A Golden Goose thing.

I'm sorry but the current state of Ontario is the DIRECT result of the incredible stupidity and arrogance of Mike Harris, easily the worst premier Ontario ever had, and I'm a long time staunch Ontario conservative supporter (the current duffus is trying very hard to change that). All Mike Harris did was dump provincial responsibilities and costs down to the municipal level, and walk away from them. From the health protection system to the wholesale destruction of the highway system, to the amalgamation theft of taxes, the featherbedding of cronies (the epitome being the god-awful 407 debacle), he was without peer as a colossal failure as a premier. Even Bob Rae, during his term wasn't as inept (in truth Rae got handed the proverbial economic hot potato - a premiership at the onset of one of Ontario's worst recessions since the war (and the one coming). No premier couldn't have weathered his term without scars.).

Skip,
My understanding is that the politicians in Toronto wanted more power, Harris gave it to them along with more money. Toronto took it then ran things irresponsibly. You know the old Spiderman "with great power comes great responsibility", then Toronto wants to be bailed out.
Health care is a direct result of Liberal Martin cutting transfers to the provinces.

What's more, to defend Bob Rae and his handling of well, anything, rules out your credibility. An unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Rae strengthened the recession plus loaded up on debt.

Apparently Jay, your weren't around for either of those periods.

"As I said in one of my last speeches as premier, I only regret that we didn’t move faster, and push even harder, to make the changes we did."

That statement sums up the Harris legacy perfectly.

They (Snobelen) totally bungled the teachers unions right at the start and then the red tories (Cabinet mebers) crept into the mix along with his personal strife at home, ending up giving the real socialists the opportunity to get back into power.
Pity.

I wish Mike Harris or a clone was back. I joined the "Common Sense Revolution in '93 and worked elections and gave modest financial support. All that stopped when J.Tory was elected leader, we don't need Dalton lite. As to Harris downloading, Chretien/Martin in '94 slashed Prov. transfers costing Ont. $Billions. Dalton hasn't changed it much has he!

The Harper Miracle:

Though Canada's economic downturn is partially the result of a global financial crisis, the report says the minority Conservative government shoulders some of the responsibility because of policy decisions during Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first term in office.

"The weak fiscal performance to date is largely attributable to previous policy decisions as opposed to weakened economic conditions," the report says.

It pinpoints the government's second one-percentage-point reduction in the goods and services tax and reductions in corporate income taxes for causing the lowest budget balance in the first five months of the fiscal year in recent times.

In August, the year-to-date budget surplus stood at $1.2 billion, down from $6.6 billion the year before.

Mike Harris = my hero

Jeff...you mention that government revenues fell after the implementation of a huge tax cut...wow...I never saw that coming.

When Martin slashed the transfers, Harris simply passed the losses onto the municipal ratepayers. His "hand-up not a hand-out" policy simply bloated the expense base of local social services which now became the responsibility of the municipalities to be funded from the municipal tax base. As for the highways, the provincial highway system was an impediment to suburban development as well as an increasing maintenance cost to the province. In oder for the GTA municipalities especially to develop their suburban areas in order to increase their tax base, they had to have control of the existing road infrastructure, or build new roads.

Dumping the secondary provincial highways to the cities allowed them to proceed with the necessary zoning and development plans to expand the tax base they were going to need to pay for the roads that were now being dumped on them as well as the increased social services.

They knew then, just as they know now, they didn't and still don't have the income base to support the development they're issuing building permits for. Amalgamations were forced in order to pull revenue from well managed satellite municipalities to service the downloaded costs to the big cities.

Toronto, for example, has never been required by a provincial government to development its own transportation infrastructure. Since the "401 bypass" as it was originally known, was built, Toronto has never built a major east-west corridor to service its internal transportation needs. As a consequence, Ontario has hamstrung its ability to facilitate trade through strangulation, issued building permits (and comtinues to do so) for development for which there is no or inadequate infrastructure, and layered horrendous additional costs on itself (and everybody else) to come up with end-runs to deal with the lack of foresight successive governments have demonstrated. Ontario had one window of opportunity to make it right, and Harris threw it all away. The nature of the geography around the lake pretty much means Ontario's problems may become unreconcilably worse.

