That’s all Harper does is twist everything. Perfect example is the money parents are getting for having children.. He keeps forgetting to mention he took of the income tax deduction for having kids..so he is really not giving parents the thousands of dollars. But really just about $13.50 a month. Yippeeeee

And we haven’t seen anything yet… We have the lowest GDP of all times under his rule…but I am sure his spin doctors will make it a good thing…

Talk about false information and spin doctoring; the lowest GDP? It is the highest it has ever been, the only drop was in 2009 during the recession where every country in the world dropped.

let us just say Harper is not as honorable as he would have us believe and that with this election he is desperate…

God help us if we get another majority government

I wouldn’t describe Harper as being in any ways ‘desperate’. To me, that seems far more to be the condition all his opponents are in. All in all, considering what’s been happening in the world economically over the past few years, Harper has provided pretty good governance. He’s not perfect, no leader ever is ~ every one of them, in one way or another, has been a curse to mankind, and likely that will always be the case ~ but he has tried, and when it’s come down to the endless struggle between ‘practicality’ and ‘ideology’, he’s opted for what works best for the greatest good within a financial system that’s not totally amenable to needed changes by any one country (yet).

In the end you are measured by your results, commitment, and policies. Harper has turned Canada into something we are not, we are a country that respects science, different views and respects the rights of the people. To date this government has made no effort on any front, they are more concerned with spin and 100,000,000 ad campaigns to justify then actions. It means they have to go, they are know longer about people but themselves.

Nine consecutive years of deficits put this Harper Government at $150 BILLION dollars total debt, that’s one quarter of Canada’s debt since CONFEDERATION!!!

At the end of 2014, the unemployment rate was higher than at the end of 2008. The labour force participation rate was lower than in 2008. The employment rate (the percentage of the adult population employed) was lower than at the end of 2008. The youth unemployment rate was higher than at the end of 2008. The share of total employment made up of full-time jobs was less than in 2008 — and the quality of jobs had sunk to its lowest level in a quarter of a century.

So what was stopping the other parties from having a big war chestÉ

Peter seems to have conveniently left out some information such as the campaigning by all parties was already on and by calling an election all parties have to declare third party funding of which the NDP, Greens do not like as funding from NGOs will have to be declared.

To be fair it was 9 years of a Harper Government not a conservative government per se.

To be equally fair, Harper is the leader of the Conservative party and it is not possible to separate one from the other. Harper government or Conservative government: Tweedle Dum/Tweedle Dee.

That’s true Hartly 2. After all, they did take progressive out of their name after the takeover, LOL ;)

To be fair, it was 4 years of a Harper Majority Government. The earlier years were tempered by being the leader of a minority government.

I still think of him as a Reform and Alliance Party member. In short, he is an opportunist.

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Here is some information about Canada’s GDP in relation to the Harper Government and the governments of other world states.

Of the 68 states for which the World Bank has GDP date available over the period of 2010 to 2014 inclusive = 5 years, there are 107 states which have a GDP 5 year average of greater than the Canadian 2.6%.

Australia and Slovak Republic are tied with Canada, and there are 57 states which have a lower GDP average. That includes 12 states who have a negative 5 year GDP average. In that group we find Spain, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and Greece.

Over Harper’s uncontested leadership, we have seen 107 states do better than he, 2 other the same, and 57 worse. In other words, on a world scale he is below average on the economic scale. If it were not for the Petro-C$, we would have done worse as we can start to see now.
Remember this news item which broke not that long ago.
cbc.ca/news/business/oecd-slashes-canadian-gdp-growth-forecast-to-1-5-in-2015-1.3098212

“A day after federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver deflected concerns over Canada’s poor economic showing to start 2015, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has slashed its growth expectations — now expecting the country’s gross domestic product to only expand by 1.5 per cent this year.

“The Paris-based organization of wealthy nations on Wednesday cited the ongoing impact of cheap oil in slashing its expectations for Canada’s economy.
“The recent fall in oil prices has resulted in declines in related investment and GDP,” the group said.
“The 1.5 per cent forecast is well below the group’s projection as recently as last November, when it was calling for 2.6 per cent growth. In March, the OECD ratcheted that down to 2.2 per cent.”

