Feb 22nd
libThese reports present the key points raised by the panelists, the Caucus members, and members’ online feedback as well as highlights of the question... read more2 hours ago | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libThese reports present the key points raised by the panelists, the Caucus members, and members’ online feedback as well as highlights of the question... read more2 hours ago | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
Smart Economy by Christina Fong It is time for a new refreshing change in the Canadian economy today. Each citizen has the right to live in a country where... read more3 hours ago | Ontario, Barrie
greSmart Economy by Christina Fong It is time for a new refreshing change in the Canadian economy today. Each citizen has the right to live in a country where... read more3 hours ago | Ontario, Barrie
Feb 21st
- MP
libCarolyn BennettNutrition North…. a disaster….. the government didn’t consult, didn’t listen, the replacement for the Food Mail Programme is a COSTLY failure….20 hours ago | Ontario, St. Paul's
libBROSSARD, QC— Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the death of Pierre Juneau: “Today Canada lost one of its greatest advocates... read moreTue 2:56 pm | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libBROSSARD, QC— Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the death of Pierre Juneau: “Today Canada lost one of its greatest advocates... read moreTue 2:56 pm | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
libWINNIPEG– The Conservative government’s Bill C-31 deeply politicizes our refugee system, said Liberal Citizenship and Immigration critic Kevin Lamoureux... read moreTue 11:55 am | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libWINNIPEG– The Conservative government’s Bill C-31 deeply politicizes our refugee system, said Liberal Citizenship and Immigration critic Kevin Lamoureux... read moreTue 11:55 am | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
libSHERBROOKE— Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the death of former ethics counsellor Howard Wilson: “We are all saddened... read moreTue 9:58 am | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libSHERBROOKE— Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the death of former ethics counsellor Howard Wilson: “We are all saddened... read moreTue 9:58 am | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre- MP
ndpDear Friends, I was very sad to hear the news about Jim Green and how he's facing cancer. I join the many people in our city who send him love and good... read moreTue 8:40 am | British Columbia, Vancouver East - MP
libCarolyn BennettMy letter to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Canada’s 19th and 20th Periodic ReportsClick here to read my letter to CERD regarding its consideration of Canada’s 19th and 20th Periodic Reports, taking place this week in Geneva. In... read moreTue 7:30 am | Ontario, St. Paul's
libWhen aspiring Republican U.S. presidential candidate Rick Santorum spoke at an economic club in Detroit last week he revealed just …Continue reading... read moreTue 3:03 am | Ontario, London North Centre
Feb 18th
- MP
lib“Protect your Charter rights. Support the Liberal amendments for judicial oversight on electronic surveillance. To find out more and take action... read moreSat 12:14 pm | British Columbia, Vancouver Quadra
Feb 17th
- MP
libOptimism personified.. OISE’s Julia O’Sullivan gets it….. and Suzanne Stewart makes its happen… and Stephen Van Offlen http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/research/ien/courses.html... read moreFri 6:18 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's - MP
libCarolyn BennettJohn Duncan finally responds to my letter on the crisis in Attawapiskat…almost 3 months later!Today I received a reply from Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan to my November 24, 2011 letter regarding the urgent situation confronting Attawapiskat... read moreFri 1:10 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's - MP
libCarolyn BennettCanada’s review before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)A coalition of First Nations organizations and governments, including the Assembly of First Nations and the Native Women’s Association of Canada,... read moreFri 12:56 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's
libSHEDIAC, NB— Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Dominic LeBlanc made the following statement on the one-year anniversary of Libya’s revolution: “One... read moreFri 12:36 pm | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libSHEDIAC, NB— Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Dominic LeBlanc made the following statement on the one-year anniversary of Libya’s revolution: “One... read moreFri 12:36 pm | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre- MP
libCanada’s pension problem today is rooted in stagnant disposable incomes among middle-class families. Over the past six years, the wealthiest 10% of Canadians... read moreFri 11:50 am | Saskatchewan, Wascana - MP
libFor Immediate Release February 17, 2012 OTTAWA- The Liberal Party today launched a petition calling on the Conservative government to support Liberal amendments... read moreFri 11:16 am | Ontario, St. Paul's
libOTTAWA- The Liberal Party today launched a petition calling on the Conservative government to support Liberal amendments that will protect the privacy... read moreFri 10:38 am | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libOTTAWA- The Liberal Party today launched a petition calling on the Conservative government to support Liberal amendments that will protect the privacy... read moreFri 10:38 am | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
libThe Conservative government has introduced an Online Surveillance Bill that could violate your Charter right to privacy — unless you act now to stop... read moreFri 10:27 am | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libThe Conservative government has introduced an Online Surveillance Bill that could violate your Charter right to privacy — unless you act now to stop... read moreFri 10:27 am | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
libThe rather plot-driven democracy we have been used to for decades is quickly giving way to a new dynamic of …Continue reading » read moreFri 2:37 am | Ontario, London North Centre
Feb 16th
- MP
libHon. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s): Mr. Speaker,While the rest of Canada demands real action on First Nation education, the Minister of Aboriginal... read moreThu 8:58 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's - MP
