How Harper Wastes Your Tax Dollars

Harper likes to style his government as a "firm, steady hand on the tiller", especially on matters of the economy.

But the man is so blinded by his hatred for our country's laws and the foundational principles of the Canadian Constitution and The Charter of Rights And Freedoms that he simply writes legislation that is based solely on his ideology.

The net result:  unjust laws that are in fact illegal under Canada's Constitution, and millions of dollars spent trying to sustain those laws before the courts of the land.

June 2014: Supreme Court upholds privacy rights
April 2014: Feds can't go it alone on Senate reform
April 2014: Judges have discretion on sentencing
March 2014: Medical marijuana users win injunction
March 2014: Early parole abolition repealed
March 2014: Marc Nadon rejected by Supreme Court
December 2013: Court strikes down prostitution laws
November 2013: No mandatory minimums for guns
September 2011: Supervised injection clinic remains open

... and those are just the cases the court has ruled on.  There is more before the court, and more challenges yet to come based on legislation that this government has rammed through.  Including the "Fair Elections Act", "The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act", and the "Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act" for starters.  

There's more, including a "cyberbullying bill" that is really just a trojan horse for widespread surveillance without warrant, and a litany of evilness that has been rammed through as part of "budget omnibus bills" which should never have been given the time of day.

Fiscal prudence?  Hah!  

This is government by ideology.  Harper views the Constitution of this country as an impediment, not as a framework.  

More Cult Of The Harper

Now the Harperites are spending taxpayer dollars on partisan propaganda:

The massive TV and radio buy is shared among three federal departments for slick ads that began airing Jan. 11 and wrap up by March 31. The ads have been hitting some of Canada's priciest advertising real estate: the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and Hockey Night in Canada.

Human Resources and Social Development Canada has budgeted $14.5 million on three separate advertisements over nine weeks. The Canada Revenue agency is shelling out $6.5 million over 11 weeks, and Finance would only say its $5 million campaign runs during February and March.

All the ads link to the Economic Action Plan website which has drawn the ire of critics across the political spectrum for its partisan tenor.

The current run of television ads is also coming under fire, in particular a Finance department spot that features actors singing the praises of the Harper government's 2009 budget plan.

Uh huh ... so, we're paying how much for "The Harper Government" to tell us the wonders of the "Economic inAction Plan" ... on some of the most expensive advertising real estate in the country? Worse still, they're spending more on this propagand campaign than a major corporation will spend in an entire year of advertising in Canada:

Alan Middleton, marketing professor at York University's Schulich School of Business, called the dollars involved "huge."

"A major advertiser like Procter and Gamble wouldn't spend that within a year in Canada, it's that big," he said.

Annualized to about $100 million for a full year, "not even McDonald's and Tim Hortons spend anywhere near that."

More outstanding fiscal management on the part of "The Harper Government" ...

I Thought Conservatives Were Supposedly Good With Money

Fighter-jet price tag will approach $30-billion, budget watchdog warns

An explosive independent report on the Harper government’s controversial purchase of new fighter jets estimates their full cost, including maintenance, could hit $29.3-billion (U.S.).

That’s about $12-billion more than what the Tories have been telling Canadians it would cost.

The report by Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page comes at a bad time for the Conservative government, which been dogged by controversy over the acquisition and faces a possible defeat in the weeks ahead.

So, let's see if we've got this straight. Not only did the government sole-source this contract - and in doing so, violated the public tender process that is intended to ensure that Canadians pay a reasonable price for the capital goods our government purchases, but they've been short-changing the long term costs of this program.

Figures released by the government have suggested the total cost of the planes would be $17.6-billion, which includes about $9-billion to purchase them plus decades of maintenance bills that the Tories say would not exceed the annual costs of maintaining the current CF-18 fighters.

Hmmm...let's see - the Conservatives want to minimize the costs, so they are quietly 'underestimating' the costs involved. What do they gain by it? The ability to claim that they are being fiscally prudent - and hopefully retain a few votes.

His report was independently peer-reviewed by non-partisan experts at the United States Congressional Budget Office, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and Queen’s University.

