When McCallum bleats on about 'wasted opportunity' and 'record deficits' and 'pork-barrel projects', McCallum is actually describing his Liberal Ontario buddies Deceptive Dalton McGuinty and Disastrous Dwight Duncan.
Ontario's children are being saddled with McGuinty's abusive Liberal deficits, John.
Compare McCallum's deficit-propaganda to Ignatieff's so-called priorities, in David Akin's story "I'll put jobs before deficit, Ignatieff says; Party differences; Unemployment should be tackled first, leader says" (Canwest News Service, Dec.19, 2009, here):“Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says fighting unemployment is more important than eliminating the federal deficit.
In an exclusive year-end interview with Canwest News Service and Global National, Mr. Ignatieff said that, should he become prime minister, he would be prepared to divert federal resources to job creation even if that meant Canada would remain in deficit beyond 2015, the year when the Conservative government believes Canada will be close to eliminating its budget deficit.
"If I'm prime minister, I'm going to be looking at the unemployment numbers first and deficit second," Mr. Ignatieff said during the interview at Stornoway, the official Opposition leader's residence.
Mr. Ignatieff said the approach to deficit reduction will be one of the key choices voters will have between his party and the governing Conservatives.
"They think the deficit's the only issue you have to worry about and we're saying unemployment's the issue you have to worry about," Mr. Ignatieff said. "That's a differentiator." The point is crucial because it will be one of the key issues Liberals will be looking at when they assess Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's 2010 budget, likely to be introduced as early as late next month. Both the NDP and Bloc Quebecois voted against the 2009 budget but the government survived because the Liberals voted in favour of it.
But Mr. Ignatieff would not be pinned down on what it will take for his party to support the next budget.
"We're dealing with the Conservative Party of Canada here," Mr. Ignatieff said.
"We're dealing with Stephen Harper [and his] capacity for poison pills, for game-playing, for omnibus budget bills that freight in some other thing that you never even saw coming. I've been around long enough to know I'm not telling you what I'm going to do because I've got to look at this thing and see what it is."
Moreover, Mr. Ignatieff said it is the government's responsibility, not the Opposition's, to propose a plan to eliminate the deficit that it created.
"They don't have a plan to get us out of deficit. So the burden is not on me -- I'm in the Opposition -- they've got to give Canadians a credible plan on deficit reduction and they don't have any."
Mr. Ignatieff argues Canada has the luxury to extend the amount of time it takes to regain its budgetary balance because of the fiscal foundations laid down by the previous Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin.
And he blamed the Conservatives for what he characterized as frittering away the $12-billion surplus they inherited from Mr. Martin's administration in 2006.
The latest projections from the Finance Department indicate the deficit this year will be about $56-billion, the largest in Canadian history. By 2014-2015, finance officials predict the deficit will be down to $5.2-billion.
Mr. Ignatieff said that relative to the size of the Canadian economy, those deficit numbers are not as serious as they were when Mr. Chretien took over from former prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1993.
For the fiscal year that ended in 1993, the federal deficit was $41-billion but that represented 5.9% of the country's gross domestic product, the sum of all economic activity.
This year, the deficit will be about 3.6% of GDP. By 2015, it will be down to 0.3%.
But opposition critics, as well as some private sector economists, say Mr. Flaherty's fiscal outlook is partly based on employment insurance premiums remaining artificially high over the next five years and that, Mr. Ignatieff said, amounts to a payroll tax.
"And every employer, especially the small ones, we talk to say this is a job killer. So one of the big issues we've got is -- yeah, we've got to get back into balance but is the smart way to do that to raise payroll taxes which will kill jobs?"
Mr. Ignatieff said his government would consider incentive programs for employers that might reward them with a break on payroll taxes for every new job.
"Prudent fiscal management, good structural investment that creates jobs -- my sense is that the trade-off is: do you focus on the unemployment problem or do you focus on the deficit problem? We focus on the unemployment problem and we think we can pay down the deficit on a different gradient.""
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Let's see: Iggy (the flip-flopper who less than a year ago demanded that the Canadian government spend spend spend: more, faster!!) now wants us to think that only Iggy cares about unemployment; Iggy now says he wants to focus on unemployment, rather than on the deficit - yet out-of-touch Liberal MP John McCallum nevertheless sends another stinking Liberal POOP-O-GRAM to Niagara, whining ABOUT THE DEFICIT !!
WTF?!
Can't you get your shit together, McCallum - did you even bother to run your idiotic Liberal propaganda past Iggy first? This just re-affirms the out-of-touch arrogance of Ignatieff's poopy, incompetent Liberals.
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