Home | Contacts | Classifieds | Archives | Media Kit | Email Us |
Hard economic times lie ahead for Canadians, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a gathering of multicultural and community journalists in Montreal last week, while adding that the government will be tabling one of the most comprehensive federal budgets seen in recent times on Jan. 27, in order to deal with an anticipated economic crisis.
Creating opportunity
"I always say that as a Conservative government, we always prefer to try and create opportunity for people," Harper told one journalist who had asked what the government's future plans are for federal subsidy programs created for the disadvantaged. "That's always the best thing — rather than assist people in situations, to create opportunity for them … There will be opportunities for people.
"People forget that this crisis began in the United States in August of 2007 with the meldtdown of the sub-prime mortgage market," he added. "We acted early in the fall and in the spring principally but not exclusively through a series of tax reduction measures for business taxes and personal taxes to sustain consumer demand and help sustain employment."
A different environment
Harper claims the Conservative government created 100,000 jobs since then, although "unfortunately, it was 200,000 until October, and then, of course, we really started to be impacted by the recession," he said. "When I say 100,000 jobs it's not a lot, but when you compare it with the United States in a similar period, they lost 2 million jobs last year. So we think that our initial reduction stimulus package worked.
"Obviously we're in a different environment now. The government will be undertaking even larger measures, will be undertaking a lot of spending measures, will be running a substantial deficit. We've indicated that we are prepared to run a substantial deficit for the next two years and longer if that is what the economy requires.
Targeted measures
"But we will bring in temporary but targeted spending measures to help sustain economic demand in various sectors and to create employment … Our objective will be to make sure that this spending is effective and that it gets into the economy quickly … These will not be long-term programs because we can't sustain that kind of spending, but will hopefully lead to economic improvements that will sustain our economy in the longer term."
Harper said the Conservative government has been consulting interested parties across the nation more extensively than it ever has before, in a bid to determine the right mix of priorities for the budget. "We will take some unprecedented measures and do whatever is necessary to sustain economic activity through this worldwide economic downturn." Harper was told by the editor of a local Filipino newspaper that the crisis is starting to have an impact on Filipino factory workers.
Impact on workers
"We brought in tax incentives for manufacturers to invest in machinery," he replied. "That is to ensure that our manufacturing sector can transform itself through this economic downturn and emerge essentially with a higher end of the production chain. In our view, that is essential for factories and manufacturers to sustain employment in the long term. We are putting substantial moneys ourselves into a government science and technology strategy."
Harper said the government has been trying to "transform" the country's manufacturing sector into something more productive, rather than providing it with outright assistance. He said the automobile manufacturing sector, which received a multi-billion dollar bailout package the week before, "is a special case …. Let me be very clear about this. We have a totally integrated auto sector with the United States. Not just the consumer market is integrated, but the production market …
Auto sector 'special'
"Car companies are on both sides of the border, but the average North American car crosses the border seven times while it's being manufactured. It's a completely integrated industry. And the reality is that because of the deep financial problems, the American government has decided that if it's going to restructure the industry itself, the simple choice that we and the government of Ontario had was we had to participate, or the entire auto sector would go in the United States. If that happens, we will lose 500,000 jobs in Canada and we cannot afford that. So that's why in that case we are doing direct assistance to the sector."