Well the fact of the mater is that there are more people in Ontario and Quebec than the West.
Ontario & Quebec make up 20 million people. Canada’s population is roughly 32 million so by population they should have 192 seats instead of 181. But the seat formula I linked to above does a fairly good job of allocating seats amongst provinces that have populations ranging between 130 thousand and 12 million.
You other point is fair. You could even say that the Liberals have shrunk to a Eastern/Maritime shadow of their former selves as a consequence of leaving the Conservatives/Reformers unchallenged in the west.
They all have people with degrees in economics helping to craft their policy. The question with Harper is ideology. Even when it makes economic sense to support the arts, he cuts that support.
I don’t like using the economic argument for government support for the arts myself - I think the government should do it for the benefit of society. But the fact remains that the government’s 7.7 billion dollar investment in culture reaps close to 40 billion in economic activity. Citation. Harper listens to the neo-con ideology of cutting taxes and services instead, which is why I don’t care that he claims to understand economics.
Harper’s view is that Federal funding of the arts (only 3.5 billion of the 7.7 listed in your cite) is not a direct Federal level responsibility. Chances are good that equalization funding likely makes it way into Provincial Art programs. But really, who the hell could ever track that?
Still, say you can leverage a ROI of 20% (3.5 Billion in, 4.2 billion out) year over year. If only 20% of the return was re-invested into the arts you could have 4.3 billion after 10 years and full creative control (within the constraints of the funding source I suppose). That’s a default 4% increase year over year without having to fear government cuts.
Still if Passchendaele turns out to be a great/profitable movie (rah! rah! Canada Coming of Age etc. etc.) Expect Harper to claim to want to fund such decent, valuable films showcasing our common shared values and heritage.
[Complete hijack] - Sorry, lad, I tried sending you a PM yesterday that obviously went nowhere…
Le Ministre de l’au-delà comes from a song, 2033, by La Bottine souriante, a fantastic Québecois band which explores and sometimes modernizes the rich heritage of folk music from Acadie and Québec. They range from traditional fiddle reels to jazzy arrangements that sound like modern Cajun music or early New Orleans jazz. Definitely worth a listen. The name of the band means ‘Worn-out shoe’, (lit. ‘smiling boot’, as a description of a crack across the sole).
Le Ministre de l’au-delà means ‘the minister from beyond’ or ‘The Minister of the Beyond’. In the context of the song, a hunter can’t figure out what’s happened to all the geese that he used to hunt, and when he writes a letter from the bush, he is magically answered by The Minister, who tells him he’s got no business being where he is.
A disadvantage of having a username in French is that it makes people assume I am a Francophone - an honour which I cannot claim. Francophile, yes, but I am an Anglo whose family landed in Québec in 1828 and my direct ancestors left for Alberta in the early 1900’s. I do speak French, but it’s most certainly my second language, and like many other non-native speakers, I sometimes make a complete fool of myself.
Because those are three different parties with three different platforms. The Liberal, Green and NDP platforms are as different from each other as any of them are from the Tory platform. And some people believe in voting their conscience. After all, you seem to be assuming the NDP is a legitimate vote, but they’ve never formed a government, have never come close, aren’t going to come close this time… why waste you vote on them, I might ask?
In any event, the Liberal Party is not “left” by any rational, evidentiary definition of the term, at least not in Canada. There’s not one iota of evidence they’re a left-leaning party; geez, you’d think they hadn’t actually run the government for eleven straight years recently. They governed firmly from the opportunistic center, and in many ways were very conservative. If elected they’ll likely do the same.
And actually, my top two choices right now are the Conservative Party and the Green Party. So I’m one of the people you don’t seem to think exists. Be very careful about what assumptions you make about other people’s politics.
