“Relatively speaking this is a mild economic recession"
Canada loses a record number of jobs in January 2009
Canada trade deficit biggest on record
Budget adds 57 billion to swelling deficit
Carney sees record drop in Canada's GDP
Canada faces worst recession since 1980s
Canada retail sales post biggest monthly drop in 15 years
etc, etc...
I'd hate to see what constitutes a severe recession in Flaherty's world. Calling GritGirl?
5 comments:
How the heck can Flaherty go around and say the following:
"Speaking in London on Friday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty played down concerns about the depth of Canada's recession, saying it would be relatively mild and that Canadians were not worried about the exact pace of the slowdown."
WOW!!! Those of us who've lost their jobs and those that will lose their jobs are VERY concerned. How dare he have the pomposity to even make such a stupid, ill informed comment!!
I may be "blind" but I can "see" what's going' on...Why can't the Con Gov't?
If Canadians aren't worried, why did consumer confidence hit a 27 year low a couple months back?
About Harper and Flaherty speaking and foreign media reports - I've had trouble finding any, but thought this one from Australia was indicative of what they're saying:
Kevin Rudd's audience with HM QEII was preceded by a similar royal tete-a-tete involving the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Waiting for Harper to slip away and Rudd to glide in, the dapper gents were escorted to a special room. Its usual occupants, the Queen's corgis, were escorted out to another, sunnier spot. The room, it turns out, is where the royal canines are sequestered of an evening. Each has a little water bowl marked with a special royal doggy-bone insignia and a carefully-laid out personal towel, embroidered with the same. There was a bottle of scent with a brush above the fireplace and a painting of said pooches on the wall above that.
and this one:
Kevin in the cheap seats
KEVIN Rudd officially may be nearly as popular as Bob Hawke, but that doesn't get you far in London. At a Downing Street banquet for G20 leaders, our Kev got dudded with a seat at the outer edges with Canadian PM Stephen Harper and Czech PM Mirek Topolanek, who's still in the doghouse for describing the US-proposed rescue package as a "road to hell". Hopefully Kev got to quiz Topolanek about his attempts to pin the blame for his contentious line on prime Australian cultural export AC/DC.
So, what did Flaherty say again? Wasn't listening and nor were the foreign media it seems.
What we had around 2001 was a mild recession, not what we have now. This will probably be the worst recession we have had since World War II, not mild at all. I think Harper and Flaherty have for too long taken the most optimistic predictions. True, no one I think realized just how bad this would be since it seems each problem that occurred had a continuous compounding effect, but still this seems stupid. And while Harper is right that Canada may not do as bad as the United States or Europe, that has less to do with him being competent and more to do with the strong financial management when the Liberals were in power. If anything the Liberals deserve credit for the fact we are not in as bad a shape as the US and Europe as we didn't de-regulate our banks to the same degree and we also ran strong surpluses.
It is true that the two main Con talking points, strong banks and relatively strong fiscal health are both Liberal legacies.
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