The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Great Expectations No, this article is not about Charles Dickens, although the theme in his 1861 masterpiece may certainly apply to the politics and economy of today. The theme of the novel was a youth discovering the realities of life and being forced to change his values and adjust. Consider the great expectations of the NDP's Jack Layton, leader of the fourth party in Parliament, who thought he could be Deputy Prime Minister in the now-dead coalition but was bitterly brought to reality by the new Liberal leader. Layton then turned on the Liberals as betraying Canadians, and ran a series of ads attacking Michael Ignatieff. A well known Winnipeg professor and writer, a former Conservative who has spent most of the Harper years attacking the Tories, recently turned his guns on Layton, particularly for voting against the budget in advance of the document. He called the NDP leader "a real piece of work!" Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe also had expectations of playing a major part in the proposed government, and really holding them to ransom for anything the separatist party wanted. Remember, the Bloc runs no candidates outside Quebec and has a policy of separating the province from Canada. The Bloc and the NDP will now be on the outside looking in, exercising no control over the government or policies. Ignatieff, who spent his entire working career outside the country but is touted as the future Prime Minister by the Eastern media and a few polls, certainly has expectations of winning the office in the future. He was clever to support the budget and not try to take over the government, as it really is not a good position to be in in tough economic times. He obviously wants to wait, rebuild and refinance the bankrupt party, build more popularity, and hope to win the next election. One letter to the editor in a major newspaper deplores the media's support of Ignatieff, and says "stop kissing up to Ignatieff" as polling does not really show him that popular. Ignatieff also has been taking a few cheap shots in Parliament, like trying to blame Harper for the new trade deficit, obviously caused by the worldwide recession. There are great and really impossible expectations of the new U.S. president and his plans for rescuing the economy. Some critics say that Barack Obama's trillion-dollar plan will create few jobs in the next two years and that he has proposed little to fix the battered U.S. banking system. As well, Obama's $50-billion plan to subsidize those with homeowner mortgages is criticized as subsidizing those who have made poor decisions. Critics say many will receive the subsidies even though they could cut back their lifestyle and pay the mortgages. One economic writer compares Obama's lavish spending plans and huge future debt with Harper's cautious pragmatism, which he says will look more impressive in the months ahead. He gives four approaches that are more responsible than Obama's: "agree to spend money now but more restrained, no to massive future spending commitments, no to any new entitlements and cutting taxes across the board, and trying to keep the GDP/debt ratio constant over the next five years." Will Canada do better? We certainly should hope so, but we should also hope that the Americans recover for obvious reasons. How about great expectations on a smaller scale. In B.C., in spite of problems in forestry, preparation for next year's Olympics is looked on as a positive for that province's economic outlook. For an expenditure of $6 billion, some optimists are predicting a benefit of $10.7 billion, 244,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and $2.6 billion in tax revenue. This is very optimistic, but supporters say those who attend the Olympics and spend money are wealthy; however, others caution that the worldwide economic crisis will most likely affect the returns on the investment. On a much smaller scale, but important to the business, the small company licensed to manufacture the 2010 winter Olympic mascots in Burnaby is doing extremely well and expects to increase staff and revenue instead of downsizing as they feared. To date they have sold more than 200,000 items with much more expected, and very positive expectations for the future. Roger's Right Corner runs Wednesdays.