Do you all people suffer from cult of politicians?

Harris governed for the future. Far from perfect, yes, very far from perfect. Keep in mind that his government's plan followed the Bob Rae debacle which had followed the David Peterson mess. These were times when tough decisions had to be made. McGuinty is in power because the people of the Socialist Republic of Ontario, voted for the promises of no tax increases and plenty of free hand-outs offered by the Liberals. The first hand-out, umm, err, the first non-increase in taxes, ummmmm, errr, the first meaningful decision made by McGuinty's Liberals was the Health Care Premium. Don't call it a tax. It's a premium.

It's Socialism.

McGuinty is a useless ass leading a pathetic excuse for a government. Don't get me wrong, I don't care that he's an ass, it's just that useually the ass is at the back of something, not in front. Maybe this is where the term ass-backwards came from. Bring back Mike!

Harris governed for the future. Far from perfect, yes, very far from perfect. Keep in mind that his government's plan followed the Bob Rae debacle which had followed the David Peterson mess. These were times when tough decisions had to be made. McGuinty is in power because the people of the Socialist Republic of Ontario, voted for the promises of no tax increases and plenty of free hand-outs offered by the Liberals. The first hand-out, umm, err, the first non-increase in taxes, ummmmm, errr, the first meaningful decision made by McGuinty's Liberals was the Health Care Premium. Don't call it a tax. It's a premium.

It's Socialism.

McGuinty is a useless ass leading a pathetic excuse for a government. Don't get me wrong, I don't care that he's an ass, it's just that usually the ass is at the back of something, not in front. Maybe this is where the term ass-backwards came from. Bring back Mike!

jeff - the previous Liberal 'surpluses' were due to overtaxation of both individuals and corporations and downloading costs to the provinces.

Anyone can set up a paper budget like that, i.e., over tax and then, cut your own responsibilities to use this money by handing over those responsibilities, without any money, to the provinces.

That is, the Liberals both overtaxed and under-programmed. What did they do with the money? They didn't even use it to pay down the debt!

Oh, Chretien purchased two Challenger jets for his own use as PM. Oh, and set up the gun registry as a make-work project in the Maritimes; that's good for votes. Oh, and lots of money to multicultural groups to keep them isolated, non-integrated and dependent on government funding. That's good for votes also. More programs for votes, such as leftist themes of Women's Topics, where most of the money goes to the administration and zilch to actually needs, Court Challenges, HRCs and so on. Lots more loans to friends and colleagues and so on. That's where the money went..After all, votes matter, don't they?

And, the Liberals were doing this in a time of global economic expansion. That phase is over, with the Asian nations moving out of acting as cheap labour sites and moving into developing their own, more costly middle class.

Harper has reduced the GST, which puts more money into the hands of people rather than the government banks and the pockets of those who are 'entitled to their entitlements'.

He told Ontario to pick up the GST themselves, to tax an extra 1% in their own territory to cover their own programs; McGuinty hasn't done this and is instead, holding out his cap for money from the federals.

He's used surplus to pay down the debt.
He's cut, drastically, corporate and small business taxes and costs. That helps them.
He's returned money to families for child care, education, sports programs, etc.

That is, the govt has less surplus now, because it has put more money into the hands of the citizens, to make their own choices about looking after themselves.

Now, you, Jeff, may instead prefer that people don't look after themselves but instead, hand over most of their money to the Big Boss, who will make all the choices and churn out all the programs for everything from food to shelter to ...

Such a Big State model reduces people to passive onlookers. A lot of us don't want to remain children for our lifetime but prefer a certain 'sovereignty' over ourselves.

