Yay! We're winning in the race to the bottom!

Don't you feel great?

baizhongtang has previously said:

"Flaherty says now is not the time for "dangerous and risky" new spending schemes that will increase deficits and raise taxes"...you mean like new military spending, new fighter jets, new jails, more police, more security, more spying on Canadians and more tax cuts? ( for corps?)?

How much money the Canadian taxpayer gives to the American treasury every year. A gift with nothing in return..I can think of so many better ways to spend 4-6 billion annually, can't you?

Munir Sheikh had an op-ed piece in the Globe: A Canada-U.S. tax gap means a Canada-U.S. tax transfer

"Under Article XXIV of the Canada-U.S. tax treaty, any U.S. citizen, resident or company earning income in Canada is subject to U.S. tax, with a credit for Canadian tax paid or accrued."

This means that our lower corporate tax rate is not an incentive for American companies to invest in Canada, because there is no net benefit.

Any savings here are paid there.

The notion of corporate taxes having a trickle down affect is not new.

It was tried in Canada before Harper. At the time it was thought of as plausible, now it is only laughable.

A rough estimate concludes that there is a "$500-million annual tax transfer from Canada to the U.S. for every point reduction in the Canadian tax rate."

Their corporate tax rate is 34.2% and Harper and Flaherty are attempting to reduce ours to 15%, roughly half. And under the current agreement, the difference goes directly to the American treasury. $500 million annually for every point difference.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-canada-us-tax-gap-means-a-canada-us-tax-transfer/article1991567/

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2009/10/22/BubbleWillBurst/

&

"Finance Minister Jim Flaherty repeated the mantra that the government acted early to get rid of risky mortgages. What he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper do not explain, however, is that the expansion of zero-down, 40-year mortgages began with measures contained in the first Conservative budget in May of 2006.

At the time, Mr. Flaherty announced that the government was opening up the market to more private insurers.

"These changes will result in greater choice and innovation in the market for mortgage insurance, benefiting consumers and promoting home ownership," Mr. Flaherty said.

The new rules encouraged the entry of such U.S. players as American International Group – the world's largest insurance company – and Triad Guarantee Inc. of Winston-Salem, N.C. Former Triad chief executive officer Mark Tonnesen, who spearheaded his company's aborted push into Canada, said the proliferation of high-risk mortgages could have been mitigated if Ottawa had been more watchful."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/article727831.ece

One Conservative misdeed, that has certainly flown under the radar, was the secret bailing out of our banks. This was necessary after allowing sub-prime mortgages to infiltrate our once sound banking industry.

And not only did Flaherty give them 150 billion dollars of our money, but they also tapped the U.S. government for 111 billion dollars more.

In the November 2009 "Markets At A Glance" investment newsletter by Eric Sprott and David Franklin, they revealed:

"Acknowledging the leverage levels above, you may wonder how the Canadian banks escaped the 2008 meltdown unscathed. The answer is that they received significant assistance from the Canadian government. First, they received $65 billion in liquidity injections from the Insured Mortgage Purchase Program (IMPP), whereby Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) purchased insured mortgages from Canadian banks to provide additional liquidity on the asset side of their balance sheets. Next, the Bank of Canada provided them with an additional $45 billion in temporary liquidity facilities. Finally, a Canadian Bank (that shall remain nameless) also received assistance from the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) through the purchase of $4 billion in mortgages prior to the IMPP program, for a total government expenditure of $114 billion.

For reference, the entire tangible common equity of the Canadian Banks in 2008 was $68 billion. The Canadian government injected a sum through mortgage purchases worth more than the entire tangible common equity of the Canadian banking system!

http://www.sprott.com/Docs/MarketsataGlance/11_09%20Dont%20Bank%20on%20the%20Banks.pdf

The story of how the U.S. housing crisis spread to Canada is a tale of carefully orchestrated U.S. corporate lobbying, failed public-policy promises and government inaction to numerous private and public warnings about reckless mortgage practices.

AIG's Greensboro, N.C., mortgage subsidiary launched a quiet lobbying campaign in 2004 with senior U.S. executives and a former CMHC official to push open the doors to Canada's mortgage insurance market, where some of the world's highest insurance rates are charged. Two years later, on May 1, 2006, AIG's mortgage insurance division registered with the lobbying commissioner's office. It was the day before the federal budget revealed new players would be allowed into Canada.

