Thursday, January 06, 2011

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday.

- Obviously missing from Ted Menzies' excuses for the Cons' decision to do nothing about the Canada Pension Plan: a single word of explanation as to how anybody is better off setting up new funds for private profit rather than actually expanding the CPP to include more people. This might be a point worth pressing, no?

- Maude Barlow weighs in on some of the issues with the proposed Canada-Europe free trade agreement.

- Bill Curry points out one significant drain on Canada's federal coffers that would serve as an obvious means to increase revenues if the Cons were the least bit serious about dealing with the deficit:
Billions of dollars worth of credits and tax writeoffs for everything from construction tools to textbooks and kids’ sports fees have been piling up for years. Their expansion ramped up under the Conservatives before the recession hit. Now in leaner times, they continue to eat up cash.

Billed as tax “cuts” when they are announced by politicians, they live on in the federal books as “tax expenditures.” The semantic debate between politicians and academics continues as the number of credits rise.

The annual report detailing their cost runs for 24 pages.
- Finally, Jamies Bowie may give far too much credit to the Libs' earlier lack of accomplishment. But it would certainly be worth taking his suggestion to start compiling a list of Con programs that did nothing toward their nominal ends - so stop by and add your suggestions.

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