Somehow, I'm thinking that the government's numbers are overly optimistic. Any other guesses on how badly the Conservatives have mangled this country's finances?

The Conservative Talent Pool

AKA Lake Harper's Folly.

So much for the much ballyhooed Conservative "money management" talents - talk about "tax and spend" - sheesh!

This Is NOT To Be Confused With Fiscal Prudence

So, uncle Ed is going to take a 15% pay cut.

It almost sounds good, doesn't it?

Until you remember the 34% pay RAISE he gave himself a year ago.

Cabinet ministers will give back 10 per cent of their cabinet allowances (a cut of $6,391 per minister), but also does not include base salary and committee pay.

The premier's overall pay cut amounts to about six per cent of his total salary, which was about $213,000 prior to today's announcement. Cabinet ministers will each give back about three per cent of their total individual salary, which was $184,000 heading into today.

This is important - it's not really a 15% cut - it's less than that when you account for the extra "perks" our politicians receive for sitting on committees and other bits of pay that make up a sizeable fraction of the total pay that our politicians get. $6,000 for a cabinet minister (on an overall salary of $184,000) is peanuts - it's symbolic at most, and makes virtually no difference to the cost of operating the legislature that Alberta's taxpayers fund.

But, it's not like I've seen anything from Team Ed that suggests any ability to balance the books or otherwise manage finances.

Crumbling PMO Organization?

There's been quite a flurry of departures from the PMO in recent weeks, and even The National Post is commenting on it.

But strange things are happening in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's close-knit office. A senior advisor and at least one strategist are moving on, which has some Conservative observers concerned about internal morale and questioning the operation's top official.

This is interesting all by itself. When senior advisors start jumping ship, one of two things is wrong. Either the ship is sinking, or the captain is coming unglued.

Harper is a micromanager in the extreme, and micromanagers tend to fall apart when the number of issues that they have to deal with exceeds their ability to get a grasp on each and every one individually.

When a country is blasted by the kind of economic storm currently blowing around the world, the number of issues goes up dramatically. It can come as little surprise that things are rapidly exceeding Harper's ability to manage.

MPs confide there's a darkening mood in the big guy himself, hardly surprising given the stormy economic challenge Mr. Harper faces. One source says there was a blowup between a furious Prime Minister and key players last week. And PMO chief of staff Guy Giorno is now plotting the second major internal shuffle in eight months.

Uh huh. In short, Harper's losing his cool because things aren't going his way. Hardly the mark of strong leadership.

My counter-argument to saddling the Conservatives with the crumbling economy is that none of the other federal leaders would have managed affairs much differently if confronted and confounded by an imported global recession shedding jobs and creating bankruptcies at such a horrific speed.

Here's where I disagree with columnist Don Martin. All of the other parties were running the flag up the pole last fall, while Mr. Harper was blithely promising Canadians that the "fundamentals of our economy are solid". Anyone with their eyes open could see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, although few would have guessed the pervasiveness and severity of them.

Second, Mr. Harper has not managed this situation well at all. Instead of managing things to the benefit of Canadians, he has tried to turn it into another weapon in his constant, ongoing partisan warfare. The November FU was nothing more than a bunch of vacuous statements, followed with actions designed to inflame the situation - mere weeks after he was reluctantly re-elected by a Canadian public forced to choose between three marginal leaders.

Then he suspended the management of Canada's affairs for almost two months in order to draw up a budget that just might be passed by the House of Commons - if he didn't try to poke another stick in the opposition's eyes.

Harper hasn't managed a damn thing yet. He has, however, overseen the most vicious partisan warfare I've ever witnessed in this country; and now is poised - like his predecessor, Brian Mulroney, to plunge Canada still deeper into debt. (and, I wonder, just what kind of accountability the HarperCon$ will be demanding of those who are the beneficiaries of the government's sudden largesse?)

What Price Are We Paying For Stevie's Ideology?

Well, if we are talking about Steve's Most Excellent Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan, it seems that the number is at least $18 Billion and counting - for all of this amazing progress.

