Re: rewriting history
Trudeau left Canada with the largest deficits and debts ever as a percentage of GDP. We had double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. And to top it off, his mean-spirited and idiotic NEP killed the one sector of the economy which was showing promise.
Mulroney left office with high deficits but with an operating surplus. In other words, but for the interest on the Trudeau spending spree, the Tories ran a surplus. Tory economic policies brought inflation down and set the stage for interest rates to fall.
Once interest rates fell, a large part of the deficit problem solved itself. Remember again that Mulroney had acheived operating surpluses. All that was left was to cut the transfer payments to provinces (one of several good things the Liberals did in the opinion of this Tory) and the deficit was solved.
I don't follow Ontario provincial politics - but federal income taxes have been cut over the last several years. All provinces are free to have used this as an opportunity to raise provincial taxes without increasing the overall tax burden of their citizenry. If your province failed to do this, take it up with the provincial politicians (as you did by throwing the Harris/Eves group out).
It is curious though that the three provinces which were run by right-of-centre provincial governments since WWII (Alberta - Socreds from 1935-1970 and PCs from 1970 to the present; Ontario - The "big blue machine" until Peterson, then Death Rae, but then back to Conservatism; and BC - Socreds up to the early '90s but for one NDP term, then NDP, then right-of-centre provincial Liberals) are the three provinces with the best performance over the last half century. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec, with their regular experimentations with left-of-centre governments since the 1960s, continue to trail the other three.
Trudeau left Canada with the largest deficits and debts ever as a percentage of GDP. We had double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. And to top it off, his mean-spirited and idiotic NEP killed the one sector of the economy which was showing promise.
Mulroney left office with high deficits but with an operating surplus. In other words, but for the interest on the Trudeau spending spree, the Tories ran a surplus. Tory economic policies brought inflation down and set the stage for interest rates to fall.
Once interest rates fell, a large part of the deficit problem solved itself. Remember again that Mulroney had acheived operating surpluses. All that was left was to cut the transfer payments to provinces (one of several good things the Liberals did in the opinion of this Tory) and the deficit was solved.
I don't follow Ontario provincial politics - but federal income taxes have been cut over the last several years. All provinces are free to have used this as an opportunity to raise provincial taxes without increasing the overall tax burden of their citizenry. If your province failed to do this, take it up with the provincial politicians (as you did by throwing the Harris/Eves group out).
It is curious though that the three provinces which were run by right-of-centre provincial governments since WWII (Alberta - Socreds from 1935-1970 and PCs from 1970 to the present; Ontario - The "big blue machine" until Peterson, then Death Rae, but then back to Conservatism; and BC - Socreds up to the early '90s but for one NDP term, then NDP, then right-of-centre provincial Liberals) are the three provinces with the best performance over the last half century. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec, with their regular experimentations with left-of-centre governments since the 1960s, continue to trail the other three.