Just to play devil’s advocate,
I think it should be pretty obvious that the government is not actually turning $7.7 billion into $40 billion. You can’t just turn one dollar into five, and if you could, private investors would be lined up from Fredericton to Kamloops to do it. The precise connection between the two numbers is not made on that page, and I am confident there’s a lot of BS in connecting the two. That cite doesn’t even really explain how it came up with the “$40 billion” number; it just says “an economic impact of $40 billion.” Impact in what? How was it measured?
I don’t, on the face of it, see what’s different about the government giving X dollars to someone to make a movie, and give X dollars to someone to keep their car factory open. But when the government gives big bucks to a big business everyone (except in the industry the money was given to) screams about corporate welfare, so why is the money any better spent when it’s given to an organization that makes plays instead of widgets?
I like the arts too, but there is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that the federal government’s role should not be paying people to make art.
As is always the case when it comes to something like this, nobody’s talking about the opportunity cost. Expending $7.7 billion on the arts is terrific for the people who get the cheques, but what else could have been done with $7.7 billion? It could have been invested in health care. It could have been given to other types of businesses. It could have been used to repair infrastructure. It could have been used to pay down the national debt. It could have been given back to the Canadian taxpayer in the form of a tax cut. I could sure use the money. And all those methods of dispersing the money would have generated an “economic impact” as well. If you let me keep the money I paid into that pot - which is at least a few hundred bucks - I would have invested it or spent it on local businesses, which also generates economic activity, doesn’t it?
As with a lot of stuff like this the money spent on the arts is being viewed in isolation, as if the rest of Canada doesn’t exist. The evil, evil Tories aren’t just making money vanish or stealing food from the mouths of actors; they’re reallocating dollars from one form of expenditure to another. Unless they actually pile up bales of cash on Parliament Hill and set fire to it, the money’s not vanishing, it’s going elsewhere, either spent on something else or not taxed in the first place. Dollars lost from arts funding unquestionably sucks for the people who would have received it… but it’s great for the people who get the moeny instead. On the whole, the Canadian people aren’t down any money. The question of whether arts funding should be cut cannot be viewed solely with regards to “should we fund arts,” but has to be viewed with questions like “what else could we put this money towards, and would it provide the country with more or less benefit?” and “what is the proper role of government spending?” and “what unintended consequences could result from spending government money on this?”
I don’t see any of these questions being asked in the discussion over arts funding. Regrettably, the discussion I’ve seen in the papers and on the internet is amazingly narrow-minded from BOTH sides of the argument.
The difference a word makes - he doesn’t claim to understand economics - he DOES understand economics. Better than I would say anyone else in this thread who does not have a Master’s in economics.
Of special note: the Canadian debt per Canadian is $22,155. The US debt per American is $31,821. Of extra special note: the Canadian debt is going down, and the US debt is going up.
I expect my government to do what I do in my own home - live within my means, work on getting rid of debt, and do what it takes to keep the US from taking us down with them. Well, maybe I don’t do that last one in my own home so much, but I will vote for a government that takes it seriously. I might also add that I’m a green Conservative - I would like to see the government take responsible, realistic steps towards environmental sustainability. I won’t be voting Green though, because of the silliness of their platform (and yes, I just read it. Silly.)
A very interesting comparison. Also of note; the Canadian debt clock “measures the total of federal, provincial and municipal debt” While the US debt clock does not include any state or municipal debt (eg New York = $48.5 billion of total State-Funded debt, plus 80 billion other debt and California = 80 billion)
It was the Liberals who balanced the budget because of the GST and free trade programs introduced by the Mulroney PC party! Without these two initiatives we’d still be recovering from the Trudeau era.
ETA: In retrospect, we still are recovering from the Trudeau era!
In fact, Chretien’s government cut spending quite dramatically. That can’t be credited to Mulroney; the Chretien government was the most fiscally responsible government in our lifetimes, at least through its first two terms.
Leaving aside for the moment my or your opinions of Stepher Harper, what exactly does it mean to you to be “Driven by ideology,” and which politicians AREN’T driven by ideology?
