Nothing. And that's what has been going on. Martin allowed the provinces to count on fed transfer payments and stuff in his red book, and then swapped strategies and pulled the rugs out from under them. It's like me giving you a note of promise to give you $20 with one hand while my other hand is stealing the c-note from your pocket.
Canada tops, Harper shines?
- Thread starter JLM
- Start date
Yes it did, but Campbull also blew wads on the bloody Olys at the same time. SO BC is roughly in the same condition of a boat as the rest. Our health care is shoddy and we have massive debt and deficit.
That is pretty simplistic. Most of us vote for the critter that will do our riding good and hope that our favored party has enough seats to govern. If it was as simple as voting directly for which party we wanted to govern, then fine.
Ah yes, the Olympics. And how exactly did we benefit from them in any material way? Ah, well, it doesn't matter because it gave us a chance to beat our chests with national pride for a few days. That must be worth a few million dollars, no?:roll:
It doesn't. But neither does ignoring the poor and shutting down programs that are supposed to help them. And that is what Martin and cronies did.
I think the right way to vote is for the local man/woman and to hell with any of the parties- they are all rife with corruption and the head honcho in Ottawa doesn't care about Thrums.
Of course we may have to help the poor, but not by encouraging them to live beyond their means. Why not provide them with more education so as to raise their ability to earn more money? Still, by making it more difficult for them to borrow money, we'd be encouraging construction companies to build more affordable housing and smaller houses. The poor might not like it, but they'd certainly appreciate it in the end when they realize they have no debt and that, however small their house is, they've actually paid it off.
And besides, if they can earn more money, they shouldn't need to borrow as much money anyway, right? Or at least if they must borrow, they will find it easier to borrow owing to a higher salary, not because the banks just lend to anyone.
Quite so, the bad lending practices from USA were slowly permeating Canada, with the blessings of Conservative government. One was the 40 year mortgage. Another was zero down payment mortgage.
Both were discontinued as a result of the meltdown. Neither of them were in place long enough to do much harm. But it may be that Canada was lucky that the meltdown came when it did. If meltdown had not come for another couple of years, by then the practices of 40 year mortgage and zero down payment mortgage would have become widespread, and Canada may have had as big a crises as USA if it had occurred after two years.
So it is debatable whether Canada was spared due to sound economic management or because due to sheer luck. I suspect a bit of both.
Here's a site with the story - it's a little biased - but there are at least links in the site to the announcements. Appears the non-bailout bailout was close to $75 B
Canada's 75 Billion Dollar Bank Bailout
The blame mostly goes to the bank for offering it. 40 year mortgage is very good for the bank, since it collects a lot of interest, much more than a 30 or a 25 years mortgage. As to the average citizen, many of them don’t think long term. They see that with a 40 year mortgage the monthly installment is smaller than a 30 year old mortgage and they are all for it. But the blame goes to the bank for offering such a scandalous, swindling product.
Agreed. How most vote:
The party with the prettiest logo or most handsome or beautiful leader.
The party with the coolest music during an ad campaign.
etc.
That's why the party system has got to go. Most Canadians would vote for another Nazi Party if it could brand itself effectively with pretty colours and a handsome leader.
One can hardly put all of the blame on the banks, and none on the homebuyers. At some point, people have to take some responsibility for their own decisions.
Funny you should say that. I don’t know if you have read the story by H.G.Wells, ‘The Country of the Blind’. A man is lost in the forest and stumbles upon a country populated exclusively by blind people, blind from birth. Since the society is geared totally towards the blind people, it turns out that his eyesight was no advantage at all.
He was as helpless as a blind man would be in our world. The best he could hope for was to escape from there and come back to the world of the seeing.
I did not say all the blame goes to the bank, I said most of the blame goes to the bank. Sure borrowers are responsible for it, but that is human nature. Many people cannot think long term, they see lower mortgage payment and are attracted by it (by the 40 year mortgage). The blame goes to the banks for exploiting this weakness of human nature.
There are people for whom the 0/40 mortgage makes sense.
On the other hand, my mother in law just bought a condo on a line of credit, and has no intention of paying off the balance, only the interest. Should we blame the bank for allowing her to do this?
On the other hand, my mother in law just bought a condo on a line of credit, and has no intention of paying off the balance, only the interest. Should we blame the bank for allowing her to do this?
Yeah, why not?
Construction companies? All they do is get work where they can and the bigger the project the happier they are. The gov't should make them build more affordable housing? The gov't should pay them to do it?
Right. The gov't should start making jobs instead of giving big corps tax breaks and expecting the benefit to trickle down. Perhaps it should enable our own people to start up companies in manufacturing and stuff so we don't have multinationals owning our companies and off loading jobs to countries with smaller wages, etc.
We need more unions and union wages.