With reference to EBD:

What he said

Well skip I have to disagree with you on Harris. The Common Sense Revolution was taking Ontario to the right places, and Eves put the brakes on.
And you are stretching it by trying to blame Toronto's highway mess on Harris.
Miller and McGuinty have taken us right back to Rae's socialist days.

Mike Harris was head and shoulders above the two dofusses who preceeded and followed him in office as premier. He was elected as Conservative leader because all the "big time movers and shakers" in the party viewed the prospects of short term return to power as hopeless so who cares if he placeholds for a few years. His election was the direct result of the follies of Peterson and Rae and the disgust they generated in ordinary Ontarians.

The areas in which I felt most disappointed were his poor grasp of the need for hard hitting public relations on a 24/7 basis because of the overwhelming MSM opposition to his government and what I saw as coasting after the third year in office. I suppose Buzz Hargrove and his various stooges have to be given some credit for that. The Metro amalgamation was an ongoing civil service initiative which seemed to wind up being thrown into the mix as a goodwill gesture or something without much thought behind it.

A trip down memory lane

"the Rae Governments first Budget, introduced in 1991, increased Social Spending to mitigate the economic slowdown & projected a Record Deficit of $9.1 Billion, Finance minister floyd laugren argued that Ontario made a decision to target the recession rather then the deficit, and said the budget would create OR protect 70,000 jobs. It targeted More money to social assistance, social housing & child benefits and raised taxes for higher income earners while lowering rates for low income earners"
journalist thomas walkom described the budget as the the Worst of Both Worlds angering the business community & not doing enough to provide for public relief.

And Skip I have been around for quite awhile with connections to MTO and MOH.The gravy train ended when Harris went in to clean up, and no one is so bitter as those 'let go' by the ministries under Mike, and then had to find jobs where they were accountable.Reality bites, eh?
As well we were a single income family (by choice) during the Rae days. Nothing soured us towards welfare as much as those days. Too many stories, not enough time.We didn't want handouts, we were just disgusted with the way our taxes were being 'handed out'.
MOH is on a hiring frenzy right now, but not nurses or doctors. Watch McGuinty try to cut back on health care programmes, witout touching high priced admin... just like Rae did.
Bring Back Mike!!

Posted by: Skip "Apparently Jay, your weren't around for either of those periods."

I was. Bob Rae almost ruined Ontario, and Dalton McGuinty is his evil twin.

This recession has been looming on the horizon for so long that the Blind were becoming afraid of the shadow it was casting. What was Dalton doing? Funding Ottawa's Drug addict starter kits (that the city canceled), throwing money at the auto industry.

Here's a quoteable quote... "The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) today responded to the Ontario government’s Fall Economic Statement which announced Ontario will deliver a $500 million deficit, despite having increased taxes and having seen government revenues climb 42% in six years. CTF Ontario Director Kevin Gaudet said, “the premier is borrowing today so taxpayers of tomorrow will pay for his bad spending habits of the past six years."

Wake up and smell the coffee Jay.

Sorry, Skip needs to smell the coffee, Jay is caffeine enabled as far as I can tell.

Dulton, best buddies with Kinsella, still taxing Ontario into the poor house and have not Province status.

They vote for him, they pay the price.

"And you are stretching it by trying to blame Toronto's highway mess on Harris."

There was very little "common sense" in the CSR. There was a lot of pandering.

With regard to the highways, no, I'm not. Harris surrendered the few remaining corridors for east-west transportation in order to satisfy the demands of local developers and councils for suburban development, then offered up one of the worst government contracts ever entered into in Canada -the 407, as the alternative.

Now, those corridors are gone, broken up with suburban sprawl, interminable stoplights and congestion. They could have been preserved with good design. Mississauga, in a few places learned how, with secondary ring and feeder roads paralleling the corridors. Toronto has done nothing in that regard, and even threatens to tear down it last remaining east-west corridor, such as it is, the Gardiner.

