At This Point, What’s $56 Billion More?

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is back in the news again, although this time it isn’t over having his budget cut or being threatened with muzzling. Yet. That could easily change as his fiscal projections increase the expected five-year deficit by about a third more than the government projected, including as much as a $16 billion deficit as late as 2014. This flies in the face of the prevailing wisdom that as the economy recovers, the budgets will return to surplus. In the latest predictions, the combined federal deficits over the next five years will total $159.3 billion, not $103.5 billion, and represent a “permanent deficit” without either cutting spending or raising taxes.

There’s something about that term, “permanent deficit”, particularly so close on the heels of the slogan for Stephane Dion’s carbon tax plan as a “permanent tax on everything”. We never did get to see what Dion’s permanent tax would do, but I’m fairly certain we’re going to see what a permanent deficit will do. If the Conservatives do manage to cut spending, where will it come from? In a minority government, any attempts to cut spending now will result in being defeated [which is perhaps necessary and inevitable anyway]. And if they raise taxes, they will be mercilessly vilified by their opponents. The latter scenario seems as implausible as the first, for while massive spending increases since Stephen Harper took power has been largely brushed aside, actually raising taxes would be anathema to everything the party has been campaigning against in the past three years. Even if it is the only recourse.

What we’re talking about, then, is structural deficits. Not just a quick dip in the lake, but long-term year-over-year deficits, unless something is done, and something is done fast to change it. Remarkably, there is some good news:

“The budget is not structurally balanced over the medium term,” said Page’s report, to be officially released Wednesday.

“That said, (the deficits) are small, relative to the size of the economy. Indeed, they amount to less than one per cent of GDP annually.”

But the biggest problem with accruing debt like this, as anyone with household debt can attest, is that the more you borrow from credit in order to sustain your current levels of spending without increasing your revenue, eventually you’ll increase your outgoing expenditures on the interest. The debt on $56 billion more represents a significant increase in interest forecasts, which under the Conservative budget is already forecast at $39.6 billion in interest payments per annum by 2014.

Nevertheless, unless Mr.Page is wrong, the Conservatives will have managed not just temporary deficits, but structural ones, something that both Mr.Harper and Mr.Flaherty adamantly denied would ever happen. And to make matters even more painful, policy-wise, is that it would appear that the popular GST cuts are a large source of the current shortfalls. Of note, the 2% cut represents $15 billion in lost revenue, or approximately $1.7 billion shy of Mr.Page’s 2014 forecast. Even if we use the Conservative numbers, that’s a revenue shortfall of $75 billion over the five-year span.

What’s interesting is that even if the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s predictions are off, he’s basing his numbers on the expected shortfalls of maintaining the status quo. If the government can make sensible changes that can offset these numbers, it won’t necessarily means he’s wrong. But it does put the government on the hot seat, and not just the Conservatives, but all our elected representatives, to find a way out of this red, and back into black.

A Staggering Display Of Misplaced Priorities

If you were asked a simple question: “Who do you think deserves the greater level of protection, girls under the age of 18 from a sexual predator, or the sexual predator who may face danger if he is deported?” You may have a simple answer. The nanoseconds it would take to make such a decision could possibly be prolonged by a few tenths of a second, depending on whether you had had your morning coffee yet.

But for the Immigration and Refugee Board, they seem to act on a completely different level of time and space. One might need to consult Einstein in a seance to work out this kind of relativity:

He’s been branded a danger to girls under the age of 18.

But despite the threat convicted sex offender Farid Noedost still poses, he is now allowed to walk free instead of being deported to his native Iran. The decision to release Noedost on parole instead of deporting him came after the Immigration and Refugee Board agreed his fears of being killed in Iran are valid.

But Michael McPhelan of the Immigration and Refugee Board, who ordered Noedost to be released from custody on conditions after a hearing on Thursday, said he wasn’t convinced the man will not reoffend.

“I have concerns that you are dangerous to the public in Canada,” McPhelan said via video conference from Vancouver to a Winnipeg courtroom.

“The way you have conducted yourself in Canada is despicable. You are a danger to girls under 18.”

In agreeing with immigration officials, McPhelan said, “The need to protect the Canadian public is outweighed by the risk you face in your country of origin.”