However, a lack of government consistency and transparency has made the figures difficult to estimate, and they likely understate the full costs of the mission, the report says.

Wow, that comes as a big surprise - the HarperCon$ have made it difficult for the Parliamentary officer responsible to get to the real numbers.

The figures released Thursday are incremental costs — that is, they do not include costs such as salaries that would be incurred by Canada's military anyway, even if it were not in Afghanistan. The cost of military operations, veterans benefits and foreign aid related to the mission were all part of the estimate.

However, Page said certain costs weren't included due to the difficulty of estimating them reliably, and this suggests the figures "may likely understate the costs" of the mission. Such additional costs include danger pay and the need to replace equipment sooner if it is deployed in war rather than peacetime.

So, reality is the number is a lot more than the $18.1 Billion - and I shudder to think how much we've spent on "urgent" equipment purchases that didn't follow the usual competitive bid process.

But, that's not the best part - all of that is simply depressing. Truly pathetic is the utter lack of comprehension of the financial costs coming from our supposed economic genius of a prime minister:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had previously estimated that the total cost so far would amount to less than $8 billion.

We can afford this how?

Banking Meltdowns, The Free Market and Bailouts

There's a very natural, almost visceral response to the difficulties of the big investment banks in the United States - 'you created the mess, you clean it up!'. Especially when one hears about the mind boggling salaries that the top executives get.

I have huge reservations about simply handing nearly a $1 Trillion dollars over to the banks as a 'bail out' package without some strings on it - both for oversight and to put in motion a process to examine what happened and restructure the marketplace to control that kind of risk better.

Banking has always struck me as a fairly staid, risk averse business. Perhaps at its core it is, but clearly the so-called "investment banks" have clearly been running towards risk in the name of profits.

I disagree substantially with this economist on a key point:

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

My disagreement is simple - this is the classic line of the "Free Marketeer" (sounds surprisingly close to "Privateer" - an archaic term for Pirate, doesn't it). Basically his entire argument hinges on the idea that government intervention in the markets is "bad". He's wrong. Very wrong.

The problem here is very much that the government has not thought to draw out the lines of the 'sandbox' that is the free market in the banking and lending arena. Consequently, this has allowed the banks to come up with some unique - if predatory - lending practices that are simply bad investment thinking.

I don't think you simply hand Wall Street bankers a bag of money either. Any bailout has to be accompanied with a few strings:

1. Accountability. Not just to the shareholders, but to the public. Sorry Mr. Banker, but you've proven that you are not mature enough to run about unsupervised.

2. Regulation. A process must be put in place that will lead to a balanced, regulated marketplace.

The "free market" is a concept, but it works fundamentally by being "just slightly" out of balance - rather like standing on a wobble board. Ideally it is always counterbalancing itself. Regulation does not exist to prevent the market from changing and adapting, but rather to identify when the situation is becoming unbalanced to to prevent it from doing so.

If you will, it should be the equivalent of speed limits on the highway - intended to keep things more or less in check, but recognizing that you cannot catch all of the cases where things go a little too nutty.

Abbreviated Stelmach Budget Analysis:

Last week, Lyle Oberg delivered the first budget in Alberta under Ed Stelmach's premiership.

Much like my criticism of Ralph - both during his rabid "cut it all, damn the torpedoes" years and more recent budgets, I find myself asking:

So where's da plan?!?

There's a tacit admission in a $30+ billion dollar spending spree that Ralph spent the last 15 years screwing Albertans over.

"But we have no debt!" F.O.R.K.s (Friends of Ralph Klein) will claim. And they are correct in a very limited way. Instead, we have a debt of infrastructure and services. In his blind rush to pay off Alberta's fiscal debt, Ralph forgot that things like schools and roads need to be repaired from time to time. Now, some are so badly damaged that they must be replaced outright at many times the cost of incremental repairs, and much greater disruption. Calgary is arguably 2 hospitals short of what it needs, especially given the growth we've experienced; and our school systems are starving for cash just to pay decent salaries.

We have a debt people, make no mistake about it. And the people who created it are sitting in the Legislature on the government benches - fat, dumb and happy.