HawthorneVillager.com

With all the respect I have for Harper, I am beginning to think he did not get the timing of calling for an election. If he had some good indication the economy will start tanking do you think he would have still called for an election?

If he did not expect the economy to tank, does that scare you?

If an election holds today (assuming we can trust the polls) he will still be PM but most likely will not have a majority.

With everybody holding tighter to their wallets and all the fear mongering and situation in the market is this a good time to flush over a quarter billion dollars of tax payers money down the drain on the election if the net result takes us back to the same situation. Bad timing?

Actually, I think it was done in such a rush to beat the worst of the crisis that is coming. Personally, I believe his thought process is so that he is in charge throughout as he feels he can do the best job at dealing with it, but I do think that it is wise to start a new mandate now rather than a year from now.

Even if it is a minority, it will have a theoretical full 4 year span to live, and presumably when things are at their worst, opposition parties won't play games or cause the government to fall for nothing.

In fact, I hope it is a minority again personally, because I believe that if the Conservatives had a majority, they would risk running a deficit, since they don't seem as opposed to debt as other parties, and they would have years to net it out to zero before the next election, but with a minority, if they tried it the opposition could make the government fall while the deficit existed, which after what we all went through in the 90's would probably ensure the Conservatives were not the government.

And theoretically, spending the money on the election would be a good thing as it keeps the money circulating.

As to who would do the best job? Beats me. I think Harper is dead set on operating as business as usual, so if that turns out to be the right course of action he would be, but if it requires anything different I would trust Flaherty to find a way to screw it up as bad as a Layton appointee. As for the liberals... hard to say, we haven't heard much from McCallum the last few years.

Personally, I would LOVE a debate between the prospective finance ministers. But instead all we get are the debates amongst the PM's and local candidates on super general terms. Let's have it moderated, and have half of the questions, provided by economists.

How Dion could be viewed as the better leader through the credit crunch is beyond me. He’s been quite clear that no matter what happens carbon taxes would begin to be implemented in 2009, in the midst of a recession. His economic “plan” to meet with the provinces and bank leaders isn’t a plan, it’s an announcement to meet with people. Apart from that, I haven’t heard him saying he’d do anything to solve the problem. Which makes sense, because there’s nothing anyone can do to solve the problem. You just have to ride it out, which is exactly what Harper is suggesting. Don’t do anything drastic, don’t raise taxes, and don’t implement any major spending initiatives, and we’ll get through this in one piece.

I don’t even get why people are looking to the government for a plan. Has a government anywhere in the world ever prevented a recession? Do people think they can just make it go away? In the 90’s Bob Rae tried to spend his way out of a recession. Nobody’s life was made any easier, and Ontario’s debt doubled from 50 to 100 Billion dollars in just 4 years.

As for a deficit, it’s going to happen no matter who wins. Recessions cause government revenue to fall, so what do you do? You can’t raise taxes, or you make it worse. The alternative is to cut spending, and look what happened to Harper when he cut $50 million from the arts. Special interest groups unite and paint you as Satan.

While it might be possible that a deficit is unavoidable because EI funds have always just been dumped into the general coffers, and then spending has increased as a result, there is a big difference between just running a deficit equal to our commitments and doing what you can to reduce it (ie, temporarily suspend reduction of the national debt, since there's not much point paying 3b down and then increasing it by a 3b deficit), and having a majority government take advantage of the inevitibility of some small deficits to ram through their pork projects in the guise of "helping during hard times", leaving us all to pay the price, again, down the road.

Then again, if the liberals are the opposition again, and don't develop a bit of backbone, minority vs. majority may be as moot as it was last session.

EDIT: On the other hand, since one of the problems is a reduction in credit availability, and the act of running a deficit requires the government to borrow, the act of the government borrowing large sums to finance a deficit might itself further hurt the credit markets and increase financing costs for business, which could further hurt the economy, maybe in this particular instance it will be less detrimental to the economy to raise taxes, or postpone some of the upcoming tax breaks, to prevent the need to borrow.