We are still led by the Harper government, a government which has failed, as have many governments before him, to diversify the nation’s economy. We are a nation blessed with many things. It is unconscionable that we have been unable to diversify our economy to the extent that the USA, for instance, has done.

Harper has shown he is not the guru we needed. He has just bumbled along without instituting programs which would begin to make us not only be the nice guys, but also the smart guys when it comes to economic stability.

As far as having the “nice guys” reputation on the world scene, he has certainly not done much to support that. More towards arrogant when boasting about our economy which was so dependent on oil. Others are having the last laugh now.

What do you want the government to do, Sophic? Run a surplus every year? Where would we be if Harper had put his Conservative ideology first all through the recessionary period from 2008 onwards and done just that? A lot MORE people would have been, and still be, unemployed. That’s where. A lot MORE businesses would have failed. We may have even seen a situation where our Banks, at least your money on deposit in them, would have been as negatively affected as was, and still is, the case elsewhere.

There are changes that need to be made to the whole financial set-up we continue to operate under. I have no idea whether or not Stephen Harper, when he finally becomes aware of this FACT, will be up to making them. But I can tell you for certain that neither Mulcair nor Trudeau ever will. As for your Ms. May, she’s so far out of any concept of economic reality, whatever she says is just going to continue to be ignored. Except by the likes of those who think they can save the world by phasing out the human race. But never volunteer themselves as the first ones up to be phased out.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in GDP as an accurate measure of anything meaningful, gopg2015. You can have a rise in GDP for many reasons, and not all of them are a positive indication of some country’s economic well-being.

As for “diversifying” the economy, that only can come about when there’s an actual consumer demand for the products you’re hoping to diversify into, and even then that only comes about if that consumer demand can be made fully into “effective demand”. In other words, every business still has to be able to recover all its costs in price, plus enough of an inducement in profit to make whatever process it’s engaged in worth repeating. That’s pretty hard to do when capital costs are accelerating and labor costs, (overall current consumer incomes) are declining in ratio to them. And we labor under the nonsense that the only way anyone should receive an income is through employment.

I see the Harper Carpers are out if full force,. Those who criticize Harper on a regular basis, are those who have never voted for him and never will, and I say Pshaw to them.

Trying to compare us to the USA with a similar size Country, but with 300 Million plus population, or compare us to some European Countries that have been around for a thousand years, and are small is size, with a concentrated population is a waste of time.

Canada is a unique Country. Massive in size, with a very small population. Once you take out those under 18 and those over 65 and those who do not work you have a very small working population to run the Country.

Now throw in hundreds of thousands of underworked and over paid Civil Servants, thousands of high paid employee’s working for Government entities, and of course the high paid Union workers, and we begin to see why we cannot compete on the world market.

So to blame Harper for our inability to compete is foolish. We cant compete because of ourselves. We the people of Canada with great demands, and little concern about anything but ourselves.

There is a hardcore group of small and large business’s across Canada who keep this Country up and running,. Everyone from the person who sells you a coffee at Tim Hortons to the waitress that serves you in a restaurant, to the mechanic who monkey wrenches you car, to the truck drivers that keep cities and towns supplied with what they need, etc; etc;. Kudo’s to the basic Canadian.

Those who sit on their collective butts all day and criticize should maybe look at who signs their pay cheques. It is a private business, or is it a Government cheque. If your cheque comes from the Government, then your salary is being paid for by the basic Canadian I mentioned above, without them you would be out of a job.

So time to face the reality that we are what we are, and no Government can wave a magic wand and solve all are problems.

“Harper has shown he is not the guru we needed. He has just bumbled along without instituting programs which would begin to make us not only be the nice guys, but also the smart guys when it comes to economic stability.”
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If you’re in a global competition for world markets you’re going to do whatever is best for your country in capturing them. You aren’t going to look like a ‘nice guy’ doing that, but if you don’t do it your country will end up where nice guys invariably end up. Last. And your electors will curse you forever for allowing that to happen. Now it doesn’t have to be that way, but there is no collective will to explore any PRACTICAL alternatives. Not here, nor elsewhere. Yet.

