I fully agree with Goodale

Liberal MP and former finance minister Ralph Goodale recently wrote:

First, always preoccupied with short-term election positioning above all else, the Conservatives have become very big spenders. Their budgets have ballooned by more than $40-billion in just over two years. Stephen Harper is today the biggest spending prime minister in history, but few Canadians can name a single thing they've gained from it all.

Secondly, the transparent safeguards that were previously built into federal financial projections have been abandoned. Even the most basic "Contingency Reserve" has been eroded. These provisions used to serve as shock absorbers to prevent unpredictable events from pushing the country back into the red, events such as the Asian currency crisis, the SARS outbreak, the havoc caused by mad-cow disease, and 9/11. In the face of future threats like these, Canadians will have no cushion.

You don't have to be a Liberal to agree with Goodale on this one, because even many conservatives have been so unhappy with Harper's interpretation of "fiscal prudence" that many of them may not vote Conservative next time.

I also seriously challenge the quality of the University of Calgary economics department if Harper is to represent the typical graduate of that school. It is clear to anyone, even those who have never taken Economics 101, that Harper doesn't understand even the basic fundamentals of taxation and fiscal prudence. Given Harper's brazen incompetence, one can reach only one conclusion: the economics department at the U of C is nothing but a diploma mill.

Update1: Jeffrey Simpson chimes in:

Instead of focusing relentlessly on this complicated challenge – and it is complicated – governments (egged on by the public) have engaged in counter-productive policies. Cutting the goods and services tax, instead of lowering personal and corporate taxes, earns the Three Star Award for a dumb approach to productivity.

Update2: Looks like there is another U of C (?) graduate who doesn't get it:

Liberal MP Ralph Goodale argues that Stephen Harper has taken the country to the brink of a deficit, and treats that as some major transgression of public morality. In fact, deficits can play a useful role in an economic downturn. So long as deficits are financed from Canadian savers who are also taxpayers and pay taxes on the interest payments received, and the Bank of Canada keeps the real rate of interest lower than the growth rate in the GDP, then the net effect of a deficit is to limit the downturn and restore prosperity faster than otherwise would be the case.

Deficits, in fact, limit the burden on future taxpayers because they limit the damage of recessions. Trying to run a surplus budget in an economic downturn is likely to make matters worse, not better.

There is also a case to be made for lowering consumption taxes such as the GST as one approaches a downturn for it encourages consumption. Simply cutting income taxes may result in higher savings but less stimulus to consumption.

Harold Chorney, economist and professor of public policy, Concordia University, Montreal.

Apparently, the professor is in dire need of a remedial economics refresher course. What stimulates the economy is not a reduced consumption tax (many countries have a GST of around 20% or even more), but people with money in their pockets, i.e., money that the government has not stolen from them in the name of "taxation". The real killer, as everyone knows, is income tax.

Taxing the fruits of people's labour isn't fair at all and should be abolished entirely. People should be rewarded for their work, not punished. In return, government should raise revenue from consumption/sales taxes (as several US states do, for example).