It is crazy to be witness to Conservative Party members saying that the private sector, history and natural resources have absolutely nothing to do with the recovery, but that every job is due to them.
I will get more to the point in today's situation. The budget was introduced in February of this year. We should think back to those long six month and how things have changed. It is now almost October, and even if the economic action plan in that budget of February 2011 was the right thing to do at that time, although I do not accept that, but even if it were, the whole world has changed in the last six months. Therefore, what was right in February 2011, is not right today in late September 2011. We should think back to February of this year. What was happening? The stock market was going up nicely. Now it has tanked by close to 20%.
Everybody thought the U.S. economy was proceeding fine in those days, but now we see what has happened to the U.S. Every indicator points to bad news. We have dysfunctional politics south of the border. We have the crazy situation about the debt limit and the incapacity in the United States to act politically. Therefore, what was one thing in February is totally different and far worse, both economically and politically, today.
Let us look at Europe. Nobody was talking about the eurozone ending. Nobody was talking about Greece defaulting. Nobody was talking about European banks defaulting. However, that is exactly what they are talking about now. It seems that the European leaders cannot get their act together, cannot agree on what to do, so we have a real possibility of a really dangerous situation, both in Europe and in the United States.
I will quote from an article in The Economist that came out just today. It is entitled “Be Afraid”. It states:
But governments are not just failing to act; they are exacerbating the mess.
My point is that if the government does not adopt something like what the NDP motion calls for, it will be not just failing to act, but exacerbating the mess.
I will proceed further to talk about three people and institutions that agree with what I have just said, and they can hardly be regarded as raving socialists.
First, the IMF went into countries, forced them to cut spending and were really mean to the small countries, et cetera. It is fiscal conservative. What does the IMF say? The new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, recently, in her opening speech to the annual meeting, said that what governments today should do is that they should have a medium term plan to balance the books and pay down debt, but, in the short run, they should take action to support jobs and the economy.
She is the head of the IMF. The government should do what she said. We certainly have the room. We should take action to support jobs and the economy in the short run, while having a plan to balance the books in the longer run.
We also have Sherry Cooper, the chief economist at Bank of Montreal. I used to be the chief economist at the Royal Bank and the golden rule for chief economists is to never ever criticize the federal government or the boss will get mad. Maybe her boss is mad at her but she spoke truth to power and said what was right. She said that the actions of the government were like the actions of Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression. We do not raise taxes or cut spending when times are super tough. That is what Herbert Hoover did and it caused the Great Depression. That is what the government seems to be poised on doing, unless it follows the advice that it is receiving today.
I will talk about The Economist. Everybody would agree that The Economist is a small “c” conservative magazine. It is not raving socialist. It is fiscally very conservative most of the time. It understands that times are different, times are tough, times are extremely dangerous, so it has been urging for a number of weeks now the same thing as the head of the IMF and the same thing as Sherry Cooper.
They are saying that, during these difficult and dangerous economic times, it is not the time for governments to cut. It is the time for governments to support the economy. They are complaining that the problem we have is not just that governments are failing to act but that they are exacerbating the mess.
I would conclude that these are unusual times and they are dangerous times from an economic point of view. I am not saying that the government's plan back in February was appropriate but it can make a case that it was. However, even if it were appropriate in February, it is not appropriate in September. Additional actions need to be taken unless the government wants to be part of the mess rather than part of the solution.