With apologies to my readers of faith, Jesus Harold Christ that is insane. This is on a whole new level of disgusting. That we uphold the principle of not seeing harm come to a pedophile, rather than protect our own children, is something I figured only happened in Law and Order episodes.

This is a guy who came to Canada from Iran as a refugee before 2001 and was granted permanent residency. We can’t know the exact dates because that information is being protected. He was arrested in 2006 after sexually abusing two teenage girls, and sentenced to three years in prison in December of 2007 for cocaine dealing, and a three-year suspended sentence and probation for a sex assault conviction in April of 2008. After doing the math, yes he’s out early.

He was slated for mandatory deportation after receiving a sentence exceeding two years, but because immigration officials felt there was an imminent threat to his safety in Iran they stayed the order. What nobody can explain, however, is why if he’s a dangerous sexual predator he’s allowed on the streets of Winnipeg.

h/t Dust my Brooom

It’s Not Misogyny When It’s Sarah Palin

As you can tell from the above graphic, the world is going a little bit insane over the whole Sarah Palin resignation. And no, it’s not ironic that I’m adding to the pile.

While a good majority of the articles involving Sarah Palin revolve around political theories and hypotheses, it doesn’t take much investigation to find the rampant and open abuse of the woman. It isn’t just the usual insults, either, such as the suggestion that she isn’t bright, or the redneck and hillbilly pejoratives, but comments that would otherwise be considered sexist and misogynistic if it weren’t blinded by the fact she’s so reviled and despised by her anti-fans.

I hesitate to use the word “critics” in this context, since I think that those who have opinions of her tend to have such a polarized view that they can’t actually give her a basic level of respect in order to criticize her on her valid weaknesses. It’s not entirely surprising. I was so taken aback by John McCain’s pick for running mate at first that even I engaged in some regrettable rhetoric. But nothing I said was based on the kind of vicious attacks against her as a woman. The strange thing about all this, is that some of the worst comments have come from those would otherwise consider themselves “progressives”. From the CBC website, a sampling of those comments that got through moderation [I saw worse ones deleted]. Note the overwhelming approval:

And one comment from a “progressive” blog:

I think that there are enough genuine ways to criticize Ms.Palin without resorting to these kinds of cheap attacks against her as a woman. This kind of “humour”, as David Letterman learned the hard way, doesn’t add anything of value, while undermining the kind of strides that women have made. You and I don’t have to like what she has to say, but we do have to respect her right to say it without resorting to abuse.

“Most Selfish” Poll

Photo: Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC

Hey, we never do polls here anymore on Unambig, and instead of venting and frothing at the mouth over which of the following statements/situations is more inherently selfish, I thought I’d let readers decide. So without further ado, the contestants:

1. CUPE in Toronto. So far beyond the grasp of reality are these public sector unions, so distant from the rules that the rest of society engage in, so pathetic are their whines and pleas for more than just keeping their jobs in a recession that saw Ontario lose 60,000 jobs in May alone, that it will not be easy not to pick this disgustingly selfish greedy group. [I find it interesting, in the link provided above, that the picture of the officially union-designated closed dumpster doesn't dissuade people from leaving their empty water bottles and fruit smoothies.]

2. The federal government. For spending $58 million on a project in China. It’s not good enough that they waste countless taxpayer dollars [I say countless because we never know what the deficit numbers will be until, like a drunken night at the bar, we get the final bill] in Canada, but now they have to waste them in China.

3. Dany Heatley. Hi, I’m a professional hockey player adulated by millions of Canadians and envied by even more. Can I please sign a no trade clause with Ottawa, demand a trade somewhere else, realize it’s Edmonton [which sucks because it was only good enough for players like Gretzky, Messier, Coffee, Kurri, and Anderson], and then invoke my no-trade?

4. Glenn Beck guest Michael Scheuer. For wanting and wishing for an Osama bin Laden terrorist strike in America to wake up Americans to the need to greater security. And Glenn Beck for not telling him it’s a stupid thing to say.

I didn’t say the choices were easy. There is a lot of selfishness and greed and ugliness here. Is it the union for whom too much is never enough? The federal government which now spends stimulus dollars in foreign countries? Dany Heatley for pulling an Eric Lindros? Or Michael Scheuer for praying for a good old dirty bomb to rally Americans behind the cause?

Vote now.