Oakville, in its desire to emulate Mississauga with a new city centre, is relocating its municipal heart to the intersection of Hwy 5 and Trafalgar. Hwy 5, once a major route into Toronto is now just another congested stop and go mess.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at a map and understand the impact of Lake Ontario on transportation flow through Ontario. Harris, the ex-teacher and part-time golf pro was certainly no rocket scientist. But hey, the GTA probably has more golf courses per square mile now than anywhere else in Canada and may be catching up with Fla and Hilton Head.

If I wait long enough I'll probably hear from Skippy that they have canonized Saint Bobby of Rae for his parting of the economic seas. That is before he tried to flush Ontario down the drain.

Don't waste your time folks. It is always someone elses fault when your a leftist. They never take any responsibility for anything that goes badly. They are perpetual 12 year olds.

Ontario was already effective broke when Rae won the election and the recession was well underway and solidly entrenched. I'm not defending Bob Rae. I'm saying that it wouldn't have mattered who won that election, it would have taken tough measures and heavy spending by govt regardless to clear out of it. Rae just happened to be the patsy who got stuck with it. Y'all seem to forget, that for Rae to even win that election, Ontario's economy had to have been already well into the crapper. TC, KMA.

Harper faces a similar scenario, only on a national scale, and don't be surprised if he doesn't do some of the same things Rae did, including his own version of "Rae days". This recession is going to be that bad...

Eves didn't "put the brakes on", he inherited the mess Harris had created. By the time he took office, Harris' downloading strategy was beginning to have full impact on the municipalities and hence the provincial coffers. Remember there is only one taxpayer.

"Ontario was the envy of the world and the foundation was in place to ensure our province’s future prosperity."

Albertans didn't envy Ontario.

That said, above are complaints that surpluses are low due to Harper cutting the GST.

The GST was sold to Canadians as a revenue neutral replacement for the manufacturers tax.
It isn't supposed to produce a surplus.

I must have missed the memo that said for profit government was a good thing. Government should be run as a break even proposition.

Such fond memories!

One of the Harris Tory’s first moves was to take no crap from the protest-happy Left. Speaker Chris Stockwell was in charge of Queen’s Park security and on the very first day of protest had the OPP welcome them with the then-new concept of “whack ‘em and stack ‘em.” Sort of an Ontario version of Kathy’s much beloved Hard Hat Riot - I’d pay money to see those left-wing losers get whacked upside the head again.

As for the 407, I love that highway. On the occasions I use it I don’t mind paying a fee as that seems to keep cheapskate Ontarians out of its lanes, leaving more room for the rest of us.

My memory is that Bob Rae won his election because the electorate had a massive hate-on for then-Premier David Peterson and Muldoon in Ottawa. That left Rae as the “eh, what the heck” candidate. Harris was largely an unknown commodity at that time when he ran his first campaign as the “Tax Fighter.”

Rae and “Pink” Floyd Laughren then went from one disaster to another - spending their way with our money through a recession, “Rae Days,” etc. What a debacle.

By the end of Harris’s second term the shrill Left of the province were out for blood, and Harris’s replacement, Ernie Eves, decided he’d try to run as a Liberal and apologize for the previous 8 years. Bad move Ernie.

it would have taken tough measures and heavy spending by govt regardless to clear out of it


and that, people, is why you NEVER trust a socialist to have a say in budget matters.

Harris is partly correct on the taxes side. I've lived in Toronto for close to 10 years now and their only solution to everything, it seems, is to increase taxes.

Harris is being disingenuous about cutting government. One of the worst things they did was to lay off competent people on salary, only to hire them back as consultants at twice or three times the cost. The Tories under Harris ended up being just eager and competent at pursuing their individual interests as the Rae-days crowd.

I've been around since the days of George Drew and Leslie Frost. To my mind the best Premier this Province has ever had was Mike Harris. For all the obvious reasons.

