Would You Like Engines With That?

The Harper government’s numbers on the F35 Fighter jets have been questioned by lot of people, including the parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page.  Canada’s planned purchase of 65 fighter jets will cost billions more than government has projected, according to a report released in March by Mr. Page.  The watchdog’s report came a day after the Conservatives were reprimanded for refusing to release financial details of planned prison construction projects that the opposition also said will cost much more than the government maintains. It turns out, the Conservative’s numbers don’t include the price of engines!

Mr. Harper, it seems, is fonder of spending fighter jets with no engines and prisons despite a decreasing crime rate than providing Canadians with health care and looking after the environment.  That’s not my Canada – is it your’s?  Remember to vote for democracy on May 2nd (or in the advance poll tomorrow, April 25th) – fill out your ballot for the chance to win the Canada you want!

More links:

U.S. Defense Expert Says Jets Will Cost Double Tory and DND Estimates

Reality Check: Harper’s Five Biggest F-35 Fictions

Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer: Report on Cost of F-35 Fighter Jets

The Fallacy of Stephen Harper’s Good Economic Management

I’ve posted on this recently, but it bears repeating – Stephen Harper and his Finance Minister Jim Flaherty took Canada from a surplus position to a deficit even before the recession hit. For ideological reasons, Harper cut taxes so much that the surplus from the Martin government was gone, gone, gone before the Harper Cons been in power long.  And, despite consistently bragging about how Canada’s economy was a global leader, Harper used the excuse of poor economic times to freeze aid to some of the world’s most impoverished countries.

Thanks to Harper’s mismanagement of our economy, Canadians are now saddled with the largest deficit in Canadian history; clearly, Canada can’t afford much more of Harper’s economic brilliance!  Here is Mr. Harper in 2008 saying – repeatedly – “We will <NOT> be running a deficit.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgHxTpUsTUo&NR=1]

This graphic comes from Michael at Compelling Comics.com

More links:

Sachs Slams Harper G8 Maternal Health Care Plan, Criticizes Planned Aid Freeze

Canada Records Biggest Deficit in History

Which Canada Will You Vote For?

An Open Letter To Stephen Harper

Another Day, Another Conservative Lie

Wow – as the Canadian federal election carries on, the whoppers coming out of the Harper camp are starting to really pile up.  Here’s a few of them:

The IPod Tax is Coming! The IPod Tax is Coming!   The Conservatives have been running attack ads claiming that, if elected, the other parties are going to charge Canadians a $75 IPod Tax.  Well, it turns out it’s an outright lie. Read Who Wants To Charge a $75 IPod tax? Uh, no one. (to view the attack ad, scroll to the bottom of this post)

Stephen Harper Knows How To Manage Our Economy!   Harper, an economist, often proudly proclaims that he is, without a doubt, the best fiscal manager for Canada’s economy.  Really, Mr. Harper? When the Conservatives came into power, our country had a healthy budget surplus. Now, Canadians are saddled with a $50 Billion deficit!  We can’t afford much more of Harper’s economic “brilliance”. As Murray Dobbin recently pointed out in The Tyee:

The Conservatives’ only claim to fame is that our financial system did not melt down the way others did. Ironically, the only reason it didn’t is our banks remained regulated, so they could not take the kind of risks that their counterparts in the U.S. and EU did. Even here, Harper and Co. played with financial deregulation in the mortgage industry (allowing 40-year, no down-payment mortgages), and created a bubble that has yet to burst.

And speaking of poor financial management, the G-8 and G-20 summits were the most expensive 72 hours in Canadian history. The total cost was over $1 Billion!  At the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, Harper spent $1.9 million building a fake lake and nearly $1 Billion on security for the 3 day event. (Incidentally, 1,105 arrests were made during that summit – the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Yet only 99 criminal charges were laid. So everyone else was arrested – why? Certainly not in the name of Canadian democracy!)

But what porkers have the Harper Cons been caught uttering recently?  Turns out they quoted Auditor General Sheila Fraser as praising the Conservative’s management of the summit when in fact the quote they used was taken out of context.  What she was actually doing was praising the Liberals for their spending on security after the 9/11 attacks. Last week, Ms. Fraser responded:

...the Conservatives inserted a 2010 comment she made during a CBC News interview on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The comments attributed to me in the [Conservative] report are completely unrelated to G8/G20 spending,” Fraser writes in her letter.

“I would appreciate it if the report could be modified as it is clearly erroneous.”

And with regard to the G-8, it turns out that the Tories may have lied misinformed the Canadian Parliament about their spending on that meeting, and in doing so may have broken the law.  We, the electorate, won’t know before we vote on May 2nd exactly what they were up to, because of the rules of Parliament only permit the release of this report to a sitting parliament.  Hmmm – I wonder if this had anything to do with the timing of this election?

And, of course, Stephen Harper continues to dismiss the finding of “Contempt of Parliament” as a minor issue.  That is the worst lie of all, in my books, because it so clearly shows with how little esteem he holds our entire parliamentary democracy.  Here’s what a few Canadians had to say about Harper and his record:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQm0t1v2wOM]

More links:

ShitHarperDid.com

Tories Misinformed Parliament on G8 Fund, May Have Broken Law: Auditor General

Tories Used Praise For Liberals To Defend Summit Costs: Fraser

Reckless and Ruinous: Harper’s Economics

Anti-Harper Website Attracts Two Million Hits

Ballot Box Thief A Conservative Staffer. Oh My!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTP8qPY9ds4]