How Stephen Harper AND The Conservative Party LIE To You Every Day And The MSM Backs Up Their Bullshit ....
REGINA — So much of what many Canadians consider conventional wisdom is what Henry Ford used to call 'history': mostly bunk.
I’m talking about statements like the Harper Conservatives are the best party to manage the economy, or that internal trade barriers are costing the Canadian economy $50 billion a year, or that carbon taxes are killers of investment, economic activity and jobs.
Each of these statements has been widely circulated in the media recently, so much so that they appear to be self-evident truths. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Let’s look at the first proposition: That the Harper Conservatives are the best party to manage the economy. This assertion is based on the assumption that Canada is doing well, economically speaking, and that the Conservatives deserve much of the credit for that.
The Harper government has repeatedly boasted that Canada has the best job creation record in G7. Recently in Calgary, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated: “Since the recession, the Canadian economy has created almost 1.1 million net new jobs, … overwhelmingly full-time, high-paying, private-sector jobs …”
Unfortunately, recent job numbers cast doubt on that assertion. Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey reported the economy actually lost 9,400 jobs in June and the unemployment rate increased to 7.1 per cent. But let’s look at the bigger picture.
In the past year, Canada’s economy added just 72,000 net new jobs — most of that in Alberta. That compares to the average level of job creation of 214,000 per 12-month period dating back to 1977. In other words, Canada is creating jobs at one-third the average rate of the last four decades.
What kind of jobs? Looking at January’s job numbers, of the 99,000 jobs created in 2013, 95 per cent were part-time jobs. Hardly the “full-time, high-paying jobs’’ of Harper’s description.
What about the statement that internal trade barriers cost the Canadian economy $50 billion a year? Industry Canada recently used the figure in a press release. Premier Brad Wall gave lip service to the number in a recent story in the Globe & Mail. But where does the number come from?
Well, Canadian Press reporter Julian Beltrame recently tracked down the source of the $50 billion figure to some off-the-wall comments in 2006 by former Conservative senator David Angus. “It may be $50 billion,’’ Angus told a senate committee, but later admitted he was “taking high numbers out of the air” to make a point. In other words, it’s pure, 100 per cent baloney, according to Canadian Press’s Baloney Meter.
Likewise, comments last month by Harper and his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott about “job-killing carbon taxes’’ are also based on purest thin air. Last month, Harper praised Abbott for promising to cut Australia’s carbon tax, which was brought in 2012, but met with widespread consumer resistance because of disinformation campaigns by industry, public misconceptions about the cost of the tax (they thought it was twice as costly as it was) and steep increases in electricity bills by utilities investing in infrastructure.
But closer to home, B.C. has had a carbon tax since 2008, which has successfully lowered fuel use by 16 per cent, while actually lowering B.C. taxpayers’ income tax bill by $760 million a year, thanks to personal and corporate income tax cuts to offset the carbon tax revenue.
In fact, the revenue-neutral carbon tax has done
exactly what economists predicted it would: reduced the burning of
fossil fuels and shifted economic activity away from carbon consumption
and production. Since 2008, B.C.’s economy has slightly outperformed the
rest of Canada. “The idea that a carbon tax hurts the economy is a
myth,’’ said Stewart Elgie, a University of Ottawa law and economics
professor and chair of Sustainable Prosperity.
Yet whenever anybody, like Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, talks about the need for carbon pricing, the Harper government comes down on them like a tonne of GHG emissions. Recently, Finance Minister Joe Oliver called Trudeau’s call for carbon pricing a “multi-billion tax on everything’’ that will undermine Canada’s competitiveness.
This is an exact echo of Harper’s demonization of former Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s carbon tax as a “tax on everything.’’
But just because somebody repeats something doesn’t make it right.
Bruce Johnstone
Business Editor
Regina Leader Post
Yet whenever anybody, like Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, talks about the need for carbon pricing, the Harper government comes down on them like a tonne of GHG emissions. Recently, Finance Minister Joe Oliver called Trudeau’s call for carbon pricing a “multi-billion tax on everything’’ that will undermine Canada’s competitiveness.
This is an exact echo of Harper’s demonization of former Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s carbon tax as a “tax on everything.’’
But just because somebody repeats something doesn’t make it right.
Bruce Johnstone
Business Editor
Regina Leader Post
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