Here are the actual budget positions that the Harper government has had while in power:

2006 13.8B surplus (after nine consecutive years of Liberal surplus budgets)
2007 9.6B surplus
2008 -5.8B deficit
2009 -55.6B deficit
2010 -33.3B deficit
2011 -26.2B deficit
2012 -25.9B deficit
2013 -18.9B deficit
2014 -16.6B deficit
2015 1.4B surplus (projected . . . although many commentators believe it could easily slip into a deficit as well)

If you listen to non-partisan observers, they will also tell you that we are technically in a recession at the moment.

Can you imagine if a Liberal or NDP government had similar economic performance? Many of the regulars on here would be foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog and running around the streets with pitchforks and a noose.

It doesn’t matter how you spin it, these numbers are dismal.

As for “diversifying” the economy, that only can come about when there’s an actual consumer demand for the products you’re hoping to diversify into, and even then that only comes about if that consumer demand can be made fully into “effective demand”.

=======================================

You mean like how markets operate across the entire world?

So to blame Harper for our inability to compete is foolish.

================================

Palopu, you honestly believe that government policy has no impact on the economic climate within a particular country? Interesting position considering that Harper himself has indicated that this election is partially about managing the “fragile economy” and that his party is the only one that can do it.

So who is wrong? Harper or you?

So, NMG, you are telling me that the two surpluses Harper is taking credit for are actually a carry-over from the 7 consecutive surpluses the Liberals forged? Isn’t that a bit less than forthright?

Well, Harper also added 150 billion dollars to the federal debt, thereby undoing the efforts of the Liberals who had actually reduced the federal debt by approximately the same amount!

So much for fiscal conservatism.

NMG:-“You mean like how markets operate across the entire world?”
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How they ‘should’ operate, both here and across the entire world. But do they?

NMG:-“Can you imagine if a Liberal or NDP government had similar economic performance? Many of the regulars on here would be foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog and running around the streets with pitchforks and a noose.”

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That’s somewhat true, because most people equate the financing of a national government with what’s true in respect to their own personal finances. Even though there’s a BIG difference. And to them, ideologically at least, both the Liberals and NDP are considered to be ‘tax and spend’ Parties, while the Conservatives may be considered to be spenders, at times when they need to be, like in the past period of global recession, but not so quick to cover the increased spending with new taxes. This works to some extent if the spending doesn’t lead to a permanent dependence on more of it coming from government. If it’s for something that tides the private sector over, until it can get back on its feet again. Hopefully, anyways. The Liberals and NDP seem to have an unfortunate habit of feeding their addiction to more of this kind of spending by making it permanently funded by more taxes. That only makes a difficult situation worse, long term.

Socredible, you are far too much a theorist and you keep on showing that you are unable to accept the market realities of the world.

There are businesses who find opportunities and take the risk to go after those opportunities. Most of those who do that at an international scale are not Canadian. Canadians generally are not great entrepreneurs.

Why on earth do you think there is so much advertising, especially in North America. It is not to inform people of where they can get waht they have been looking for all the time, but to inform them of what they should have, do, buy, live … whatever it takes to get them to buy organics, holidays anywhere but in Canada (thereby seeing C$ exit the country) buy Mercedes, Subarus, huge trucks, huge houses, shows at the CN Centre for $200 a pop (most of which exits the city) dinners out, wines, foreign beers, phone plans, 100s of TV channels, 4K flat screens, and on and on it goes.

Forget about waiting till people tell you what they want. By that time it is others in the world who have told them what they should want and they have the products ready for them.

You obviously have not observed Apple marketing tactics which, of course, other manufacturers have been doing as well.

Remember the wait for the new car models every year in the 60’s? It is nothing new.

