Harper's broken promises:Instead of investing in programs and initiatives that could make your life more affordable, he squandered $50-billion on tax giveaways for big oil, the banks, cell-phone giants and other large and profitable corporations.
One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to cancel agreements with provinces to fund new affordable child care spaces—launching a family allowance instead that barely puts a dent in the cost of diapers.
Instead of addressing runaway drug costs, he expanded brand-name drug companies’ monopoly rights by three more years—making it even harder for you and your family to access cheaper generic drugs.
After admitting that consumers are hurt by unfair ATM fees, high credit card rates, and unfair wireless charges, his government did nothing more than politely voice "concern" to his corporate friends.
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Stephen Harper and the war in Iraq
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The laissez fair approach has been a complete failure - and here is how Stephen Harper fits that dangerous ideological mould:
* Harper’s overarching economic policy is to tie Canada permanently to the US market - to an economy that is headed for permanent chaos: a financial crisis that will last for another 18 months, huge government deficits, consumer demand dropping like a stone, 10 % of mortgage holders in default, and a negative savings rate.
* China and India are the growth centres of the world because they ensure a close collaboration between capital (business), universities and the government, carefully engaging in long-term planning of industrial development. Harper literally has NO industrial development strategy or policy. Our economy is completely on its own, pulled this way and that by a faltering globalization.
* Harper keeps talking about us being competitive but he is squandering any competitive advantage we might have by completely failing to fund the rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure. In the years to come this infrastructure deficit will become a crisis but his $60 billion tax cuts means the government will have no money to respond.
* Harper is so hostile to activist government that he has deliberately put Canada on the road to deficit by eliminating the healthiest surpluses the country has ever had. Just as we are headed for recession, and when the economy will need an economic stimulus, Harper has implemented huge tax cuts which will make such economic stimulus impossible.
* When the world is calling for renewed regulation, Harper is headed in the opposite direction. His deregulation economic agenda will affect every other aspect of Canadian life: self-regulation in food safety; self-regulation in airline safety; “harmonising” regulation with the deregulated US on pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables; abandoning separate Canadian testing of new drugs and more.
Should Canada follow the USA?Everything costs more
The cost of living in Canada has increased by more than 7% since Harper came to power, despite the 2% GST cut - a move that will cost the federal government $12 billion a year in lost revenue.
The price of gasoline is up 54%, heating fuel is up 42% and the cost of food up by over 8%. These increased costs alone have added over $2,000 a year to the expenses of an average household.
Harper’s billion dollar subsidies to his conservative cronies in the ethanol industry have fuelled food price increases, hurting lower and middle-income families the most.
The average Canadian is falling behind…
Harper pretends to be the everyman, but his policies impoverish ordinary hardworking Canadians while enriching corporations.
Average wages have only increased by 6.7% since he was elected, less than the increase in the cost of living. This means that most workers have had no increase in real wages for the entire 2 ½ years that Harper has been in power.
One in ten Canadians continue to live in poverty. Harper has refused to support a national plan to reduce poverty, or to increase the federal minimum wage.
Progress in reducing the wage gap between men and women has stalled: women working fulltime are paid on average 20% less than men.
Harper has done nothing to protect pensioners and investors from fraudulent financial scams, such as income trusts and asset-backed commercial paper.
While the rich are getting richer
In Harper’s first two years, CEO salaries increased by more than 50%. Canada’s top CEOs now make more for just 10 hours of work than most of us make in a year.
During the same time, corporate profits have increased by 28%, allowing corporations to amass an extra $150 billion in surpluses that they haven’t even invested back into the Canadian economy.
It’s getting harder to find work
Harper has helped create an increasingly unbalanced economy based on the exploitation and exportation of oil, gas and other raw materials.
For each day he has been in office, an average of 200 manufacturing jobs have been lost. Harper’s response to 500 laid-off Ford workers in Oakville this week? “We can’t guarantee your jobs.”
In July, Canada suffered its largest job loss since the recession of 1991, with a drop of 55,000 jobs.
This week, the NDP announced a plan to invest $100 million in skills training. Harper has no plan to help laid-off workers find a decent job again.
We’re in debt
The ratio of household debt to income has increased by 15% while Harper has been in power.
The federal government had a surplus of $13.2 billion when Harper came to office. But the Conservatives have recklessly squandered it by pushing through expensive tax cuts. The surplus is now expected to shrink to $1.3 billion or lower in 2009/10. This would be the worst fiscal balance for the federal government in over a decade.
The economy is stalling and our productivity is declining
When Harper arrived in office, the economy was growing at a healthy rate of 4.2% a year. Economists expect that Canada’s economy will grow by only 1.1% this year. This will be the slowest rate of national economic growth in 15 years—since the 1992 recession.
Harper is the first Canadian Prime Minister in modern history under which economic productivity has actually declined. This demonstrates just how ineffective his neoconservative tax cuts and privatization policies have been.
Although he claims to be frugal, Stephen Harper is actually a big spender—on the things he likes. Spending on defense has increased by more than 16% in just two years. He is spending billions of the public’s money on private contracts, costly public-private partnerships, and partisan advertising. We need a government willing to put money back in the pockets of the average Canadian. We can’t afford any more of Stephen Harper’s economic “management”.
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Jack Layton's New Democrats:
Putting you and your family first.
