Seriously, does Flaherty have an iota of credibility left? He's been exposed for having Crown assets under review for sale and he says, nothing to worry about? Please.Just how many times can this government get away with saying one thing and doing another? I admit it perplexes me how anyone in the CPC can be taken at their word...yet we seem to have a buying public. No more than there ever was though. They haven't penetrated beyond their 30%ish base and even there, I wonder how many fiscal conservatives are rolling their eyes and the social right must be perpetually on their knees in prayer, asking that Harper see the light!
Yes, I know that the Lib's numbers aren't much higher, but come on, we've had a hill to climb and the Conservatives have supposedly been sitting on top of it.
So, is the more than 50Billion dollar man blowing smoke? Uh...is water wet?
Later, in a scrum with reporters, the finance minister insisted there will be "no fire sale" of government assets. "We're certainly not going to sell anything or offer anything for sale where the market would be depressed in terms of price."
And at the moment, what market wouldn't be? Petro Can is gone pal. David McGuinty had this to offer:
"Will the government disclose its criteria for this review and guarantee that this is not an ideological mission to dump institutions such as the CBC, VIA Rail and Canada Post?" asked Liberal MP David McGuinty. "After all, they were all on the prime minister's hit list when he was the head of policy with the Reform party."
Exactly!
What is disappointing about this story is that the mysterious 10B in asset sales included in the budget and never been accounted for, isn't questioned. I mean really. Shouldn't that be a story? An on going story? How do you put something in the asset column and not account for it? Doesn't that simply negate all that Flaherty is going on about now?
There is a saving grace though:
Under the Financial Administration Act, Parliament must approve the privatization of Crown corporations.
The bad news is...this government doesn't listen to Parliament.
3 comments:
The 10B put in a budget bill would be forced into a confidence vote (if the Reform-a-Tories want it). Would love to see it happen. I think we could go into an election over the sale of Crown assets which earn the Crown more money in tough times...
It's like this: Times are tough, and you own a home, and a few businesses. Your home is mortgaged to the hilt. You can pay it down slowly, through your business profits, and have a strong asset making positive capital when times get better, OR you can devalue your business, neglect them, then sell them off for much less than they're worth, and have nothing to show for it when times get better...
We have to GROW our revenue base through crowns, federal projects, and a wider tax base (via projects which hire lots of out of work Canadians, so they can start paying taxes again). We don't want to deplete our revenue base, privatize everything, and have a perpetual debt - as the Reform-a-Tories wish to - hoping that somehow, some miracle will allow them to slip out of a growing debt.
How did this deficit get to 50 billion plus? What items cost so much ? They keep complaining about IE and how it costs. I heard there was 54 billion in EI before all this started..what did they do with it? I cannot stand our Assets being sold for a crumb...just an excuse to get rid of them..It makes me ill.It should not be allowed to happen.
It should be broadcast loud and clear for the Country to see.
There is another scary 'coincidence' to all this talk - Flaherty under Mike Harris. The deregulation that Ontario went through, under the guise of saving taxpayers money, ended up producing Walkerton. Now you've got Flaherty, Harper et al pushing our nuclear industry to the auction block. Time to stand up for Canada all right. Get these bloody nincompoops out of office before they really do harm.
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