Last week it was Andrew Coyne; this week it’s Jack Mintz. Seems all the National Post’s favourite conservative commentators have suddenly decided to offer their Very Serious Advice™ to Alberta’s new government. While Coyne made a spurious comparison between raising the minimum wage and instituting a minimum income, Mintz outdoes
Continue readingTag: public debt
The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Double-down Locke #nlpoli
“I didn’t see this coming,” Memorial University economist Wade Locke told the Telegram’s James McLeod the other day. Locke was talking about the dramatic drop in oil prices over the past week and a half. The day before, Locke was on VOCM’s morning talk show dismissing this low oil price
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Vision Thing #nlpoli
The St. John’s Board of Trade is about the only business advocacy group in the world that doesn’t actually believe in free enterprise. The Board doesn’t believe that government should control public debt. They claim they are worried about it, but in practice the Board will shout with joy the
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Conservative Misinformation and the Public Sector Debt Problem #nlpoli
There is no limit to how selectively provincial Conservatives will read a document in order to find some microscopic filament that might possibly confirm that they have really been running the most magnificent administration in the history of the galaxy. They still insist, for example, that they are the tops
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Whizzo Quality Assortment #nlpoli
On the outside, the spring budget for 2014 looks like a delicious assortment of goodies for everyone. You can tell it is delectable because everyone is shouting for joy and drooling over their good fortune. There is not a single group who have had their hands out for government money
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Vibrant Unsustainable Super Energy Debt Warehouse #nlpoli
The Conservatives used to say that Newfoundland and Labrador was eastern North America’s energy warehouse. Once Danny Williams ran for the hills and left Kathy Dunderdale in charge, she kicked everything up a notch. Energy warehouse was too plain for Kathy, whose party ran on the slogan “New Energy” in
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Political Mummers’ Parade on Monday #nlpoli
Finance minister Tom Marshall will present his mid-year financial update on Monday. It is supposed to be a way of bringing everyone up to date on how the annual budget is going. It’s an accountability thing. Since the government’s fiscal year starts in April, the middle of the year was
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Debt, Demand, and Delusions #nlpoli
The Conservatives running the province got together with their staff and key supporters this weekend to reaffirm their conviction that they alone ought to be running the province. Some people seem to think it’s remarkable that they stand together behind Kathy Dunderdale and her supposed wonderful charm, despite what the
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Well on the way to Debt Freedom #nlpoli
According to economist-consultant Wade Locke, the provincial government’s “Sustainability” Plan includes a debt commitment: The long-run target is to bring the province’s net per capita debt gradually down to the all-province level within ten years. Locke made it clear in another part of his March 25 memo to finance minister
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Public Debt #nlpoli
One of the greatest political frauds committed by the current administration and its supporters is the idea that they have lowered the public debt. All the politicians say it. Wade Locke, their tireless economist, talks about the same thing – net debt – in his soon-to-be-infamous memo to Jerome Kennedy.
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Pennies and Pounds #nlpoli
In May 2011, the provincial public works department issued a call for proposals to replace the lift bridge in Placentia. In August 2011, the department scrapped the project and went back for a re-think. They got only one proposal for $43.25 million, which upset them given that they had figured
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: If the next two years are bad… #nlpoli
No surprise that on the day after natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy talked about looming deficits of pre-1934 proportions that the ruling Conservatives did two things. First, backbencher Paul Lane reinterpreted Kennedy’s comments on VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms. There will only be big deficits, says Lane, if we
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Putting selective “facts” on the splitting table #nlpoli
Premier Kathy Dunderdale wants to have a “conversation” about the provincial government’s financial mess and the ways we might fix it. That’s what she told CBC’s David Cochrane in her year-end interview. One of the things Kathy wants to talk about is taxes, specifically the number of people not paying
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Provincial Public Debt…again #nlpoli
As often as they say it, the facts don’t bear out the claim some politician like to make about the provincial public debt. The Premier did it again in the House of Assembly Tuesday evening. We can all give her a bit of a break since she was on her
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Public debt and financial mismanagement #nlpoli
A few days ago, Stephen Taylor posted a table from a 2010 study that showed how big Quebec’s public debt is compared to that of countries around the world. The results weren’t pretty. A similar comparison for Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t pretty either. A rough comparison for Newfoundland and Labrador
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Fiscal conservative, you say? #nlpoli
One of the more curious comments from provincial Conservative supporters lately has been the claim that they support the current Connie administration provincially because they – the supporters – are fiscal conservatives. labradore has already challenged one such claim with a look at the provincial labour force figures. Here’s the
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Dundernomics 101: Public Sector Employment Numbers #nlpoli
In an interview with CBC’s David Cochrane, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said that the public service has grown by more than 2,100 jobs in the past eight years and that total employment in the public service is about 9,000. Well, not exactly. That depends on what you consider to be public
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The old cabinet documents ploy #nlpoli #cdnpoli
Premier Kathy Dunderdale and her ministers refuse to hand over documents on more than $5.0 billion in public works spending by the Conservatives since 2004. The documents are cabinet secrets, as their argument goes, and under the access to information law cabinet cannot release that information to him. like her
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: AG Report–Government Liabilities #nlpoli
The latest report by the province’s Auditor General has some information to bear in mind as we talk about Muskrat Falls. Note that total liabilities went up from the end of March 2010 to the end of March 2011. It now stands at more than $13 billion. But… Financial assets
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Wading through Locke on Muskrat (Part 3) #nlpoli #cdnpoli
[continued from Part 2] Debt One of the issues Wade Locke set out to address was the impact Muskrat Falls would have on public debt. For some other information on Muskrat Falls and public debt, check this earlier post. Slide 43 is a table of debt servicing amounts based on
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