Skip,

Harris was far from perfect but to suggest that Rae did a better job excludes you from objective reality.

Even the socialists and union hacks were happy to be rid of him in the end. There wasn't a single person in Ontario outside of you and their own families that supported the NDP after that twit was through with it.

As for recession, it was a "made in Ontario" recession. Made in Ontario BY BOB RAE.

Harris got to clean up Rae's mess while implementing Martin's cuts at the same time. He screwed up electrical privatization and failed to axe the school boards (his worst failure,) but he did a better job than either Rae or McShifty (although that's setting the bar very, very low...)

another trip down memory lane

The liberal govt had forcast a small surplus earlier in the year, but a worsening NA economy led to a $700mil deficit before Rae took office. In october the NDP projected a deficit of $2.5 Billion for the fiscal year ending in march 1991.
Rae first budget forcast a Deficit of $$9.1 Billion
The rae govt introduced "The Social Contract" Legislation that reopened collective bargaining with the public sector unions. This was the start of the imposed wage freezes & 10 Unpaid days off to all civil servants, This is what became known as "Rae Days".
He had to find money somewhere to pay for his social programs, & mounting deficit & knew that going to the electorate again with another tax would not favor them well So they(NDP Govt)took a gamble, Figuring the Unions would always back their Govt.

Harris is right, the worst thing he did was not to go far enough.
He had the teachers' union over a barrel and blinked. He should have let them strike and broke the union - instead he backed off and the unions cruxified him - even going so far as to invest in third party campaigns to defeat particular MPPs.
There were many people doing real well in Socialist Ontario before Harris ended the party. They're still really mad at him. It's Harris Derangement Syndrome. In addition, many regular PC supporters in the broader public service are still mad at him - like Skip, I suspect.
Harris balanced the budget, decreased taxes, reduced welfare rolls, set up back to work programs, increased school spaces for health care professions, put an end to job killing Rae labour laws and prepared the groundwork for business to bring in more than 1 million net new jobs. All in six years. A previous poster was right, Red Tory Eves killed it. Harris was by far the best Premier in Ontario history. Yes there were mistakes, selling 407 was one - it should have become a provincial toll highway. Downloading social services was another.
As for growth problems, Harris can hardly be blamed for a federal Liberal government letting in huge numbers of immigrants who were then allowed to bring in their extended families. I have heard too many anecdotes of people bringing their families here to partake in Canada's generous social services, while the breadwinner works in another, lower tax jurisdiction like Lebanon or Dubai. Much of the growth around Toronto is coming from out of the country not natural population growth or internal migration.
However, handing over jurisdiction of minor provincial highways to local municipalities is just natural as communities grow. Or Skip, should the province still maintain responsibility for Dundas Street through Mississauga or say Highway 2 along the northern edge of Lake Ontario?
Harris was best when he wanted to do the right thing rather than worry about re-election. He did that in his first term and he was re-elected easily. He tried to appease the upset freeloaders in his second term to maintain a hold on governmnet, a plan pushed along by Eves, and the Party lost big time. And now we have Red Tory John who will never be Premier. Wonder why?

I never said that Rae did a better job than Harris. I said that no premier was going to come out that recession smelling like roses. By the time Harris took office, the recession had pretty much burnt itself out.

"However, handing over jurisdiction of minor provincial highways to local municipalities is just natural as communities grow. Or Skip, should the province still maintain responsibility for Dundas Street through Mississauga or say Highway 2 along the northern edge of Lake Ontario?"

That isn't what Harris did. Intercity corridors are as important now as they were then (more so, in fact, with the increased pop density). Just because a highway has an in-town component doesn't mean you abandon it. Hwy 2 and Hwy 5 weren't "minor" provincial highways, they only became so through planned neglect. Hwy 2 was killed off long before Hwy 5, but actually it should have been developed, as should have been Hwy. 5. The GTA's transportation system is ridiculously fragile for the volume of people and business that depend on it.

