Monday, May 18, 2009

Check your stats: NDP has best record of balanced budgets - Gvnt of Canada

Reading this, anyone who knows anything about New Democrat governments would conclude that Janice MacKinnon was either (a) badly misquoted, or (b) the victim of a nasty spill off the turnip truck.

Though threadbare from over-use, the talking points that say “New Democrats equal deficits and profligate spending” are flat wrong. The fact is that since the mid 1980s, New Democrat governments have had the BEST record of balancing budgets of any party on average. The source for such blasphemy? Why, the shysters over at the Federal Department of Finance, of course!

The whole "spend us into deficit" racket is sadly more true of Liberal and Conservative federal and provincial governments. It's something you’d expect MacKinnon to have some familiarity with, given that she was an NDP finance minister responsible for a balanced budget or two herself.

2 comments:

susansmith said...

When will canwest go bankrupt? That said, Janice is used by Canwest to screw the NDP.
This horse crap that bailing out companies is somehow left is crap. Let's see, save the execs and screw the workers is what is going on.
Anyway, great post!
Why don't you write Janice: and ask her to link to your post (or better send her an email with attachments). This thus makes her aware and better sound bites rather than trotting out the same old tired story.

Janice MacKinnon
Professor of Public Policy and Adjunct Professor, History
Department: History

Office: Diefenbaker Center
Phone: (306) 966-5661
Email: janice.mackinnon@usask.ca

RuralSandi said...

So,
B.C pop: 4-1/2 million
Sasks: just over 1 million and never, ever been more than that.
Man pop: just over 1 million

Toronto alone has over 6 million people.

Budgets for one province with small population is quite different than for the whole country with varying issues, etc.