The recent announcement by Finance Minister Gary Collins that BC is now expected to post a $1.2 billion surplus in 2004/05 caught many by surprise. After all, it was only seven months ago that Minister Collins tabled his first balanced budget, after sky-high deficits the previous three years. What explains this dramatic shift from red to black?
Economy and economic indicators
Economic intimidation is one of the main obstacles to the self-empowerment of Third World countries. Such intimidation, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. It is not necessary for a superpower like the United States to do anything of an aggressive nature, or to launch an economic attack, or to withhold its immense purchasing power in order to cast a threatening shadow over a developing nation. The mere hint that it might do so can be cause for alarm. (Of course, the U.S.
The noted Canadian economist Pierre Fortin tells us that,
“during the 1990s, Canada’s aggregate economic performance has been the worst since the great depression, and very nearly the worst among all industrial countries.”
For those of you who might think that Canada has improved substantially in the new millennium, you should know that this country still ranks only 65th in GDP growth rate.
It’s time to move on from analyzing what’s wrong. Let’s acknowledge that some solutions have been tried--and found working! We now know, as does the WTO, that its principles don’t work, not even for free enterprise and certainly not for the vast majority of the world’s people. The opponents of corporate globalization--whom the French call alter-globalists--have identified some characteristics they would like to see in a new and better global systems: inclusion, ecological sustainability, human-scale operation, and subsidiarity.
In the 2004 election, economic issues have not been front and centre. Accountability, rights issues and health care have dominated the stage, while the economy has essentially been taken for granted. That is too bad because the contending parties have very different visions of what makes good economic policy.
When Canadians went to the polls last June they chose, in policy terms, new spending by the federal government over shrinking government through more tax cuts. In so doing, they rejected arguments that higher public spending would inevitably undermine Canada's economic performance, or conversely, that reducing the size of government by cutting taxes would boost the economy.
(Ottawa) Would cutting taxes even further boost Canada's economic performance? Would introducing a new social program like early childhood education and care hurt Canada's productivity? A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reviews the evidence, finding no relationship between how big a government is and a country's economic performance.