal imbalance exists or if it exists at all, what it really means. Tories might wear this because of a perception that we're selling out to Quebec yet again, but if this is true then Tories must have been receiving heat well before the budget came out because the media has been reporting that Quebec would be getting a sweet deal for weeks now. If Flaherty made any mistake, it's that he suggested that peace and harmony might possibly exist among provincial Premiers and that's just laughable - they'll always bitch about Ottawa because its a convenient method of distracting from their own political woes back home. (And some of the Premiers on the list have some very large woes they'd like to forget about)

    By Blogger Sean Cummings, at 6:35 AM  

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