Prince George:-“Well, Harper also added 150 billion dollars to the federal debt, thereby undoing the efforts of the Liberals who had actually reduced the federal debt by approximately the same amount!

So much for fiscal conservatism.”
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A National Debt is a distributing agent, Prince George. To the extent that it’s paid down, that much money vanishes from your whole economy. If there are goods for sale in that economy with ‘price values’ in money on them that already totally exceed the amount of money available to liquidate those values, and you’ve just taken 150 billion out of that economy, you have to replace that money by some other means or those goods can’t be sold for the cost of their making. There are currently only two other means of replacement. Export more than you import and receive international credits convertible into Canadian dollars for the difference (something a little difficult to do in a GLOBAL financial crisis), or some other entities within the country borrow 150 billion dollars from the banks that create them. The debt doesn’t vanish. It’s simply transferred. In the final analysis it’s still going to be paid by us, if we have anything to pay it with.

socredible states; “A lot MORE people would have been, and still be, unemployed. That’s where. A lot MORE businesses would have failed. We may have even seen a situation where our Banks, at least your money on deposit in them, would have been as negatively affected as was, and still is, the case elsewhere.”

Playing the fantasy game again are we? Who knows what would have happened, maybe an NDP government in power would have managed the recession even better than the Harper Government… see two can play that game, a game of fanciful thinking, with absolutely NOTHING to back your statements with.

I will use your fantasy approach as my example: If the NDP had won that last election the unemployment rate would lower, and our economy would rank higher than 50% of the other countries, do I have evidence? Of course not, because it is just fanciful socredible thinking.

Maybe NMG does not remember the subprime crisis in the US that began in 2007 and led to the worldwide recession of 2009 slowly climbing out and coming to an end some time in 2014.
Canada only showed a recession in late 2008 and most of 2009 but the world still being in recession until 2014 is probably why we are finally able to post a budget without deficit. Being a majority they didn’t have as much pressure on them to perform budget wise and reducing them to a minority would help in that regard.

Sage, socredible is playing the “we know what the NDP is like because we suffered through the 90s with them” game. Don’t you remember BC being called a “have not” province, a lot of us still do.

Thanks, slinky. My memory goes back a bit further with the NDP. I think that if they’d formed a majority government in Ottawa last time they’d have been much more like when they first got to be government here in 1972. Most of their MPs would have been like Dave Barrett’s MLAs. Idealistic novices. We had a recession shortly after they formed government the first time here, too. And the way they dealt with it was to massively increase the size of the civil service. That cut down the numbers of unemployed, all right. But taxes and hydro rates and all other costs of doing business skyrocketed. To be fair, when they did get back into office in the 1990’s after the implosion of the Social Credit Party, they did improve a bit as time went on. Not much, but a bit. By the time they got to Miller and Dosanjh as Premiers they were clearly not the same socialists they used to be. More like would-be capitalists without any capital.

Gopg2015:-“There are businesses who find opportunities and take the risk to go after those opportunities. Most of those who do that at an international scale are not Canadian. Canadians generally are not great entrepreneurs.”
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Absolute nonsense. Canadians are just as good as entrepreneurs as any other nationality, and if they seem to be risk adverse, it’s generally because capital markets here in Canada are far more centralised than in many other countries. Here they are dominated by a small clique of chartered banks who are often adverse to their borrowing clients competing with each other in a way that might adversely affect the bank’s position, or imperil its collateralised security.

At one time socredible used to write about national assets and provincial assets and personal assets.

Every time the government builds something, buys something, or provides a service, the government pays for that either out of direct taxation or by “borrowing” the funds.

According to USDebtClock.org the national debt is $18 trillion and debt per citizen is $57,040 and debt per taxpayer is $154,433
Fine. However, if you check all the way down on the bottom of the online version, it shows that national assets are $119 trillion and assets per citizen are $370,849.

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So why would someone who was given research money by Canada to improve solar cells and their production but no financial assistance for implementing a successful, improved process. Instead, he had to go to Germany to find funds and all the assistance required to start a clean industrial plant. That could have been built anywhere. It just needed a national priority. Our only national priority is to dig stuff out of the ground or cut it from the bottom of its stem and sell it to foreign countries with very little if any added value.

