Actually most economists, including those from the Banks feel that the GST cuts were bad public policy.
Thank you for proving my point
It was simply good politics and good answer to Martin's 1% cut across the board on personal taxes. In fact had we not done the GST, which in fact left it below most of the Western World with the exception of the United States which has none, and did the 1% personal tax cut we would not have this deficit at the tail end of the recession. It would have allowed greater flexibility regarding Corp incentives to get people back to work. In fact fiscally we would be in a position to cut taxes on personal income thus freeing up far more money for people to spend freely ... which is your goal. Good politics lousy economics.
You are using "In fact" to express your opinion wrt personal vs. corp tax cuts. (I think ???)
At this point exactly how you stand on this issue is very unclear.
Read what you wrote. It is filled with contradictions
e.g The GST replaced the manufactures tax
Not sure how you drew the the conclusion that corps would be hiring more people if they were taxed at the point of production
The GST was a very unpopular, but very necessary evil need to pay down the high govt debt load accumulated prior to its implementation
Had the gov't been scaled back further there would be flexibility to reduce the GST
BTW infrastructure projects they just were not used. The Conservatives were very good at announcing large dollar amounts but less than 70% of announced spending was used largely based on the hoops you had to through to get the money ... not only did you have to front the money you had to complete the project within a rather short timeline before they would consider repaying. In addition good luck if were a City or Province that had little or no members of the Conservative caucus.
Do you have a source or is this just your opinion?
Sorry fella you got the wrong election. The recession debate was for the late 2008 election and just after Leeman's collapse the previous month. The previous 6 months showed serious issues with the Banks, both here and the States ... jobs were falling, jobless claims were up ... Corp profits down.
Now you are just being annoying
If it was obvious to everyone, why did the PM get re-elected in 2008, 2011?
Despite all the doom and gloom that you described ?
Because Canadians knew that the conservatives economic policy is far better than the alternatives
This actually is very funny and revisionist history. CIBC was forced by Feds to to issue a highly diluted deal when their stock dropped from near the near 100's to about 75 to private investors at 65 a share with rights to purchase more a 60 ... that's a fire sale and dragged everyone down. You forget the Canadian CDO problem and how US insurers of debt told all CDN Banks that they may not be able to cover their obligations. In fact the main one CIBC used went bankrupt. We only avoided this becoming a US or European Bank problem due to Banking rules that limit this kind of exposure. Banks weren't in trouble????... tell that to the widows and orphans that watch the value of Bank stocks in Canada drop nearly 2/3rds of their value by mar 2009.
Now you are being foolish.
1. Any issues CIBC had in 2008 are hardly Harpers fault
2. 99% of all equity securities had a similar performance in the time period you describe.
That was driven by fear, not economic or business specific risks
It was the buying opportunity of a lifetime. How are the widows and orphans doing with their CIBC investment?
Up 47% since Mar 2009 + a rather juicy dividend yield
However I guess you know better than the market
Not my first choice of CDN banks to invest in, however they were not any danger of failing.
Not even close