The best premier in Ontario history was likely John Robarts. There hasn't been a good one since.

Skip, you're full of crap. Bill Davis, a red Tory ruined Sam Cass' plan for highways around and through Toronto. Davis killed the Scarborough Expressway and the Allen, now called the Davis ditch by us old guys. Notice how well McGuinty is holding the green belt and the Oak Ridges moraine lands.

The only issue at the election of Rae was that the electorate was tired of the arrogant Peterson and when Davis kissed the pope's ring and made an order in council to fully fund the Catholic school system which angered all of us Conservative supporters, which led to the decimation of the Tories for years and the Rae/Peterson coalition. The split vote allowed Rae, much to his surprise to win.

The recession was minimal and over in the US by 1992 yet Rae continued to tax and spend leading to the absolute destruction of Ontario's economy and almost bankrupted the province.

Sure Harris downloaded costs to the municipalities but he took back the big one they all complained about, the funding of education. As "lookout" has informed me Harris didn't do a great job by allowing the education administration to become stronger.

Another good intention was the amalgamation of Toronto yet the socialist councilors refused to take advantage of the savings opportunities and still have 7 city halls and continue to hire more silly servants. Miller has focused totally on the old city of Toronto and allowed his union buddies to dominate Toronto.

Within days of Harris taking over Ontario the province soared and there was a whole attitude change and things got done. With McSquinty we have moved back into the shadows.

Harris was not perfect and he did some things wrong but as most Ontarians will agree, for the first time a politician did what he said he would do, which was refreshing to say the least. Now we are back to the usual lies, coverups and disappointments.

We have a bit of a race problem here in Ontario. Right wing crazy talk? No, the opinion of Dalton, McMurtry, and Lincoln Alexander:

"Premier Dalton McGuinty is seriously considering the controversial collection of race-based statistics across Ontario as a means of fighting youth violence.

"I think we need to ask ourselves what do we need to do to make sure that we are properly attacking the roots of youth violence," McGuinty said yesterday. "I just think that none of us any longer enjoy the luxury of bringing an ideological approach to dealing with race-based data."

McGuinty was responding to a long-awaited report that identifies racism in schools, policing and communities as a significant cause of youth violence, and calls on the province to create a cabinet committee on social inclusion and anti-racism.

The report, by retired Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry and former Liberal MPP Alvin Curling, was ordered in the wake of the May 2007 shooting death of student Jordan Manners at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute. Collecting race-based statistics is among the study's 30 recommendations."
www.thestar.com/Unassigned/article/537565

It was never in the interests of the federal Liberal Party to see Harris succeed; does anyone think that the increase in the net drain of taxes from Ontario to Ottawa in the middle 90's was a single-purpose co-incidence? Harris' choice to download costs and responsibilities onto the municipalities had at least the paper advantage of efficiency - reducing one step in collecting tax and then handing it back to be spent - but it foundered in the very real face of entrenched bureaucracy unwilling to reduce its own political footprint. In retrospect, it may not have been the best method of cutting costs; perhaps he should have imposed more top-down controls on municipalities until the necessity of saving money was firmly entrenched in everything they did.

If it ever could be.

I miss Mike.
John Tory is not and never will be Mike Harris.

Skip;

A recession in Ontario wasn't "well underway and solidly entrenched" by the time Ray was elected. In fact, it was in the middle of the campaign when news came out that it had slid into a relatively small 1 billion dollar deficit. I remember Ray beating Peterson over the head for trying to hide the report.

Ray took a relatively mild economic downturn and small deficit and made them far worse and bigger than they otherwise needed to be.

One day in the future Mike Harris will come to be seen as a Reaganesque character and the people of Ontario will begin building Statues of him and naming schools after him. Dalton McGinty is currently expediting the process.

the solution to Ontario's love affair for Socialists, is for the Government to spike the water with Lithium, than drown down a bucket themselves.