– Banking and insurance officials were so concerned about the alarming rush to 40-year mortgages at the beginning of 2008 that one bank executive warned the Bank of Canada's chief financial stability officer, Mark Zelmer, in a meeting that "the government has got to put an end to this."

– Critics, including former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge, say the lax mortgage policies only further stoked soaring house prices. As for mortgage insurance premiums, industry officials say rates remain virtually unchanged and could potentially rise as troubled U.S. players begin to retreat from Canada.

mail.com/report-on-business/special-investigation-how-high-risk-mortgages-crept-north/article727831/page1/

40 years after CMHC was founded, the business of mortgage insurance was as exciting as an actuarial table. The agency was set up by the federal government as a kind of financial cushion to encourage the country's conservative financial institutions to open their vaults and lend more money to homeowners.

If a home buyer couldn't pony up a 25-per-cent down payment on a house purchase, CMHC shouldered the risk of default by insuring the mortgage and charging the buyer an insurance premium. Backing CMHC's insurance policies was a 100-per-cent federal guarantee. In bad years, Ottawa piped money into CMHC; in good years, the agency added to the federal treasury by paying taxes.

The smooth working system hit a pothole in 1988 when Canada's only other mortgage insurer at the time, Toronto-based MICC, was nearly wiped out by new international bank capital rules. The rules threatened to shutter MICC because they effectively made it cheaper for banks to use CMHC's government-guaranteed mortgage insurance.

Faced with the imminent collapse of Canada's only private-sector mortgage insurer, the then Conservative government went to a place that few other industrialized countries have gone by agreeing to guarantee the policies of a non-government mortgage insurer. According to people involved in the crisis, Ottawa "hesitantly" agreed to "taking on an enormous liability" of guaranteeing 90 per cent of MICC's insurance policies.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/special-investigation-how-high-risk-mortgages-crept-north/article727831/page2/

Their corporate tax rate is 34.2% and Harper and Flaherty are attempting to reduce ours to 15%, roughly half. And under the current agreement, the difference goes directly to the American treasury. $500 million annually for every point difference.

Statscan's former chief statistician Munir Sheikh
The Globe and Mail

A Canada-U.S. tax gap means a Canada-U.S. tax transfer ..

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-canada-us-tax-gap-means-a-canada-us-tax-transfer/article1991567

&

you want to know what promises Harper broke??

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/2011/03/14/harper-then-and-now

&

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2009/10/22/BubbleWillBurst/

Harper is only interested in being PM to hand over the working class to the corporations, his finance minister Flaherty together with Baird and Clemente destroyed the Ontario economy and now they want to do the same to your province.

Flaherty recently announced that he will be spending $6.5 million to advertise his government's tax policies as helping Canadians. What won't be included in this taxpayer funded blitz, is the fact that taxes only went down for the wealthy, while Canada's working class have seen an increase.

http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/harper-and-flahertys-voodoo-economics.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/tax-man-to-hit-canadian-workers-harder-in-2011/article1851480

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/sticking-the-public-with-the-bill-for-the-bankers-crisis/article1620729/

SPP by stealth.......and they call it democracy.
http://www.youmespp.com/
Film Description:

What do secrecy, police provocateurs, an assault on democracy and infringements on citizens' rights have in common? The Security Prosperity Partnership.

'You, Me, and the S.P.P: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule' is a feature length documentary which exposes the latest manifestation of a corporatist agenda that is undermining the democratic authority of the citizens of North America.

Two processes, the Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the Trade Investment Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) are rapidly eroding and eliminating standards, civil liberties, regulatory systems and institutions put in place over generations through the democratic process. Proponents of the SPP and TILMA say that they are needed to keep trade flowing, opponents say these agreements not only undermine the democratic author

I do wonder if Canada's corporate rate is actually close to 30% or not. I suppose it could be "actually" that amount. I mean this article says the USA's rate is close to 45% that of course is completely misleading when some of the largest corporations in the USA were eligible for TAX RETURNS! Meaning that the government owed them money! That in reality a lot of business entities in the USA only end up paying 15% despite being supposed to pay far more.

We have no money to afford health care and pensions and we need to cut 5 billion a year from the budget, so its great for business..... not so great if you are a citizen. Great money manager, put the burden on the average taxpayer, has anyone noticed the CONS have never given an income tax reduction? But corporate reduction once a year.