I think that what we have to undertand from this week is that Stephen Harper has taken the lead position in terms of ideas. Martin, Layton and Duceppe are now REACTING to Harper's idea.
Are we finally seeing a new leader emerge ? Will he be able to keep this pace until January 23rd ? We'll see..
If Steven gets the PM seat and this GST promise survives, I propose a pool to bet on the date when our provincial government is going to react by raising its tax.
As for the earliness of the promise maybe we can look at it as a perfect smoke screen for the other big early announcement of the gay marriage debate. I like the theory cited by Alain Dubuc in La Presse this morning saying that Harper let that bomb early on the campain hoping people will forget about it. We kind of already forgot about this one, didn't we?
vendredi 2 décembre 2005 à 08 h 58 min 00 s HNE
Wow. Lowering the GST from 7% to 5% is a bold early-election promise. It certainly brings the debate on the Conservative's turf. I was sure that they would limit themselves to Gomery-isms for the first week. Hmmm, could they do better than expected? We'll see. Politically, it's a winner. Ralph Goodale came out swinging claiming (falsely) that reducing the GST favours the rich. Paul Martin once claimed in an April 9, 1990 press release that "the GST is a "regressive and unfair tax lon living, which will harm the economy by squeezing consumer buying power creating an administrative nightmare for small businesses." So? Which one is it?Gilles Duceppe wants Quebec-born sport stars to play in international competition for Quebec, not for Canada. I'm presuming we're going to start with hockey . Oh, I see he wants a Quebec national teams in soccer too. Seriously, I think this is going to backfire. I can't imagine that a single person will switch their vote to the Bloc on this issue (and that's the goal; pun intended) and some people might be turned away by the over-the-top-ness of the idea. The Habs are hosting the Sabres tonight; I imagine a lot of guys'll be getting asked what they think about it.Today, Paul Martin was in Cornwall. Yesterday, Domtar announced that more than 900 of their Cornwall-based employees would be laid off. Talk about bad luck! Anyways, the Libs changed the schedule around to get the mayor to meet the PM. They forgot to incite the union reps who showed up anyways. Eck. Another bad day.
"Federal election (day 3)"
3 commentaires -
While politically it may be a winner, economically it may not be. I'm no economist, but I've been gathering expert opinion here:
http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2005/12/does-cutting-the-gst-make-sense.html
Thus far, it sounds like a bad idea.
vendredi 2 décembre 2005 à 03 h 17 min 00 s HNE
Hi Marc,
I think that what we have to undertand from this week is that Stephen Harper has taken the lead position in terms of ideas. Martin, Layton and Duceppe are now REACTING to Harper's idea.
Are we finally seeing a new leader emerge ? Will he be able to keep this pace until January 23rd ? We'll see..
Ciao
Bertrand Bolduc
http://advitae.blogspot.com (under construction...)
vendredi 2 décembre 2005 à 08 h 32 min 00 s HNE
If Steven gets the PM seat and this GST promise survives, I propose a pool to bet on the date when our provincial government is going to react by raising its tax.
As for the earliness of the promise maybe we can look at it as a perfect smoke screen for the other big early announcement of the gay marriage debate. I like the theory cited by Alain Dubuc in La Presse this morning saying that Harper let that bomb early on the campain hoping people will forget about it. We kind of already forgot about this one, didn't we?
vendredi 2 décembre 2005 à 08 h 58 min 00 s HNE