The NDP has a new idea for damaging US-Canadian relations and making Canadians poorer. Despite promises to the contrary, this seems to be all the NDP is really good for, as I’ve shown previously. Our own contributor Kaqchikel has already drawn attention to the aspect of the US-Canadian trade war that this may bring about and the futility of it, at least from the Canadian perspective, since Canada is an economic featherweight compared to the 400-pound gorilla of the USA.
But I’m going to approach this from a different angle. The immediate effect of tarriffs is to raise prices to the consumer, and when prices are raised, less is bought. People who need to consume will consume less, people who don’t need to consume may forgo. So, when the price of Canadian energy to the USA goes up, Americans will buy less. This means we need to supply less, and to supply less, you need less people. That’s unemployment, folks, and it’ll all be happening north of the border. Of course, Canadian power companies won’t be laying off any executives or managers, they need those. They might take a pay cut, but even still, it makes no financial sense to continue to pay people you don’t need. So there will be layoffs, and they will be amongst the ordinary working people who Jack Layton claims to champion even as he sneaks up behind them, dagger raised high.
Doubtless the NDP will have a suggestion to deal with the fallout from their lunacy, and predictably, it’ll be more lunacy. As with Air Canada, Bombardier and other proud symbols of Canadian business prowess (or whatever they’re going to call them, “money pits” is probably the most appropriate term), the government will bail them out with tax dollars. So the taxpayer is going to end up footing the bill for all of this nonsense. What this basically means is that instead of making a few thousand energy industry employees really, really miserable by laying them off, we’re just going to spread a relatively small amount of misery amongst the whole population. Either taxes have to go up (again), and you get less money in your pocket, or those services that Canadians hold so dear are going to get cut (again), and for people who depend on them since the government makes alternatives to them illegal, that’s going to hurt a lot too. Or we could inflate the currency and spend from defecit (again), and pass this amount of misery down to our children. But either way, ordinary Canadians, somewhere, sometime, would pay the price for Jack Layton’s ignorance of economics and his personal prejudice against Americans.
The final thought I will offer is that what made the Great Depression so terrible and so prolonged was protective tarriffs and nationalist “protection” of trade with acts such as the infamous Hawley-Smoot tarriff. More to the point, as individual nations became less dependent on each other for trade, it became possible for nations such as Germany, Japan, Italy and the USSR to commit their acts of belligerence and plunge the world into the most terrible war in history. That’s where Layton’s road leads.
lord chatterly wrote:
The Election: Day Five
Martin took the day off. Harper and Layton campaigned in B.C. Duceppe marched in the Montreal parade against global warming.
Harper struck again to seize the headlines by announcing tough Conservative policy on drug crimes. A Conservative government would legislate mandatory minimum prison sentences of at least two years for people convicted of serious drug offences.
The terms would apply to people convicted of trafficking, manufacturing or importing hard drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and crystal methamphetamine.The CPC would also introduce mandatory prison time for anyone convicted of running marijuana grow operations. As well the party would ban conditional sentences and house arrest for serious and repeat drug offenders.
Jack Layton seized some media attention by denouncing the current government’s inaction on the softwood lumber issue.He announced that the NDP would pursue export levies on energy going to the U.S.
Some columnists described the Liberal strategy in the first week as “lying low” waiting for Harper to shoot himself in the foot. So far that hasn’t happened except for a couple of miscues earlier in the week which were buried with the GST reduction promise. The proposed GST cut has secured lots of media coverage. Numerous economists have been trotted out to condemn it as poor public policy. But even those criticizing the proposal describe it as good politics likely to attract votes. It’s been funny watching the Liberals trying to denounce it but doing so cautiously, not wanting to remind voters of the Liberal flip flop following the 1993 election. Sheila Copps who was a key player during that period and who resigned her seat and won it back because of the broken promise has an interesting piece on how the caucus forced the inclusion of the promise in the Red Book and how Martin worked afterward to undercut it.
I think Tom Kent, old war horse of the Liberal party, was very insightful when he described Martin thus:
He wishes he could be more optimistic about Mr. Martin, but says it’s not possible because the prime minister �?? despite his “floating interest� in a range of public policy issues �?? has not shown any disciplined central purpose or sense of priority.
“The essential problem is that Martin desperately wanted to be prime minister, as did his father before him. But the junior Martin has come to it without any firm ideas about what he wants to do as prime minister. I think that becomes clearer, unfortunately, all the time.
“He has vague good intentions and great ideas �?? transformative change and all these things drip from him �?? but there has been no substance at all. He’s been dominated by the desire to be, instead of the desire to do.�
Posted on 04-Dec-05 at 5:09 pm | Permalink
ThePolitic - Canadian Political Weblog » Harper’s pension shelter: much better wrote:
[…] The last entry I made was to lambast the wrongheadedness of Jack Layton’s proposed trade war with the USA. Stephen Harper has come up with a much better campaign promise today. Basically, he proposes to increase the amount of pension funds that senior citizens can shelter from income taxes from $1000 to $2000. […]
Posted on 09-Dec-05 at 11:46 am | Permalink
Jason C wrote:
Improverish Canada??? Let’s look back at the last time the conservatives were in power;
* Introduction of the GST
* Annual federal deficit of well over 40$ billion by the time of getting booted out of office in 1993
* 11.3% unemployment (also the greatest Canada - US uneployment rate gap at 4.4%)
* lowest approval rating of a sitting prime minister ever - 12%
Thankfully they also gave us another fine fact;
* The 1993 election was the greatest defeat for a major party in Canadian history - from 169 seats to 2!!!
I suggest all conservatives have a little look back on history. While you might not care about passing on bills and debt to future generations, we cannot risk another conservative party regime. Too much good goverance is at risk should the conservatives get their greedy hands on the political reigns again. What will you privatize this time?
Posted on 18-Dec-05 at 10:24 am | Permalink
Hugo Chesshire wrote:
The article is about the NDP. Try and be relevant. Thanks.
Posted on 18-Dec-05 at 5:53 pm | Permalink
forex trading systems wrote:
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Posted on 12-Apr-06 at 12:51 am | Permalink
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Posted on 09-Sep-07 at 11:11 am | Permalink