Maybe I’m just wrong in my understanding, but I was of the belief that “ideology” means the body of a person (or party’s) beliefs about the way things should be run. In which case, it seems to me that all governments should run according to ideology. The alternative would be pure careerist opportunism, and I’m not sure that’s a good alternative.
Getting back to Stephen Harper and his government, my perception is that they’re quite obviously not sufficiently driven by ideology. Harper’s failing, in my eyes, have usually occurred when his government did stuff out of a sense of OPPORTUNISM, in defiance of what their ideology supposedly is. Their last budget included a staggering and unjustifiable increase in spending, thereby pissing away much oif the surplus. They’re giving millions away to failing automobile manufacturers. They called an election and violated a promise solely because it was a good time for them to engage in an election. None of that is ideology; it’s selfish opportunism.
I don’t think this viewpoint is unique to me; it seems a lot of the criticism the Harper government is getting is based on the perception that the Harper government is overly concerned with the continued existence of the Harper government. If there’s a hard core conservative ideology being implemented, I don’t see it. They’re spending like drunken sailors (this is, to me, the single largest flaw with his government.) They haven’t brought in a bunch of draconian laws, banning abortion and such the way people were shrieking they would back in 2006. They caved on the income trust issue - which, to be fair, was probably the right thing to do, but a real ideologically blinded right-winger would have left them as a tax shelter to help his rich buddies. They haven’t jumped into the Iraq War, have coddled Quebec nationalists - where’s the ideology?
That’s a pretty silly claim. The GST was a more or less revenue neutral replacement of previous MST, and while the Canada-US free trade agreement was easily the greatest accomplishment of Mulroney’s government, I don’t see how it was responsible for the 4 years of holding the line on spending that the much-maligned Paul Martin achieved as finance minister. The Mulroney Tories never held spending in check, ever, in spite of always promising to do so. The Liberals did, in spite of much wailing and gnashing of teeth over purportedly inadequate funding for nearly every government program there was. I see no reason to think that a Kim Campbell government would have gotten spending under control in the way that Chretien and Martin demonstrably did. Credit where credit is due.
Danny Williams has a degree in economics, too. I guess it’s only the fact that Harper has a Master’s and Williams only has a Bachelor’s that has them poles apart on the subject of equalization and the fiscal imbalance.
If you combine credit card balances, bank loans and mortgages, what is the average indebtedness of individual Canadians? An honest question, as I don’t know the answer, but my instinct tells me it’s going to be more than $22,155. when you start talking about mortgages. Why should the Government not be allowed to borrow as much as an individual Canadian?
All I am advocating is voting strategically In Your Riding for whoever has the best chance of winning with your views/conscience. Sometimes that is the NDP, sometimes it is the Liberals or Conservatives. Maybe somewhere it is green this year. They have polls that tell you this stuff. But I don’t understand why one who supports left leaning policies picks a party without looking at the situation in their riding, which is what seems to be happening on this board. If the conservatives and NDP are neck and neck in your riding - it does nothing for anyone to vote green. Pick conservative or pick NDP. But if you live somewhere like rural Alberta then it does make sense to vote whoever you’d like as the Conservatives will probably win there no matter what. Throw your party of choice a couple of bucks with your vote.
There’s always one isn’t there? Seriously, I quantified my original statement and it wasn’t a blanket one to say that no one like yourself exists. But I have a hard time believing ‘most’ people are like you this way. The NDP is the one who’ll is the big loser to the greens.
I just hate seeing the inequality of have 3 or 4 left parties and 1 right party. If the other parties want to actually form a government already they need to compromise on issues and unite. The genius of Harper is uniting the Reform and PC’s. Does anyone really believe that if he hadn’t done that would he have a goverment now or ever?
I was just tele-spammed by one of the parties. I don’t remember how to fast forward through a message on my answering service, so I had to sit there waiting for it to finish. While I was sitting there, I thought I should call up that party and tell them that I wouldn’t vote for him because of the tele-spamming, only when he gave his name at the end of the tele-spam, it was the party that I am voting for. :smack:
