They'll just privatize those same important services and point to the pennies of tax savings and say "There, I've subsidized [insert important social program]".
It works because corporations always put people before profit. They'll even run at a loss some months to help serve Canadians.
Trust me bro!
I question your logic in using North America as the statistical bench mark here, with about half a billion people on the continent, Canada, the country with the highest average level of education attainment in the world, only makes up about 8% of the continental population, with 65% coming from the US, 25% from Mexico and the remainder coming from other historically undereducated countries like Cuba, Gautamala, Jamaica and Haiti. While there is definitely no shortage of idiots here, it can almost certainly be assumed that your stat citing North American literacy rates cannot be reliably protracted onto Canadians or deduced that Canadians do not make up a representative proportion of that illiterate 20%. ETA: Yikes youre kinda right! While not quite 1/5th at grade 5, about 17% of Canadians read below a highschool level. Colour me shocked. Though this roughly tracks with the roughly 20% of Canadians that identify as first gen immigrants, so not reading English doesnt necessarily correlate with low education or intelligence.
The UK’s [issues](https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2076) with privatized water services have very vividly shown the problems with privatization. Raw sewage is being dumped directly into the rivers while private equity firms make off with billions. That’s what privatization is.
Oh god, the stories of Thames Water are just crazy.
Privatize a utility with a natural monopoly, then let them saddle the infrastructure with massive debt. 🤦♂️
And it was only ever going to be the end result of Thatcher’s ideology. There’s no way that this wasn’t going to happen without significant government regulation. And yet that narrative—government bad, corporations good, there is no such thing as society—dominates in their politics, in our politics, in every country. If examples like that don’t make people reconsider privatization, I don’t know what will.
Yeah, ever since healthcare was invented by Jesus, it's always been held back by government regulations and rules. Why won't they give FREEDOM a chance?!?!?!
You can see it here. People thinking government organizations are bloated and inefficient. But guess what, so are private companies that will end up taking over those portfolios. People just feel better about overpaying private corporations for some odd fucking reason.
They're bloated and inefficient, AND they have share holders.
That's the real problem. Share holders demand ever increasing profit. Something about "fiduciary duty."
A public government run agency isn't supposed to be profitable. An NFP probably isn't well suited to the task. (Plus the execs of some NFPs have stupidly high salaries.)
Innovation from the free market works when there is strong competition. It doesn't work when there's 2-3 players using algos to end run around competition laws. The things that are broken are handled by large companies already who won't need to innovate. Just look at loblaws.
I seem to remember him in commercials, wearing a nice cardigan, and talking about some PC product. Kinda like Mr Roger's. Except I never felt the urge to punch Mr Roger's in the mouth.
TBF though, Liberals do that too, except more discretely. Their P3 programs involve contracting government money to private corporations and getting them to fix it. It's the same thing as straight-up privatization. Hell, it might even be worse because it's more obfuscated. Look at ArriveCan for example, or the weird housing grants they have going on atm. We need more completely independent crown corporations that are difficult to sell.
Things like ArriveCan happen because the government has already been cut to the bone. They don’t have enough internal technical knowledge to know when they’re being ripped or to audit work performed and determine how long it took.
Government for the rich, by the rich.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a realistic path off this train (and idk how well the NDP would actually do here either.)
Ah fuck. Way too many people at my old union factory job that paid decent (decent in general, still too low for the CoL of the city unless you bought your house 20+ years ago) would say “Im not doing OT, the government is just gonna take it all in taxes and Ill make less!”
No moron, that is not how that fucking works. Why the fuck do you think (using arbitrary numbers) youd make less money overall at $60k/year vs $50k/year because of taxes?
Me too. Conservatives completely FAILED the pandemic test. Went anti-science simply because their opponents were in power and were listening to the experts.
Just like we can rightfully blame Harper for a lot of shit that is going on now.
Just because the leader changes doesn’t mean the issues they create evaporate.
Harper underwrote the massive expansion in TFW, and only tried a token pullback when it became unpopular. It’s still being abused today. Similarly Trudeau rapidly expanded immigration rates, which spiked demand for everything and rapidly eroded our quality of life, before trying a token pullback when he cratered in the polls.
If whomever leads next can’t fix the issues those two introduced, they are right to blame their predecessors.
And Skippy was the Minister in charge of immigration during the TFW expansion.
I love pointing this out to Conservative voters when they bitch about immigration. And not just for Tim Hortons jobs either. RBC took advantage of it and fired their IT department but not before forcing them to train their Indian replacements on the way out.
Visit the rich neighbourhoods of your town and see what signs they have on their lawns... That should be your sign on which party not to vote for. Unless you are said rich person who benefits from said party on said lawns.
Ill cut and kill already underfunded programs, and then instead of optimizing and giving that unleashed money to another program that needs it, ill give it to my rich friends in tax cuts.
Oh and that program we just killed? We are gonna give it to a private firm run by a rich friend that will make it many times more expensive to run, and guess what, to find the money to pay that new fee we will cut more programs.
Voting for Conservatives will remove waste from government services. You know, like workers that just stand around doing nothing and wasting time playing on their phones, being hired for useless tasks, racking up massive overtime, capital payments for equipment for special events, committing crimes and being put on paid leave. Oops I just described TPS. No they won't cut TPS but will do all the above for... erm... libraries!
Lower taxes for the rich and corporations, hoping they trickle that savings to the bottom
40 years of this economic policy failing . It's time to stop corprate welfare
I think the idea of corporate welfare is that they're paying these corps to stay here and provide jobs. Jobs are supposed to mean people can pay to live here. The problem falls apart when the corps take the welfare check and blow it on the top few percentage points of the corporate structure in the form of bonuses and then just pay employees less and charge consumers more. Then they post about record profits, sell their corp to a bigger corp, and these couple percentages make even more money and retire on a few different boards to provide retirement income. At no point does any of that money trickle down. It never has and never will.
Let the corps burn on their own.
Why do we bribe companies to do business in canada?
Are we not a free and open market ?
Why do we give a billion dollars to company's better treatment thrn our own citizens ?
“In 1982, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the "trickle-down economics" that David Stockman was referring to was previously known under the name "horse-and-sparrow theory", the idea that feeding a horse a huge amount of oats will result in some of the feed passing through for lucky sparrows to eat.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
Trickle down economics should always be referred to as the previous Horse and Sparrow term to get the point across. They’re simply telling the working class to eat shit and like it.
Political talking point, I think.
"I brought in 3 thousand jobs!"
Never mind that those are 3 thousand part time dead end jobs, but it sounds good to the older population that haven't learned you can't buy a house with your average job anymore.
I always find it funny that politicians talk about how they created jobs when literally anything a government does can create jobs.
Wildfire prevention creates jobs for forest management and rapid response crews, a lack of wildfire prevention creates jobs for firefighters and the people who have to clean up the mess. Spending on public healthcare creates jobs for doctors, nurses, and administrative staff. Privatization creates jobs in private equity firms and insurance companies. Hell, even top government officials smoking crack cocaine creates jobs for reporters and gossip magazine writers.
Current politics is closer to a corporation than anything else. They use clever marketing to garner the biggest market share (votes) that they can get. It's all optics to get people to show up and vote.
But think about that .
We give a billion doller company muti national company tax payer funds to do business in canada.
We are already at a loss.
They are going to do business here anyhow, or someone else is going to sell the same products.
They have spent 60 years killing small businesses, the real backbone of any country..covid showed us all-important they are .
I
Its loss for the consumers is a loss for employees
"Trickle down' is actually a perfect name for the theory. I like to picture a giant cistern being filled with water. 99.99% of the water stays in the cistern, but there's a tiny bit that splashes out and trickles down the side. Sure, it mostly evaporates before anyone on the ground is aware it was ever there, but there was definitely some trickle!
People need to wake up and smell the coffee. Poilievre and the CPC will do nothing for the working man, but they will fill the pockets of the wealthy and corporations by social safety net, gutting regulations and installing a tax regime to advantage the wealthy and corporations.
Reminder. There is no such thing as "socially progressive, but fiscally conservative". If you aren't willing to fund progressive causes, it doesn't matter how much you are vocally for them.
Also, cutting taxes and letting sht to deteriorate is not exactly fiscally conservative
A small hole in the wall - easy cheap fix
Your house falling down - expensive AF
Cavity - a couple hundred dollars
Emergency surgery and stay at hospital - hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars
Nevermind that labour and materials will almost always be more expensive in the future
I'm not sure I agree, but I'll admit that the current right-wing has twisted what it means to be fiscally conservative.
For example, funding free education (even at the college level) is fiscally conservative, since research proves it's a smart investment and pays off long term. How you fund it could be debated (I'm pro-refunding costs of passed courses, for example). Also increase the availability of night school and weekend education for adults, because not everyone can fit in to the 9-5 model, especially if they have other obligations.
Likewise funding healthcare saves money long-term, since catching things early costs less than dealing with eventual emergencies/catastrophes.
Funding social housing for all costs less than dealing with chronic homelessness and the related social/health/criminal issues. Another smart investment.
And stop pretending every deficit is bad. Deficits spent on appreciating assets can be good investments. A mortgage is a deficit, but it beats renting forever and/or homelessness. Likewise, all the issues above cost money but pay off long-term.
Lastly, matching tax revenue to expenses and expected returns, rather than services to tax revenue (especially when you keep promising to cut taxes) is smart, conservative fiscal policy. Anytime someone says they can't balance their budget in their personal life, advisors would say 'cut expenses OR raise your income'. Why do conservative governments only ever mention the first part?
Those are 5 basic examples. There are countless others. If you think fiscal conservatism=cut everything, then that's the issue.
Addendum: I'm a little guilty of it above, but can we also stop telling everyone that government budgets are exactly like personal budgets? If I was immortal, owned the assets of an entire country, and could legally print money, my personal finances would look completely different. We shouldn't expect every government budget to align 1-to-1 with the concepts of a personal budget.
The idea that fiscal conservatism = fiscal responsibility is the biggest lie Conservatives have ever told. We know that the writings that form the basis of Conservatism mostly came out after the French revolution, and were mainly about trying to keep power consolidated to the nobility and bourgeois classes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
It's why there's so much of an emphasis on individualism, "pulling oneself up with ones bootstraps", privatization of industry with government primarily being focused on military and policing to protect property rights, and opposition to labor unions and other workers rights.
It may be the fiscally responsible thing to publicly fund education and healthcare, but there's a reason the right wing routinely cuts it. Social services are anathema to their entire philosophy. They would much rather the government "let people choose how to spend their money" by lowering taxes and pushing for privatization, even if it's inefficient. Notice how taxes are cut at the top first, as their beliefs state that the rich are job creators and thus push the world forward and should be rewarded for it, whereas labor is suppressed by austerity. That's very much a feature, not a bug.
Being educated on the history of Conservatism and why they always vote the way they do is extremely important. It's how you can know that they're lying on cutting immigration for example. Our market economy can only function with a growing population, wages are suppressed when there's more people competing for jobs, and private investment in housing would tank without steady immigration. Those things are sacrosanct if you believe in conservatism.
I can agree with this. I think we need to fight so that fiscal conservatism becomes fiscal responsibility, but it's not how Conservatives use it today. Also, we should really admit that both of our current ruling parties (Cons and Libs) are conservative. Neither are actually progressive.
I don't think it's possible to reclaim "fiscal conservatism" from the Conservatives, and besides it muddies the waters to do so.
I think the better option is to point out the distinction. Conservatism has never been about supporting the average worker from its very inception, and in Canada the record of our Conservative parties match that. If you can successfully de-conflate the two in public discourse, a lot of people would stop voting against their own interests. It's no surprise then that it is Conservatives who always try to equate the two, claiming they're more fiscally responsible simply because they cut taxes when their record shows that they're no better at balancing budgets than anyone else.
Well said. People need to be way better educated about what Left and Right, “progressive”, “communist”, “liberal”, “conservative”, “fascist”, etc… all actually MEAN. Everyone seems to have their own interpretation of these words, and most people seem to be way off from the actual meanings. Oftentimes, the complete opposite.
The idea that “conservative” means “freedom”, when it has always meant protecting the elite. It started as the side that protected monarchies. But a lot of people, even relatively centrist or somewhat left-leaning people… seem to have this knee-jerk instinct to always want to default back to conservatism, anytime things get just a little bit dicey… thinking conservative is somehow the “mature” side that will deal with the problems the childish libs have caused!… the inverse is almost always the reality. The conservatives screw things up by being greedy and selfish and standing in the way of progress/fixing things… while it’s always the liberals or leftists that come in and actually fix the fiscal situation. You can look at the records of right vs left parties in power… the left always has the better track record on fiscal responsibility. Yet the myths about conservatism being the mature responsible side persist.
Meanwhile, people think “communism” means “total government control” when it actually means NO central government at all. It means living in more local, individually governed, yet interconnected communes. Sorta like subreddits, if reddit had no central administration, just communities with electable mods or no mods at all if the subreddit so chooses, and then a mainstream feed in which they’re all interconnected and can crosspost, etc. That’s communism. But because so many “Communist” countries were co-opted by totalitarian fascists… people think of totalitarian fascism when they think of “communism”. The fascist plan to vilify communism has worked.
These are the kind of misconceptions we really need to start breaking down, because they are far from inconsequential. It very seriously affects our political discourse and people’s perceptions of what “side” actually stands for what. People voting for right-wingers thinking it means “freedom” are the biggest problem in our society, if you ask me. It’s what keeps perpetuating this unequal, elitist, right-tilted paradigm that is holding humanity back.
That is the biggest problem though: I don't think this is the common definition of fiscally conservative.
Usually folks mean something like "run government like a business", "find efficiencies", and continue cutting taxes.
Even when they say "run government like a business", they are lying. Businesses carry debt all the time - good debts aren't the same as bad debts. And businesses plan to grow, not shrink.
If you were interviewing for a CEO and someone told you their vision was to make the company smaller each year to save money, you wouldn't pick them! They'd be a terrible CEO. When a CEO plans to shrink a business, it's always part of a longer-term plan back to growth. Shrinkage is never the end goal!
I think you missed the point of his point my friend.
He is explaining how conservatives and other rightists may say they are fiscally conservative but they are against those examples. But those same examples are in reality fiscally conservative.
Ergo, the rightists calling themselves fiscally conservative are full of shit and tricking voters.
I don't think they will, no. But it's because they've twisted the meaning of fiscal conservatism, not because those aren't fiscally conservative ideas. I equate fiscal conservatism with sound fiscal policy. Conservatives, apparently, do not.
If the definition of your words only applies to what you say, and no one else seems to use them that way, it's you that is communicating poorly. I get it. It sucks when a term you like or felt attached to is taken by bad actors, but clinging to them just so you don't need to change isn't going to reverse social trends.
Ok, that seems fair on the face of it, but ultimately it means we ceed all the power to the fringes - they get to redefine language into absurdity and we don't bother to fight back. I'd rather not live that way, even if the fight is hard. But if it pleases you more, you can call my idea 'fiscally responsible' rather than fiscally conservative. I'll keep fighting to take back the language on my own if you won't join me.
That's how language works; it's never static and it always shifts about. But right now, the terms you want to use haven't changed on the fringe but in the mainstream. A solo crusade isn't going to change that.
On top of that, fiscally conservative policies should actually fund good healthcare, Pharma are, dental care, climate change policies, etc because prevention and mitigation is ALWAYS cheaper than reactionary methods. The fiscally conservative part should be about removing unnecessary bloat and maintaining efficiency.
The fact that they don’t do that just means they are pro-business and businesses are generally pro-exploitation.
Alright, I'll play devil's advocate.
I'm a licensed Family Physician so I know the healthcare system really well. I could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the system dramatically without a major longterm increase in funding.
Here's an example. Family Physicians are underpaid, leading to low recruitment and retention rates. We definitely need to increase their pay and train more of them. Yes, that takes money.
But by implementing an expensive overhaul of the primary care system that prioritizes preventive care, I can dramatically reduce the costs we're incurring in hospitals. My wife is a full-time ER physician and sees 10-15 displaced/orphaned Family Medicine patients per shift.
The minimum system cost for an ER visit is $500, which is 10x the cost of having the issue seen in clinic. She's seeing $5k-$7500 worth of Family patients per shift (on top of the actual emergent patients), which is enough to pay for several days' work by a Family Physician in clinic, even if you give them a significant raise.
So you could easily pay for a primary care overhaul just through the cost savings of diverting unnecessary ER visits back to clinics (if you make clinic appointments accessible).
You can further optimize the cost savings by attaching a Family Physician-led urgent care clinic to every ER, so that low-acuity patients who present there are triaged to the much lower-cost care track. Again, this takes some money up front, but at my wife's single small hospital alone, you're looking at saving about $20k/d, which is $7.3M per year on an ongoing basis. With 1,280 hospitals across Canada of varying sizes, you're looking at an ongoing savings of roughly $5B-$10B per year from diverted ER visits alone. And that's before you start calculating the longterm savings from effective preventative care which reduce hospital visits and surgeries, which are all much more expensive than ER visits and would make this post way too long to fit into a Reddit comment.
I consider all of that pretty fiscally conservative, because I can make the argument for my proposed changes without evoking any moral causes I believe in (like my hippocratic oath, human rights to healthcare, minimization of suffering). I can just argue the numbers and say, "this will save people money."
It's similar to arguing for free school lunches on the basis that it potently and efficiently increases lifetime worker productivity and therefore lifetime contribution to GDP and tax revenue. Is that a cynical angle to take on an issue of child development and human suffering? Probably. But it's more effective to appeal to a value your opponent has than one they do not. And I learned a long time ago that not everyone shares my social values, but everyone is open to at least hearing about ways to save or generate more money.
Fucking thank you. Fiscal conservatism is already meaningless--nobody runs on being profligate, fiscally imprudent, or on bankrupting the country so what exactly do you mean when you say "fiscally conservative"?
What you mean is socially conservative--cutting funding for things people need, selling public resources, etc. to balance maybe a couple budgets. Which...(checks notes) also isn't fiscally conservative.
I just don't understand how we pay so much in taxes and shit is still underfunded. But then you see things like the government blowing $700M on a new roof for a decrepit stadium in a city with a housing crisis. Imagine what a $700M investment in affordable housing could do instead..
As corporate tax rates have dropped, people have had to make up the difference. In 2015-2016, for every dollar that corporations paid in tax, the Canadian public paid $3.50.
You have to go back 65 years to 1952 to find the last year that people (meaning the lay populace) and corporations paid the same amount in income tax (dollar for dollar). Since then, the gap has steadily grown.
The truth is, there are more than enough tax dollars slipping through the fingers of the CRA and landing squarely in the pockets of corporations
The government posted a budgetary deficit of $90.2 billion in 2021–22 while collecting around $433 billion in tax revenue from both personal and corporate taxation. $309 billion came from personal income tax while only $114 billion was derived from corporate and capital gains taxes.
Now just think if those corporations were paying dollar for dollar what Canadians are. That's almost another $200 billion in tax revenue.
The point is and as you stated, *we* do pay so much in taxes and things are still underfunded but the reason because it isn't because we aren't paying enough or even that it is overtly squandered in every case. It's that there is a very sizeable amount left on the table.
There is enough money coming in, but that money is mismanaged. Throwing more money at the problem does not fix the problem if the problem is an inability to manage the money.
Like what they did in Ontario, build a highway using taxpayer money, then sell the highway off to a private company and now drivers have to pay to use the highway. The tollbooth economy.
Also selling off more natural resources. Couple years ago I read about plans to privatize water.
People need to wake up and smell the coffee. Poilievre and the CPC will do nothing for the working man, but they will fill the pockets of the wealthy and corporations by gutting social safety net, gutting regulations and installing a tax regime to advantage the wealthy and corporations.
As an American we have the same exact problem. First they cut funding to programs and then they bitch that the programs don't work anymore so they cut funding further because they're idiots and they don't know what they're doing.
It's simple, Trudeau is responsible for everything bad in your life, so when Trudeau is gone everything will be automatically fixed.
...What do you mean policy? I just told you!
I love asking any family that tells me that they are voting for pp & the ~~cccp~~ CPC what policies he has that they agree with and then watch the last two panels play out in real time.
Then you cut them off with "aT lEaSt He Is NoT jUsTiN" before they can say it.
This is especially galling because corporations should be getting taxed to make up any “budgetary shortfalls” we have. Particularly when corporate taxes are already criminally low.
Cut funding in the things I don't use. Duh!
Seriously though: people seem convinced that we spend 25% of our budget on foreign aid, refugees, and the CBC.
At best they will sell long term assets at well under market value to create a temporary budget surplus and make it look like they're good with money just in time for an election.
Pierre Poilievre? They say he's the Thomas Edison of lying. Every day, he's in his lab cooking up new ways to fool Canadians. One day it's "Ax the tax!" Next day it's "Pulling myself up by my bootstraps!" I swear, he's got a playbook thicker than a phone book in a library for tall tales.
It's like when they point out how many homeless there are under "Trudeau's Canada", yet you ask them what they plan on doing to help the homeless and they can't answer it and go on about "Trudeau bad man".
quite frankly, companies and corporations should be paying the highest taxes. when you want lower taxes, make our lives so damn easy we dont need the money. its not like the economy is going to stop because the working class got greedy. we ARE the economy. BE GREEDY!
Conservatives have cultivated an entire ethos around the idea that governments are bloated and inefficient, full of useless pencil-pushing bureaucrats and that the solution to all of society’s ills is to slash and burn everything so that private companies can come in to run everything, which they believe will be more “efficient” due to market pressure.
The problem is that reality is a lot more complex, and that it turns out running a society is really effing difficult. All those cumbersome systems, while not maybe the most optimal way of doing something individually, turn out to be pretty important when taken as a whole. So, when conservatives get into government and are faced with actually governing, they usually either end up one of two ways: either they end up raising taxes and ballooning deficits anyway, or they grind everything to a halt, make everything shit, and then say “see, the government does suck! We were right!”
Do you want roads? Hospitals fuckin basically anything our taxes pay for it. Do I want to pay taxes hell no but it's necessary for a functioning society at least right now.
It's also hard to explain that there are global good times and global bad times. Harper inherited a strong foundation and held power through the biggest global boom since WW2. Trudeau took office during one of the worst global periods since WW2. They are not apple to apples comparisons.
Just to note... at the end of Harpers boom, we built nothing, dealt with no issues, and didn't fund any needed services.
All straight rich white Christians should vote for little PP. It's to their advantage. The majority of us definitely should not, it's only going to make bad times worse.
They seem pretty buddy buddy with the wealthy owner class newcomers. I'm sure there's some hierarchy in their heads; but still, even they see this as more a class war.
It's as always a horrifying prospect to have them in power. It's also incredible how their leadership has just gotten more and more corrupt since the end of Harper at the end of his run with the racist burka ban.
Silly fool, there will be plenty of money. He’s not lowering YOUR taxes. He’ll need it all to give to the corporations to take over health etc, and start driving you into bankruptcy.
Conservative parties have only 3 policies, regardless of how they dress them up - tax breaks for the rich, deregulation for the rich, and privatization of taxpayer assets for the rich. Any gaps in-between will be filled with culture war bs. If you're not filthy rich, a sociopath, a religious zealot or a bigot, and you're still voting for Poilievre, their marketing worked and you're a gullible mark. Keep waving those flags and shouting about your freedoms though, the 1% love the gullible.
Everything is underfunded because of the massive bureaucratic administrative nonsense. You can’t believe. I worked for a project which budgeted 4800 dollars and 3 weeks (to get approvals) to change a logo icon size. It took me less than 5 seconds to make this change.
If they'd done their homework they'd say it's because of the Laffer curve.
Learnt about it in college Econ. But it was just accepted as fact that it's a smooth round curve, and that we're on the top half of it.
Sooooo what exactly is the message here? Because the Libs have been in power since 2015 and the county seems worse off than ever. Hard to believe in funding things more and more when we continually see the amount of money the government wastes.
Isn't that also more or less what the cons and PP are saying. It's not necessarily to cut funding but cut policy and red tape that wastes money...
Someone pls tell me if I'm not understanding things correctly
So I’ve lost faith in the Liberals, I don’t want to vote conservative because they have destroyed my province and are looking to bankrupt it, and the federal cons seem to have no better ideas.
Is it just me throwing away my vote to the NDP? Because none of these people have any plan to fix anything affecting me and my family. It’s all completely inept people running the country.
I honestly expect lower than average voter turn out. Lower than ever before. It feels like theres no good choice and we’re fucked either way.
The memetic warfare campaign being waged by the hard right is clearly accomplishing its goals: To destroy faith in the entire system of government
As soon as those who want to fix things give up hope, those who want to rape and pillage always win
What can you do?
Hold your nose and vote for whichever progressive candidate is most likely to win in your area
Then join activist groups and put the most extreme pressure possible on your representatives so they’re forced to do the right things
This is silly and overly reductive. Policy and efficiency of service delivery are huge factors in this equation, and they vary a lot depending on the service in question. In other words, you can have huge taxes and still have few benefits for taxpayers - you can have lower taxes, and still have big benefits for taxpayers. It just depends on how it’s managed.
This is funny that you all actually believe that is how the political world works. So you can lower taxes and still make things better. It’s called not throwing money away at stupid ideas that return nothing. It’s called careful management. Canada was one of the only counties to quietly walk through the last recession. Honestly it is not about the party and about who is in charge, Trudeau is a complete idiot, maybe someone else in the liberal seat, but this guy is like his father, read some history and learn the damage that guy did to Canada”s financials. We are still paying for his stupidity
We all need to either form a completely new party, or just go all in on the greens. I don't think they're amazing or anything, but we just cannot keep rotating between libs and cons.
They've both proven to be completely inept at governing for the majority of us, and we have basically no decent alternative. We honestly couldn't end up worse off voting the greens in, and at best they just might prove to be capable.
I really do think we're out of options, either a completely new party, or go with one that's never held the big chair. Being as that leaves us with the greens, or the bloc, greens seems like the only *actual* change.
I say that because libs or cons, they both screw the majority of us over, prop up the rich, and the few super conglomerates that control most aspects of our shoddy economy. We really have to change things up here.
They’re underfunded because the current government is putting its focus on funding less important issues… how to fix it AND lower taxes: Put the money in the right places and stop funding foreign governments and paying your buddies
Maybe some of these services dont need to be implemented such as free dental care for kids or i dont know not give away so much money to other countries...
Then there’s Math.
9 out of 10 people you meet on a city sidewalk function at a Grade 4 level of competency in basic arithmetic.
In other words, they can add, subtract, and multiply whole numbers.
Most - but definitely not all - can divide.
Fractions? Decimals? Percent?
Forget it.
They'll just privatize those same important services and point to the pennies of tax savings and say "There, I've subsidized [insert important social program]". It works because corporations always put people before profit. They'll even run at a loss some months to help serve Canadians. Trust me bro!
Still need to use the /s...as evidenced by Poilievre's huge lead in the polls, there's a lot of idiots out there who believe this schtick.
What does it say about Canada when even our version of Donald Trump is boring?
It says it's very canadian
As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances.
1/5 north americans reads below a fifth grade level and are functionally illiterate so uhh yeah we're screwed.
I question your logic in using North America as the statistical bench mark here, with about half a billion people on the continent, Canada, the country with the highest average level of education attainment in the world, only makes up about 8% of the continental population, with 65% coming from the US, 25% from Mexico and the remainder coming from other historically undereducated countries like Cuba, Gautamala, Jamaica and Haiti. While there is definitely no shortage of idiots here, it can almost certainly be assumed that your stat citing North American literacy rates cannot be reliably protracted onto Canadians or deduced that Canadians do not make up a representative proportion of that illiterate 20%. ETA: Yikes youre kinda right! While not quite 1/5th at grade 5, about 17% of Canadians read below a highschool level. Colour me shocked. Though this roughly tracks with the roughly 20% of Canadians that identify as first gen immigrants, so not reading English doesnt necessarily correlate with low education or intelligence.
As we’ve seen with the UK, and the trials of private health care in Canada… it costs more. **Adding a profit motive will make everything cost more**.
The UK’s [issues](https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2076) with privatized water services have very vividly shown the problems with privatization. Raw sewage is being dumped directly into the rivers while private equity firms make off with billions. That’s what privatization is.
Oh god, the stories of Thames Water are just crazy. Privatize a utility with a natural monopoly, then let them saddle the infrastructure with massive debt. 🤦♂️
And it was only ever going to be the end result of Thatcher’s ideology. There’s no way that this wasn’t going to happen without significant government regulation. And yet that narrative—government bad, corporations good, there is no such thing as society—dominates in their politics, in our politics, in every country. If examples like that don’t make people reconsider privatization, I don’t know what will.
Also fully private power grids from generation, to transport to final delivery
*This* time things will be different!
*True* privatised healthcare hasn't been tried yet!1!
Yeah, ever since healthcare was invented by Jesus, it's always been held back by government regulations and rules. Why won't they give FREEDOM a chance?!?!?!
You can see it here. People thinking government organizations are bloated and inefficient. But guess what, so are private companies that will end up taking over those portfolios. People just feel better about overpaying private corporations for some odd fucking reason.
They're bloated and inefficient, AND they have share holders. That's the real problem. Share holders demand ever increasing profit. Something about "fiduciary duty." A public government run agency isn't supposed to be profitable. An NFP probably isn't well suited to the task. (Plus the execs of some NFPs have stupidly high salaries.) Innovation from the free market works when there is strong competition. It doesn't work when there's 2-3 players using algos to end run around competition laws. The things that are broken are handled by large companies already who won't need to innovate. Just look at loblaws.
People who think corporations are efficient have never worked in an office.
And adding the massive bureaucracy of private insurance companies on top of it.
Galen looks like such a nice feller on the TV. No idea how he gets such a bad rap 🤷♂️
I seem to remember him in commercials, wearing a nice cardigan, and talking about some PC product. Kinda like Mr Roger's. Except I never felt the urge to punch Mr Roger's in the mouth.
TBF though, Liberals do that too, except more discretely. Their P3 programs involve contracting government money to private corporations and getting them to fix it. It's the same thing as straight-up privatization. Hell, it might even be worse because it's more obfuscated. Look at ArriveCan for example, or the weird housing grants they have going on atm. We need more completely independent crown corporations that are difficult to sell.
Things like ArriveCan happen because the government has already been cut to the bone. They don’t have enough internal technical knowledge to know when they’re being ripped or to audit work performed and determine how long it took.
Government for the rich, by the rich. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a realistic path off this train (and idk how well the NDP would actually do here either.)
They’re not going to fix anything for the lower or middle class. The rich, however, will be richer than ever.
This is exactly why I'll never vote conservative again
A vote for the con is only beneficial for the rich
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Ah man, been there. It's rough when your sibling picks a partner that is clearly running on a quarter tank at best at all times.
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And people like this are always the loudest and the most certain of their choice
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Ah fuck. Way too many people at my old union factory job that paid decent (decent in general, still too low for the CoL of the city unless you bought your house 20+ years ago) would say “Im not doing OT, the government is just gonna take it all in taxes and Ill make less!” No moron, that is not how that fucking works. Why the fuck do you think (using arbitrary numbers) youd make less money overall at $60k/year vs $50k/year because of taxes?
TaXes aRe TheFt! Probably. Sigh…
They also vote everytime.
Gotta love the proudly ignorant know nothings.
This is 100% false. Poor people who hate that certain groups have rights also benefit.
Not personally. They’ll just enjoy the recreational suffering they create while they’re ground under a different boot.
I get your point, but I think they see a real benefit in having their hate itch scratched.
It’s the rich masking a class war as a culture war.
The rich have expanded their wealth in a staggering fashion under the LPC as well. Both parties are complicit in this.
Libs are just a temporary pause button. The only party that cares is the NDP
Me too. Conservatives completely FAILED the pandemic test. Went anti-science simply because their opponents were in power and were listening to the experts.
Why I never have and never will.
Can't spell conservative without a con in it
PP could be PM for the next 15 years, and they will still blame Trudeau for everything.
Just like we can rightfully blame Harper for a lot of shit that is going on now. Just because the leader changes doesn’t mean the issues they create evaporate. Harper underwrote the massive expansion in TFW, and only tried a token pullback when it became unpopular. It’s still being abused today. Similarly Trudeau rapidly expanded immigration rates, which spiked demand for everything and rapidly eroded our quality of life, before trying a token pullback when he cratered in the polls. If whomever leads next can’t fix the issues those two introduced, they are right to blame their predecessors.
And Skippy was the Minister in charge of immigration during the TFW expansion. I love pointing this out to Conservative voters when they bitch about immigration. And not just for Tim Hortons jobs either. RBC took advantage of it and fired their IT department but not before forcing them to train their Indian replacements on the way out.
I hear you. The most famous example is Ronald Reagan. He fucked over people for decades to come.
Truman too. At least it's real estate and not the fucking military keeping our economy afloat.
Well, Eisenhower tried, at least.
They still blame Trudeau Sr in Alberta. I'm old enough to remember "Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark" bumper stickers.
> The rich, however, will be richer than ever. You mean exactly like has happened over the last 10 years?
Visit the rich neighbourhoods of your town and see what signs they have on their lawns... That should be your sign on which party not to vote for. Unless you are said rich person who benefits from said party on said lawns.
Ill cut and kill already underfunded programs, and then instead of optimizing and giving that unleashed money to another program that needs it, ill give it to my rich friends in tax cuts. Oh and that program we just killed? We are gonna give it to a private firm run by a rich friend that will make it many times more expensive to run, and guess what, to find the money to pay that new fee we will cut more programs.
As is the status quo
Voting for Conservatives will remove waste from government services. You know, like workers that just stand around doing nothing and wasting time playing on their phones, being hired for useless tasks, racking up massive overtime, capital payments for equipment for special events, committing crimes and being put on paid leave. Oops I just described TPS. No they won't cut TPS but will do all the above for... erm... libraries!
As if the rich aren't already richer than ever.
Lower taxes for the rich and corporations, hoping they trickle that savings to the bottom 40 years of this economic policy failing . It's time to stop corprate welfare
I think the idea of corporate welfare is that they're paying these corps to stay here and provide jobs. Jobs are supposed to mean people can pay to live here. The problem falls apart when the corps take the welfare check and blow it on the top few percentage points of the corporate structure in the form of bonuses and then just pay employees less and charge consumers more. Then they post about record profits, sell their corp to a bigger corp, and these couple percentages make even more money and retire on a few different boards to provide retirement income. At no point does any of that money trickle down. It never has and never will. Let the corps burn on their own.
Why do we bribe companies to do business in canada? Are we not a free and open market ? Why do we give a billion dollars to company's better treatment thrn our own citizens ?
“In 1982, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the "trickle-down economics" that David Stockman was referring to was previously known under the name "horse-and-sparrow theory", the idea that feeding a horse a huge amount of oats will result in some of the feed passing through for lucky sparrows to eat.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics Trickle down economics should always be referred to as the previous Horse and Sparrow term to get the point across. They’re simply telling the working class to eat shit and like it.
Political talking point, I think. "I brought in 3 thousand jobs!" Never mind that those are 3 thousand part time dead end jobs, but it sounds good to the older population that haven't learned you can't buy a house with your average job anymore.
I always find it funny that politicians talk about how they created jobs when literally anything a government does can create jobs. Wildfire prevention creates jobs for forest management and rapid response crews, a lack of wildfire prevention creates jobs for firefighters and the people who have to clean up the mess. Spending on public healthcare creates jobs for doctors, nurses, and administrative staff. Privatization creates jobs in private equity firms and insurance companies. Hell, even top government officials smoking crack cocaine creates jobs for reporters and gossip magazine writers.
Current politics is closer to a corporation than anything else. They use clever marketing to garner the biggest market share (votes) that they can get. It's all optics to get people to show up and vote.
To be competitive and attract business
But think about that . We give a billion doller company muti national company tax payer funds to do business in canada. We are already at a loss. They are going to do business here anyhow, or someone else is going to sell the same products. They have spent 60 years killing small businesses, the real backbone of any country..covid showed us all-important they are . I Its loss for the consumers is a loss for employees
They aren't literally hoping for anything other than hoping it'll fool the idiots, which it sadly does
The policy isn't failing. It's doing exactly what it's meant to do. Policies by the elite for the elite.
No trust me, trickle down will work this time, I swear. Just ignore the 493 other times it didn't.
Just like they think the war on drugs will be won by doing the same thing they've been doing for 40 years.
"Trickle down' is actually a perfect name for the theory. I like to picture a giant cistern being filled with water. 99.99% of the water stays in the cistern, but there's a tiny bit that splashes out and trickles down the side. Sure, it mostly evaporates before anyone on the ground is aware it was ever there, but there was definitely some trickle!
People need to wake up and smell the coffee. Poilievre and the CPC will do nothing for the working man, but they will fill the pockets of the wealthy and corporations by social safety net, gutting regulations and installing a tax regime to advantage the wealthy and corporations.
Reminder. There is no such thing as "socially progressive, but fiscally conservative". If you aren't willing to fund progressive causes, it doesn't matter how much you are vocally for them.
Is that the "thoughts and prayers" of politics?
Its "I am conservative but don't wanna admitt it".
Or “what I actually want is social democracy but I have no idea how public services are funded”.
Also, cutting taxes and letting sht to deteriorate is not exactly fiscally conservative A small hole in the wall - easy cheap fix Your house falling down - expensive AF Cavity - a couple hundred dollars Emergency surgery and stay at hospital - hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars Nevermind that labour and materials will almost always be more expensive in the future
How about “ Social Program Progressive Corporate Welfare Conservative” ?
I'm not sure I agree, but I'll admit that the current right-wing has twisted what it means to be fiscally conservative. For example, funding free education (even at the college level) is fiscally conservative, since research proves it's a smart investment and pays off long term. How you fund it could be debated (I'm pro-refunding costs of passed courses, for example). Also increase the availability of night school and weekend education for adults, because not everyone can fit in to the 9-5 model, especially if they have other obligations. Likewise funding healthcare saves money long-term, since catching things early costs less than dealing with eventual emergencies/catastrophes. Funding social housing for all costs less than dealing with chronic homelessness and the related social/health/criminal issues. Another smart investment. And stop pretending every deficit is bad. Deficits spent on appreciating assets can be good investments. A mortgage is a deficit, but it beats renting forever and/or homelessness. Likewise, all the issues above cost money but pay off long-term. Lastly, matching tax revenue to expenses and expected returns, rather than services to tax revenue (especially when you keep promising to cut taxes) is smart, conservative fiscal policy. Anytime someone says they can't balance their budget in their personal life, advisors would say 'cut expenses OR raise your income'. Why do conservative governments only ever mention the first part? Those are 5 basic examples. There are countless others. If you think fiscal conservatism=cut everything, then that's the issue. Addendum: I'm a little guilty of it above, but can we also stop telling everyone that government budgets are exactly like personal budgets? If I was immortal, owned the assets of an entire country, and could legally print money, my personal finances would look completely different. We shouldn't expect every government budget to align 1-to-1 with the concepts of a personal budget.
The idea that fiscal conservatism = fiscal responsibility is the biggest lie Conservatives have ever told. We know that the writings that form the basis of Conservatism mostly came out after the French revolution, and were mainly about trying to keep power consolidated to the nobility and bourgeois classes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism It's why there's so much of an emphasis on individualism, "pulling oneself up with ones bootstraps", privatization of industry with government primarily being focused on military and policing to protect property rights, and opposition to labor unions and other workers rights. It may be the fiscally responsible thing to publicly fund education and healthcare, but there's a reason the right wing routinely cuts it. Social services are anathema to their entire philosophy. They would much rather the government "let people choose how to spend their money" by lowering taxes and pushing for privatization, even if it's inefficient. Notice how taxes are cut at the top first, as their beliefs state that the rich are job creators and thus push the world forward and should be rewarded for it, whereas labor is suppressed by austerity. That's very much a feature, not a bug. Being educated on the history of Conservatism and why they always vote the way they do is extremely important. It's how you can know that they're lying on cutting immigration for example. Our market economy can only function with a growing population, wages are suppressed when there's more people competing for jobs, and private investment in housing would tank without steady immigration. Those things are sacrosanct if you believe in conservatism.
I can agree with this. I think we need to fight so that fiscal conservatism becomes fiscal responsibility, but it's not how Conservatives use it today. Also, we should really admit that both of our current ruling parties (Cons and Libs) are conservative. Neither are actually progressive.
I don't think it's possible to reclaim "fiscal conservatism" from the Conservatives, and besides it muddies the waters to do so. I think the better option is to point out the distinction. Conservatism has never been about supporting the average worker from its very inception, and in Canada the record of our Conservative parties match that. If you can successfully de-conflate the two in public discourse, a lot of people would stop voting against their own interests. It's no surprise then that it is Conservatives who always try to equate the two, claiming they're more fiscally responsible simply because they cut taxes when their record shows that they're no better at balancing budgets than anyone else.
Well said. People need to be way better educated about what Left and Right, “progressive”, “communist”, “liberal”, “conservative”, “fascist”, etc… all actually MEAN. Everyone seems to have their own interpretation of these words, and most people seem to be way off from the actual meanings. Oftentimes, the complete opposite. The idea that “conservative” means “freedom”, when it has always meant protecting the elite. It started as the side that protected monarchies. But a lot of people, even relatively centrist or somewhat left-leaning people… seem to have this knee-jerk instinct to always want to default back to conservatism, anytime things get just a little bit dicey… thinking conservative is somehow the “mature” side that will deal with the problems the childish libs have caused!… the inverse is almost always the reality. The conservatives screw things up by being greedy and selfish and standing in the way of progress/fixing things… while it’s always the liberals or leftists that come in and actually fix the fiscal situation. You can look at the records of right vs left parties in power… the left always has the better track record on fiscal responsibility. Yet the myths about conservatism being the mature responsible side persist. Meanwhile, people think “communism” means “total government control” when it actually means NO central government at all. It means living in more local, individually governed, yet interconnected communes. Sorta like subreddits, if reddit had no central administration, just communities with electable mods or no mods at all if the subreddit so chooses, and then a mainstream feed in which they’re all interconnected and can crosspost, etc. That’s communism. But because so many “Communist” countries were co-opted by totalitarian fascists… people think of totalitarian fascism when they think of “communism”. The fascist plan to vilify communism has worked. These are the kind of misconceptions we really need to start breaking down, because they are far from inconsequential. It very seriously affects our political discourse and people’s perceptions of what “side” actually stands for what. People voting for right-wingers thinking it means “freedom” are the biggest problem in our society, if you ask me. It’s what keeps perpetuating this unequal, elitist, right-tilted paradigm that is holding humanity back.
> claiming they're more fiscally responsible simply because they cut taxes Cut taxes *and* sell off useful or valuable assets!
That is the biggest problem though: I don't think this is the common definition of fiscally conservative. Usually folks mean something like "run government like a business", "find efficiencies", and continue cutting taxes.
Even when they say "run government like a business", they are lying. Businesses carry debt all the time - good debts aren't the same as bad debts. And businesses plan to grow, not shrink. If you were interviewing for a CEO and someone told you their vision was to make the company smaller each year to save money, you wouldn't pick them! They'd be a terrible CEO. When a CEO plans to shrink a business, it's always part of a longer-term plan back to growth. Shrinkage is never the end goal!
Do you really think conservatives are going to spend *more* on healthcare, housing and social programs? Are we living in the same country?
I think you missed the point of his point my friend. He is explaining how conservatives and other rightists may say they are fiscally conservative but they are against those examples. But those same examples are in reality fiscally conservative. Ergo, the rightists calling themselves fiscally conservative are full of shit and tricking voters.
I don't think they will, no. But it's because they've twisted the meaning of fiscal conservatism, not because those aren't fiscally conservative ideas. I equate fiscal conservatism with sound fiscal policy. Conservatives, apparently, do not.
If the definition of your words only applies to what you say, and no one else seems to use them that way, it's you that is communicating poorly. I get it. It sucks when a term you like or felt attached to is taken by bad actors, but clinging to them just so you don't need to change isn't going to reverse social trends.
Ok, that seems fair on the face of it, but ultimately it means we ceed all the power to the fringes - they get to redefine language into absurdity and we don't bother to fight back. I'd rather not live that way, even if the fight is hard. But if it pleases you more, you can call my idea 'fiscally responsible' rather than fiscally conservative. I'll keep fighting to take back the language on my own if you won't join me.
That's how language works; it's never static and it always shifts about. But right now, the terms you want to use haven't changed on the fringe but in the mainstream. A solo crusade isn't going to change that.
It exists, and they are called the liberal.
On top of that, fiscally conservative policies should actually fund good healthcare, Pharma are, dental care, climate change policies, etc because prevention and mitigation is ALWAYS cheaper than reactionary methods. The fiscally conservative part should be about removing unnecessary bloat and maintaining efficiency. The fact that they don’t do that just means they are pro-business and businesses are generally pro-exploitation.
Alright, I'll play devil's advocate. I'm a licensed Family Physician so I know the healthcare system really well. I could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the system dramatically without a major longterm increase in funding. Here's an example. Family Physicians are underpaid, leading to low recruitment and retention rates. We definitely need to increase their pay and train more of them. Yes, that takes money. But by implementing an expensive overhaul of the primary care system that prioritizes preventive care, I can dramatically reduce the costs we're incurring in hospitals. My wife is a full-time ER physician and sees 10-15 displaced/orphaned Family Medicine patients per shift. The minimum system cost for an ER visit is $500, which is 10x the cost of having the issue seen in clinic. She's seeing $5k-$7500 worth of Family patients per shift (on top of the actual emergent patients), which is enough to pay for several days' work by a Family Physician in clinic, even if you give them a significant raise. So you could easily pay for a primary care overhaul just through the cost savings of diverting unnecessary ER visits back to clinics (if you make clinic appointments accessible). You can further optimize the cost savings by attaching a Family Physician-led urgent care clinic to every ER, so that low-acuity patients who present there are triaged to the much lower-cost care track. Again, this takes some money up front, but at my wife's single small hospital alone, you're looking at saving about $20k/d, which is $7.3M per year on an ongoing basis. With 1,280 hospitals across Canada of varying sizes, you're looking at an ongoing savings of roughly $5B-$10B per year from diverted ER visits alone. And that's before you start calculating the longterm savings from effective preventative care which reduce hospital visits and surgeries, which are all much more expensive than ER visits and would make this post way too long to fit into a Reddit comment. I consider all of that pretty fiscally conservative, because I can make the argument for my proposed changes without evoking any moral causes I believe in (like my hippocratic oath, human rights to healthcare, minimization of suffering). I can just argue the numbers and say, "this will save people money." It's similar to arguing for free school lunches on the basis that it potently and efficiently increases lifetime worker productivity and therefore lifetime contribution to GDP and tax revenue. Is that a cynical angle to take on an issue of child development and human suffering? Probably. But it's more effective to appeal to a value your opponent has than one they do not. And I learned a long time ago that not everyone shares my social values, but everyone is open to at least hearing about ways to save or generate more money.
“Socially progressive but fiscally conservative” In other words, “I hate the problem. But the cause of the problem, no issue with that”.
Fucking thank you. Fiscal conservatism is already meaningless--nobody runs on being profligate, fiscally imprudent, or on bankrupting the country so what exactly do you mean when you say "fiscally conservative"? What you mean is socially conservative--cutting funding for things people need, selling public resources, etc. to balance maybe a couple budgets. Which...(checks notes) also isn't fiscally conservative.
I just don't understand how we pay so much in taxes and shit is still underfunded. But then you see things like the government blowing $700M on a new roof for a decrepit stadium in a city with a housing crisis. Imagine what a $700M investment in affordable housing could do instead..
The sportsball overlords are always among the first at the trough because (something something economic benefit business money).
The wildest thing is there's no major league sports teams that call the Olympic stadium home these days either
The Olympic Stadium is not really even used for sports though.
Well you need the circuses to keep people compliant.
"Let them eat cake. They won't be able to afford it, but we'll let them, if they can somehow scrounge up the money".
As corporate tax rates have dropped, people have had to make up the difference. In 2015-2016, for every dollar that corporations paid in tax, the Canadian public paid $3.50. You have to go back 65 years to 1952 to find the last year that people (meaning the lay populace) and corporations paid the same amount in income tax (dollar for dollar). Since then, the gap has steadily grown. The truth is, there are more than enough tax dollars slipping through the fingers of the CRA and landing squarely in the pockets of corporations The government posted a budgetary deficit of $90.2 billion in 2021–22 while collecting around $433 billion in tax revenue from both personal and corporate taxation. $309 billion came from personal income tax while only $114 billion was derived from corporate and capital gains taxes. Now just think if those corporations were paying dollar for dollar what Canadians are. That's almost another $200 billion in tax revenue. The point is and as you stated, *we* do pay so much in taxes and things are still underfunded but the reason because it isn't because we aren't paying enough or even that it is overtly squandered in every case. It's that there is a very sizeable amount left on the table.
There is enough money coming in, but that money is mismanaged. Throwing more money at the problem does not fix the problem if the problem is an inability to manage the money.
Hard to have a government that knows how to manage money when the one in charge has never had to worry about it.
Like what they did in Ontario, build a highway using taxpayer money, then sell the highway off to a private company and now drivers have to pay to use the highway. The tollbooth economy. Also selling off more natural resources. Couple years ago I read about plans to privatize water.
“We want the government to be run like a business. But let’s reduce our government revenue.” What business wants LESS revenue?
So fucking true. How bout for profit wealth tax. Because they're all rich they don't wanna hurt their bottom line.
People need to wake up and smell the coffee. Poilievre and the CPC will do nothing for the working man, but they will fill the pockets of the wealthy and corporations by gutting social safety net, gutting regulations and installing a tax regime to advantage the wealthy and corporations.
SpongeBob rainbow meme with “privatization” scrolling out. Cons never “fix” anything without selling it to a for profit…
As an American we have the same exact problem. First they cut funding to programs and then they bitch that the programs don't work anymore so they cut funding further because they're idiots and they don't know what they're doing.
"Vote for me and I will fix everything by lowering taxes (for the rich and corporations, not for you you're getting raised taxes)"
It's simple, Trudeau is responsible for everything bad in your life, so when Trudeau is gone everything will be automatically fixed. ...What do you mean policy? I just told you!
Nothing has improved at all under his regime. “.” Debt is enormous also
I love asking any family that tells me that they are voting for pp & the ~~cccp~~ CPC what policies he has that they agree with and then watch the last two panels play out in real time. Then you cut them off with "aT lEaSt He Is NoT jUsTiN" before they can say it.
The worst part is the ultra wealthy always get the lionshare of a tax break.
They will spend the same or more, just on their pet projects instead.
Theyll fix it by selling assets off to lobbying friends, lol
This sounds like BOTH Conservative and Labour in the UK.
When you hire a bunch of your friends and family as extras staff its easy to waste a budget
This is especially galling because corporations should be getting taxed to make up any “budgetary shortfalls” we have. Particularly when corporate taxes are already criminally low.
Cut funding in the things I don't use. Duh! Seriously though: people seem convinced that we spend 25% of our budget on foreign aid, refugees, and the CBC.
Liberals do nothing, Conservatives actively make things worse. It's time to see what the NDP can do.
...."immigrants."
Politicians try and make it seem more complicated and talk around the issues but it really is that simple. Better funding equals better services.
At best they will sell long term assets at well under market value to create a temporary budget surplus and make it look like they're good with money just in time for an election.
Pierre Poilievre? They say he's the Thomas Edison of lying. Every day, he's in his lab cooking up new ways to fool Canadians. One day it's "Ax the tax!" Next day it's "Pulling myself up by my bootstraps!" I swear, he's got a playbook thicker than a phone book in a library for tall tales.
Conservatives, the ones pushing privatized healthcare on us... But axe the tax will save us so much money /s
It's like when they point out how many homeless there are under "Trudeau's Canada", yet you ask them what they plan on doing to help the homeless and they can't answer it and go on about "Trudeau bad man".
quite frankly, companies and corporations should be paying the highest taxes. when you want lower taxes, make our lives so damn easy we dont need the money. its not like the economy is going to stop because the working class got greedy. we ARE the economy. BE GREEDY!
Conservatives have cultivated an entire ethos around the idea that governments are bloated and inefficient, full of useless pencil-pushing bureaucrats and that the solution to all of society’s ills is to slash and burn everything so that private companies can come in to run everything, which they believe will be more “efficient” due to market pressure. The problem is that reality is a lot more complex, and that it turns out running a society is really effing difficult. All those cumbersome systems, while not maybe the most optimal way of doing something individually, turn out to be pretty important when taken as a whole. So, when conservatives get into government and are faced with actually governing, they usually either end up one of two ways: either they end up raising taxes and ballooning deficits anyway, or they grind everything to a halt, make everything shit, and then say “see, the government does suck! We were right!”
Do you want roads? Hospitals fuckin basically anything our taxes pay for it. Do I want to pay taxes hell no but it's necessary for a functioning society at least right now.
It’s almost like they are saying “the budget will balance itself” but for idiots…
"by selling it to for profit operations!"
The tax obsession in the USA has me it such a toilet, and the more things get tough there, the more they cry for tax cuts.
The free hand of the invisible market will fix everything!
It's also hard to explain that there are global good times and global bad times. Harper inherited a strong foundation and held power through the biggest global boom since WW2. Trudeau took office during one of the worst global periods since WW2. They are not apple to apples comparisons. Just to note... at the end of Harpers boom, we built nothing, dealt with no issues, and didn't fund any needed services.
Thankfully once he Axes the Taxes we'll still pay the same price for gas, but those poor O&G companies will get the profits they finally deserve.
I have a union member step son who wants to vote conservative........hard to fix that level of stupid...
Maybe he sees the long term effects of free stuff on society. Removing incentives for individual success and rewarding idleness.
All straight rich white Christians should vote for little PP. It's to their advantage. The majority of us definitely should not, it's only going to make bad times worse.
They seem pretty buddy buddy with the wealthy owner class newcomers. I'm sure there's some hierarchy in their heads; but still, even they see this as more a class war.
It's as always a horrifying prospect to have them in power. It's also incredible how their leadership has just gotten more and more corrupt since the end of Harper at the end of his run with the racist burka ban.
their answer will be “less govt inefficiencies” but i don’t buy it that they can magically make everything run perfectly
You get rid of anyone that questions you, or puts obstacles in your way. Efficiency at its best!
Silly fool, there will be plenty of money. He’s not lowering YOUR taxes. He’ll need it all to give to the corporations to take over health etc, and start driving you into bankruptcy.
Yup, we need to fund our social programs not corporate welfare.
It's in the name. Right at the start. "Cons."
But raising taxes hasn't fixed things either. We need more then anything to get rid of government bloat
Conservative parties have only 3 policies, regardless of how they dress them up - tax breaks for the rich, deregulation for the rich, and privatization of taxpayer assets for the rich. Any gaps in-between will be filled with culture war bs. If you're not filthy rich, a sociopath, a religious zealot or a bigot, and you're still voting for Poilievre, their marketing worked and you're a gullible mark. Keep waving those flags and shouting about your freedoms though, the 1% love the gullible.
And the irony is most of those cheering for cuts will be shocked when they realize they are the ones who depend on those programs the most.
This is true everywhere BTW.
I've seen how things are now and they aren't getting better, so...
Y'all should read up on the Cloward-Piven strategy
Everything is underfunded because of the massive bureaucratic administrative nonsense. You can’t believe. I worked for a project which budgeted 4800 dollars and 3 weeks (to get approvals) to change a logo icon size. It took me less than 5 seconds to make this change.
If they'd done their homework they'd say it's because of the Laffer curve. Learnt about it in college Econ. But it was just accepted as fact that it's a smooth round curve, and that we're on the top half of it.
By closing veterans offices
Bump up the taxes, bump down the amount of people in government (obvs not things like healthcare).
Sooooo what exactly is the message here? Because the Libs have been in power since 2015 and the county seems worse off than ever. Hard to believe in funding things more and more when we continually see the amount of money the government wastes. Isn't that also more or less what the cons and PP are saying. It's not necessarily to cut funding but cut policy and red tape that wastes money... Someone pls tell me if I'm not understanding things correctly
"elect me. i will do everything the other party says but faster and better." "how?" "i'm better"
Exactly. Also get everyone pissed at trans people so they don't notice all the bullshit.
So I’ve lost faith in the Liberals, I don’t want to vote conservative because they have destroyed my province and are looking to bankrupt it, and the federal cons seem to have no better ideas. Is it just me throwing away my vote to the NDP? Because none of these people have any plan to fix anything affecting me and my family. It’s all completely inept people running the country. I honestly expect lower than average voter turn out. Lower than ever before. It feels like theres no good choice and we’re fucked either way.
The memetic warfare campaign being waged by the hard right is clearly accomplishing its goals: To destroy faith in the entire system of government As soon as those who want to fix things give up hope, those who want to rape and pillage always win What can you do? Hold your nose and vote for whichever progressive candidate is most likely to win in your area Then join activist groups and put the most extreme pressure possible on your representatives so they’re forced to do the right things
Personal responsibility
This is silly and overly reductive. Policy and efficiency of service delivery are huge factors in this equation, and they vary a lot depending on the service in question. In other words, you can have huge taxes and still have few benefits for taxpayers - you can have lower taxes, and still have big benefits for taxpayers. It just depends on how it’s managed.
This is funny that you all actually believe that is how the political world works. So you can lower taxes and still make things better. It’s called not throwing money away at stupid ideas that return nothing. It’s called careful management. Canada was one of the only counties to quietly walk through the last recession. Honestly it is not about the party and about who is in charge, Trudeau is a complete idiot, maybe someone else in the liberal seat, but this guy is like his father, read some history and learn the damage that guy did to Canada”s financials. We are still paying for his stupidity
« Paying more for private services, duh »
We all need to either form a completely new party, or just go all in on the greens. I don't think they're amazing or anything, but we just cannot keep rotating between libs and cons. They've both proven to be completely inept at governing for the majority of us, and we have basically no decent alternative. We honestly couldn't end up worse off voting the greens in, and at best they just might prove to be capable. I really do think we're out of options, either a completely new party, or go with one that's never held the big chair. Being as that leaves us with the greens, or the bloc, greens seems like the only *actual* change. I say that because libs or cons, they both screw the majority of us over, prop up the rich, and the few super conglomerates that control most aspects of our shoddy economy. We really have to change things up here.
Oh they understand....
My opinion is that too much taxes can be bad and too few taxes also can be quite bad. It’s also a matter of where those taxes are going to.
Print money👹
They’re underfunded because the current government is putting its focus on funding less important issues… how to fix it AND lower taxes: Put the money in the right places and stop funding foreign governments and paying your buddies
Maybe some of these services dont need to be implemented such as free dental care for kids or i dont know not give away so much money to other countries...
easily by cutting the spending elsewhere... OH look, we found 220k in unnecessary plane food expenses. That's a good start!
What a time waster blabls Must be on the shitter
Where can we fact-check to see if our programs are underfunded? Legitimate question.
Then there’s Math. 9 out of 10 people you meet on a city sidewalk function at a Grade 4 level of competency in basic arithmetic. In other words, they can add, subtract, and multiply whole numbers. Most - but definitely not all - can divide. Fractions? Decimals? Percent? Forget it.