OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is developing a stimulus plan for the Canadian economy with a close circle of advisers that includes Ontario's Minister of Finance, who is already dealing with the crisis head-on.Contrast this, with this Montreal Gazette article on the cost of corporate welfare to Canadian taxypayers.
Dwight Duncan, who has long been a strong supporter of Mr. Ignatieff, is offering critical advice to the newly appointed Liberal Leader on industrial issues and the auto industry, a source said.
Mr. Ignatieff has also consulted Frank McKenna, deputy chairman of TD Bank Financial Group, and Don Drummond, a former senior Finance official and the TD's senior economist, as well as Liberal MPs John McCallum and Scott Brison.
Canadians have handed out more than $182 billion - or $13,639 per taxpayer - in business subsidies, bailouts and loans over the past dozen years, a right-wing think tank says in an attack on what a former NDP leader coined as "corporate welfare bums."
The report from the Fraser Institute, however, comes as an entire industry is holding out its hand for billions more in financial aid from taxpayers as the economy slumps into recession. In 2006 alone, the most recent year for which figures are available, the corporate welfare bill per taxpayer was $1,291, the Vancouver-based think tank calculated.
"The revelation comes as politicians in Ottawa debate spending additional money on business subsidies to stimulate the economy," it said in the report in which it charged that such handouts merely feed an addiction of sick businesses.
"While corporate begging has become even more blatant this year, the fundamental truth has not changed," said Mark Mike, author of the report entitled Corporate Welfare: Now a $182-Billion Addiction. "Business subsidies, bailouts or loans are all forms of corporate welfare that transfer tax dollars and employment from healthy businesses to risky businesses. "Government intervention only delays the day of reckoning and often at the expense of other businesses and a healthy industry and economy. "Research has found that corporate welfare may not have a demonstrable beneficial impact on the economy, employment and tax revenues because no new net investment or employment is created, the report said.
Can I hear a ‘pay day’ to Big Business in Canada! But rest assured, the federal Liberal party, who cannot even manage to pay off their own political debts, has now called in the big Liberal guns to help manage the country’s economy.
And a special shout out to all Ontarians, who can now sleep the sleep of the vindicated, knowing the same provincial government who managed their economy into ‘have not’ provincial status, has now been called to do their part to shove the federal fist a little deeper into the back pockets of all Canadians – especially those Canadians who have the special misfortune of residing in provinces which still possess a budget surplus.
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