Our national debt is 1/30 of that of the USA. Since our population is lower, the debt per person is $17,263. That is less than a third of that of the USA.

Obviously we are not investing enough in our country’s infrastructure to be competitive on a world scale.

debtclock.ca

“So why would someone who was given research money by Canada to improve solar cells and their production but no financial assistance for implementing a successful, improved process. Instead, he had to go to Germany to find funds and all the assistance required to start a clean industrial plant. That could have been built anywhere. It just needed a national priority. Our only national priority is to dig stuff out of the ground or cut it from the bottom of its stem and sell it to foreign countries with very little if any added value.”
————————————————————————-
Likely because a government giving “financial assistance for implementing a successful, improved process” would be viewed as an unfair subsidy by those countries to whom we hope to export these solar cells to. Now if there is a genuine demand abroad, or even here in Canada, for such things, and it can be shown in a credible business plan that such manufacturing is likely to be profitable, then there should certainly be no problem in getting regular bank financing.

The government’s own BDBC bank is one source of funds for ventures that are somewhat more risky, and there are various loan guarantee programs underwritten by the government. But the venture has to show it has promise of success. And many ventures lack that ability. Additionally, if financing was sought from Germany, this may be of considerable assistance in having an “in” to Germany as a market.

S-slippery Steve
C-Con, contempt of parliament
A-arrogant
N-narcissistic
D-deficits or Duffy
A-adanac (Canada moving backwards) or Airbus
L-Laureen, (I kinda feel sorry for her)
O -omnibus bills
U-u won’t recognize Canada when I’m done with it
S-so scandalous we’ll use it twice

“Likely because a government giving “financial assistance for implementing a successful, improved process” would be viewed as an unfair subsidy by those countries to whom we hope to export these solar cells to.”

You are fishing for something that is not remotely true because you do not know.

As an example, BC Ferries can go to tender on the open market and award a contract for the ships to be built in Germany.

Washington DOT visited BCFerries a couple of years ago to see if they could join together in building ferries which basically have to perform the same function in inland waters on the West Coast. The problem was, the ships used by WDOT would have to be built in the USA, but Canadian ships could be built in Washington State. In addition, Canada was practicing free trade and could go for bids from other countries. The US would breach federal law, thus the open bid was only within the two countries and had some restrictions which were there solely for the protection of US jobs.

That is about as clear a subsidy as one can make it. The USA has many such “Buy Local” policies on a state basis as well as national basis. Forget about free trade. It is only free if the USA deems it free.

State subsidies are normal in the world. Canada played tit for tat in the upgrading subsidies it gave to the Pulpmills in PG recently to the tune of around $100million each because the USA did it so the feds simply followed suit.

“Obviously we are not investing enough in our country’s infrastructure to be competitive on a world scale.”
———————————————————————–Compete with who, and for what? Above you quoted a figure showing that each US citizen is worth $ 370,849 as his or her share of that country’s national assets. I don’t know whether that’s just assets that are still in the public domain, or whether it also includes the value of all the assets that are said to be privately owned as well. But in any case it’s a great deal more than each citizen is said to owe as his portion of the National Debt.

So suppose the USA had a set of books organised like the books of any private business. Like with a Balance Sheet, showing Assets, Liabilities, and Capital. Obviously there is a Capital value per citizen far in excess of any monetary Liabilities against it. And even though our “USA, Inc.” is not set up as a profit making entity, in every private business the final figures in the Profit and Loss Account are always closed to the Balance Sheet, and represent an increase in Assets over Liabilities if there’s a profit, or a decrease if there’s a loss.
Normally, barring natural disasters, wars, etc., the overall growth in Assets of “USA, Inc.” would annually exceed its growth in Liabilities. So each year there is a ‘profit’, in a sense, added to the value of the Capital Account. And in any private business we might expect a portion of this ‘profit’ would be disbursed to the shareholders as a ‘dividend’. And this is precisely what SHOULD happen with countries. Each citizen should get a dividend, either directly as a payment of money to him, and/or as a ‘discount’ on the price of all his consumables. This would allow the financial system to be what it should be , but currently isn’t. Fully self-liquidating as production becomes consumption.