Mike Harris must have done a lot of good: other wise the moon bats would not invoke his name every time they blunder. Which is often. The wackie left in action.

Dalton's busy creating zero tolerances for just about anything under the sun. His government loves regulation upon regulation which require more inspectors and paper pushers- less progress by business that becomes more expensive, as more and more workers spend more time pushing paper, than actually getting anything done.

Utopia is such a bleak unproductive place where the stupid thrive..

Its a wonder any business is left in Ontario, and don't even get me started over rules for young drivers, every kid to him is an idiot in need of bubble wrap, it's actually becoming quite insane.

Give me Harris any day.

Those where the days, to think at one time at native standoffs police officers actually faced and dealt with the real shit disturbers.

harris said what he would during his campaign, and did it, damn near a FIRST in my life time

……..status is the culmination of a five-year decline……….
Don’t know if you are familiar with the five year plans during the communist era. It took them some seventy ~ years, every 5 years a new plan for the economy, to run down their economy until there was nowhere to go. Then they gave up.
The model for socialists in Ontario seems to have got the same results.
One wanders why they would vote for rich socialist as a leader that pretend to be something else.
Not that the rest of the Liberals are liberal.

Actually, the current Liberal government might be the best thing Ontario ever had. The more it fails, the more the retreads will move out and vampire the life blood of the 'have' provinces. Sort of like a dog shaking the fleas off.

Watch out Alberta and Saskatchewan.

I miss Mike.

while mike did cut taxes and welfare he did not reduce the size of government. period.

Dalton gave us the Health-Care tax which ended up being exactly the amount of his miracle Surplus , then instead of giving it back to us he handed close to 1/2 a Billion dollars to FORD and GM to rescue them and keep the Oakville/Oshawa plants going .
But the CAW then saw the chance to Threaten a Strike and cripple the same Auto-makers we taxpayers bailed-out.
But it got worse folks .
After several years of Magna and Belinda exploiting non-Union workers to make parts for Non-Union japanese auto plants that slowly killed CAW jobs, she left her $10 Million+ a year position to eventually accept a MP seat by Paul Martin who was now a buddy of Buzz Hardgrove.

The same CAW Buzz who now yells at us to Buy-Canadian .
Today we now see that Chretien,Martin,Belinda,and Buzz are long gone from the scene with a nice $$$ package for leaving us Taxpayers with this mess for the AdScam millions still missing, and now ANOTHER CAW bail-out .

Only in Canada could Chretien and Belinda be exalted by the MSM as the ideal examples for a Success-Story in canada , that poor Belinda being forced to accept over $10 million a year by her Daddy's Company that would later on buy Chrysler for a song and de-Unionized the Workers with the blessings from Buzz.

BTW
The MSM hasn't reported the comment by Obama that he may approve a Auto bail-out that would include pulling out of canada to employ Americans and "Buy-American" made cars , funny how Buzz gave Obama the idea with his Buy-canadian Isolationism rants to Buy-canadian to save CAW jobs.
I predicted that the CAW would rue the day they stayed mute when Chretien infered that the USA deserved the 9/11 slaughter , plus when the CBC and Carolyn Parrish kept bashing Americans for Electing an Idiot from Texas.
I hope the CAW members had the foresight to save their 6-digit incomes for a rainy day instead of the entitlement mind set where they spend every cent they earn with the hope for endless bail-outs.
Plus...with all those Mexicans pouring into canadas from the USA , things must be pretty bad down there in American for them to want Refugee-Status after fleeing the USA.

I love to watch petty partisan infighting while big kleptocratic government sends a once prosperous self sustaining private sector economy to its doom with collectivist greed and corporate welfare.

As far as I'm concerned you squabbling partisan asshats in Onterrible are just two sides of the same government dependent coin. Enjoy your collective poverty, you earned it.