Sorry, I did not make it clear that the Germans were not about to finance a plant in Canada. The Germans had two national policies which allowed them to finance the plant in Germany.

1. promote solar energy and become self sufficient in the manufacturing of the cells and other associated technology.

2. industrialize the traditional farmlands of eastern Germany after the wall came down.

So, they built the plant in the former east Germany. I understand it has been expanded.

In Canada, they could have built it in PG, for instance, or any other non-large urban centre. But why should Canada try to save communities like PG by providing incentives, lets call them, instead of subsidies to diversify local industry. Our solar cells are the tree leaves. That should do for the quaint northern folk. Right?

Harper and Socred are such great economists that they are both in denial of the forces of creative destruction… that is the ying to the yang of capital creation. Capital creation has a great upside, but like any ponzi eventually has nowhere to go, so there is the correction that makes a true capitalist market elastic enough to absorb the daily speculations of a market economy.

Sometimes this happens with depreciation of real physical assets, or vanquishing good will values… and sometimes it happens through displacement by technology, or better methods, but always it involves a divergence of opinions of value.

The creative financial destruction is the symbiosis to a healthy capitalist economy; and to deny it through manipulations of monetary policy, and government subsidies, and especially by trying to freeze the economic peeking order through free trade agreements that mean very little about trade, and everything about regulatory control, that is designed to protect the globalists at the expense of local innovation and creation… is to deny the very essence of the capitalist society these people claim to be the champions of… they are no champions of capitalism, but rather its parasitic infection bent on retaining value in an alchamy of wealth that can only be retained by denying the opportunities to others to create and renew and trying to subjugate any innovation that could challenge their interests.

We get all caught up in GDP, but what is GDP other than a term to describe a mathematical function to describe the generalized national economy. A mathematical function that is only as good (and honest) as its inputs. The inputs use to be more akin to the kinds of resources and costs that occurred in the street level economy… but more and more as the financial guru’s gained political predominance in the political policy circles; the GDP as well as the benefactors of new efficiencies in the economy all went to the financial sector which was weighted more and more as inputs to the GDP figures, thus displacing the inputs from the actual economy.

Today’s GDP figures are a mostly moved by financial markets, but the national tax burden is on the street level economy. One has to wonder if the financial markets do collapse, as I think they will being a largely ponzi market, and that has a huge impact on the GDP… then does the GDP remain as relevant as an indicator of how the actual physical economy is operating? Is this the stage we are in now?

I think in 2008, if Harper was not a creative destruction denialist… I think Harper will do anything to protect the 1% elite for campaign donations. That he would even use government revenue to socialize their loses and prop up their financial alchemy… I think if Harper had allowed the banks and financial interests that were responsible for greed, corruption, over speculation, and extended risky leveraged balance sheets… then creative destruction would have served its purpose of weeding out some of the 1% from the perpetual wealth they seem to be entitled to with our tax dollars.

In 2008 we should not have incurred massive government deficits bailing out banksters, but rather investing this in having economic activity circulate more within our own economy. If we are buying from everyone else and we are all globalized with no value added diversification, then all the money in the world will not solve our problems as a nation as money flows out of the local economy as soon as it is generated.

We need to create value if we are to have money, and we need to have this new value recognized as the currency that should is circulated 2-3 times minimum in the local economy, thereby boasting a real GDP by 300% in the local economy, before this money circulates in the larger provincial or national economy one would hope another 2-3 times for a 600% increase in monetary reality from the original value create at its source.

Canada is abundant in value added opportunities from the harvesting of our resources, to the proximity and ease with which we can access energy resources. But even with that… if Jim bakes goods and uses his revenue to buy local ingredients; and the local farmer is buying his supplies in town; and the supplier in town is an important contributor to enabling the local infrastructure expansions; which then helps the national economy… then all real economic growth one can say has a genus in the small business entrepreneur trying to create value through a service or product in which they generate surplus value.

So what has Harper done for small business?

Harper is a monopoly capitalist that works for the globalist bankers, which is clearly evidenced by all his policies in the area’s of relinquishing Canadian regulatory sovereignty.

I find the idea repulsive that I should vote for Harper because the other two are worse. How can anyone be worse than a fraud? I believe in a free enterprise economy with a capitalist frame work that includes creative destruction, so why would I use my vote to enable a fraud for this cause, one that would use his fraud to snuff out not only our constitution and democracy, but the very fabric of a free enterprise capitalist economy for good; so we find ourselves living under the foreign boot of imperialist bankster controlled kangaroo courts by and for fascist powers.

Its the regulatory sovereignty that in most part protects the free enterprise economy from the predatory monopoly capitalists with international financial capital. Its the free enterprise economy… the ease of entry into the business community and the equality of opportunity based on the merits of ones skills… that is the foundation of a middle class society, one that is strong and free.

Harper will kill this all off and hand the hatchet job to three unaccountable, hidden even in their identity, making rulings on their former employers and clients, judging whether a Canadian policy, regulation, or way of doing business is acceptable under our free trade agreements… as judged by these international dispute resolution clauses that allow our treaty to rule with financial penalty over our elected bodies and even our Supreme Court of the land guided and governed by our constitution.

Its a complete betrayal and I think treasonous to insert a foreign authority over that of our democracy and constitution, but its not just the democracy and constitution that the Harper foreign dispute clause gets inserted to malign, but it is the enabler of the globalist financial colossus to subjugate our free enterprise economy one small business and one sector at a time until all that we have left is oligarchs, foreign financial wizards lording over our political system, and beggary for rents that no one can afford… all in the name of so called Harper conservativism.

Tom Mulcair leader of the NDP and Justin Trudeau leader of the Liberals don’t even come close the the leadership of Steven Harper. Justin Trudeau claims to represent the middle class, he probably doesn’t even know what middle class is, cruising around in his million dollar rare Mercedes. Tom Mulcair representing the working man/woman? Seriously? What a joke. There are two things the working man/woman needs. 1. a job and 2. low taxes. The polices of the NDP will scare away good paying jobs and whoever has a job will get taxed to the nines to pay for all the short falls.

GoPG2015 you are missing one aspect I believe from your German solar plant story. One additional factor that without would make all the others a moot point.

Socred says they probably couldn’t make the plant in Canada because of foreign concerns about a perceived subsidy. And he is right in that aspect considering Canada is a signatory on many international ‘free trade’ agreements that allow for investor state dispute resolution process.

Germany however is one of the few countries in the world that has it in explicit law that they will not be a party to any clause in any trade agreement that refers disputes to any foreign investor state dispute resolution process… meaning they will not surrender their democratic sovereignty to unaccountable foreign bankers. They fought two world wars over that so if anything they are consistent about not wanting to be under the boot of foreign bankers.

A country that understands how to apply the financial boot, as in to Greece, but is adverse to having the financial boot applied to their own democracy via so called ‘free-trade’ agreements.

German policy is if you are a foreign investor and you find yourself adversely affected then your process is to sue through German courts subject to German rule of law and the German constitution.

So if Germany wants to give an unfair advantage to its solar industry, or incubate any other for that matter… then foreign claims against it are subject to open protectionism through trade duties, rather then stealth protectionism offered by state resolution processes run by banks. Very few want to openly attack the German state to try and bend their will on local domestic policy.

Germany has it right in protecting their sovereignty to protect the sustainability of their free enterprise capitalist economy. Canada however is going down the road to serfdom and patsies for international bankers.

Harper leadership – I WILL lead and you WILL follow me!!

Justin leadership – I will lead, where do you want me to take you? Let us talk about it.

Exactly, not even close is right.

One who doesn’t know where he’s going won’t go far.

gopg2015 what about Mr. (Diddle) Mulcair?

Mul who?