conI delivered the following speech on February 3 before the Toronto Board of Trade. Yesterday, the Financial Post published an excerpt under the title “Give Keynes the boot.” ********** Today I would like to discuss the issues of how to solve the global economic crisis that began in 2007. As you all know it began as a financial crisis caused by a real estate crash in the United States. It then spread around the world and caused a recession. Most governments reacted with ambitious stimulus packages that were added to the high debt levels they already had. It has now transformed itself into a sovereign debt and a budgetary crisis in particular in Europe and the United States. Some countries in Europe like Greece are close to bankruptcy and need to be bailed out. Others such as Italy and Spain are in serious trouble. Some of them are expected to be in recession this year. Many analysts are saying that this may eventually break the European monetary union. The U. S. for its part has been accumulating huge and unsustainable deficits for several years. In Canada, on the contrary the situation is under control. We’ve created more jobs since the recession than we lost during the recession. Canada did pretty good in part because we had sound public finances before the crisis and because our stimulus plan was limited and well targeted mostly on needed infrastructure. We did not lose control of our spending. We did not create unsustainable deficits. And today we are on a clear path to a balanced budget and unless the international economic situation gets worse sustained growth. Why is it, that Canada finds itself in a relatively favourable economic situation while our partners are still having serious difficulties? Because our partners follow the economic school of thought called Keynesianism. This theory was developed by British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes did not trust private entrepreneurs and the free market very much. He was a strong believer in government intervention. One of Keynes’s central ideas is that when you find yourself in a crisis or a recession the best solution is to increase government spending. Government spending will sustain overall demand put everyone back to work and kick-start the economy. Even if you already have a big deficit and a high level of accumulated debt it doesn’t matter. You should borrow and spend. That’s one of the paradoxes proposed by Keynes the solution to too much spending is more spending. The solution to high levels of deficit and debt is more deficit and debt. Keynesian economists are saying that the reason why the American economy is still not fully recovering from the crisis is that the American government is not spending enough. For them annual budget deficits amounting to 10% of GDP are not enough. They are calling for even larger budget deficits. To give an idea, our budget deficit in Canada, this year, amounts to less than 2% of GDP. There is something fundamentally wrong with this explanation. The key question you have to ask is this where does the money that governments spend come from? It has to come from somewhere. A government cannot inject resources into the economy unless it has first extracted them from the private sector through taxes or put us further into debt by borrowing the money. Every time the government takes an additional dollar in taxes out of someone’s pocket that’s a dollar that this person will not be able to spend or invest. Government spending goes up, private spending goes down. There is no net effect no increase in overall demand. Government borrowing has the same effect. The private lenders who lend money to the government will have less money to spend or invest elsewhere. Or they will have less money to lend to other private business people. Government borrowing and spending goes up private borrowing and spending goes down. There is no net effect no increase in overall demand. It’s like taking a bucket of water in the deep end of a swimming pool and emptying it in the shallow end. And it’s definitely not working. Our Keynesian friends in Ottawa the NDP and the Liberals should understand this. Let’s look briefly at the country that has pursued this type of policy to an extreme degree Japan. Twenty years ago Japan suffered something similar to what the United States experienced recently. There was a speculative bubble in the real estate sector which finally crashed in 1990. Prices collapsed and this affected the whole economy. The Japanese government embarked on a series of public spending programs to artificially stimulate the economy. They spent trillions of yen. But the Japanese economy stayed stagnant. In 1990, Japan’s gross public debt was 68% of GDP. Today, Japan’s public debt is the largest in the world at about 225% of GDP. And they have very little to show for it. You don’t get richer by maxing out your credit card. Yet if we are to believe the Keynesians Japan should have been the fastest growing country in the world during the last 20 years. But that was not the case. Here are two more examples from history that have turned out differently. Ten years before the Great Depression in 1920 and 1921 the U. S. economy experienced a very severe recession. But almost nobody knows about it today because it did not last very long. The economy went down by 17%. Unemployment went from 5% to 12%. The President at the time Warren Harding did not believe that increased government spending was the way to revive the economy. On the contrary he thought government should get out of the way. What was his solution? He cut the American government’s budget almost by half. It went from 6.3 billion dollars in 1920 the last year of the Wilson administration to 3.3 billion in 1922. He also cut taxes. According to our Keynesian friends and the opposition party in Ottawa that’s not at all what a government should do to revive the economy. But that’s precisely what happened. By the end of 1921 the economy had rebounded and grew for the rest of the decade. Unemployment went down rapidly to 2.4% in 1922. What about the Great Depression itself? Many people believe that the President Roosevelt’s New Deal solved the crisis. But that’s not what happened. Despite all the new spending and new programs the depression went on and on. In 1939 Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau made a startling admission and I quote: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot!” It is also often said that the Second World War ended the Depression. That’s not the case either. Unemployment certainly went down because millions of men were drafted. But the situation did not improve for ordinary Americans. Most basic products were rationed during the war. The Depression actually ended after the war. That’s when government spending was drastically reduced. Government spending went from 92 billion dollars in 1945 to 29 billion dollars in 1948. That’s a reduction of more than two thirds! That’s when the post-war prosperity started. The consumer society as we know it where the average family was able to afford a fridge, a car, and a house started at that time. Again if we follow Keynesian logic this is not what should have happened. With these spending cuts, government was reducing overall demand. The economy should have crashed. But the economy boomed because the government released resources that became available to the private sector. Government spending always competes with private sector spending for scarce resources. When you divert resources from the more productive uses that they can find in the private sector to less productive uses in the public sector you will not see growth. To revive the economy we need to let entrepreneurs keep the means to create wealth. We need to create the best conditions possible for the private sector to become more productive. This means first of all to restrain spending. That’s what our government is going to do with a clear plan to achieve a balanced budget by 2015. In the coming budget our government will announce cuts in government operations of between 5% and 10%. That’s a concrete way to stop competing with the private sector. We also need to reduce taxes. Since January 1st corporate taxes in Canada stand at 15% the lowest among G7 countries. They were at 22% when we took power six years ago. That’s a concrete way to leave resources in the private sector. We need more free trade. Our government has also announced free trade agreements with eleven countries. We are still negotiating with several other countries. We hope soon to be able to announce a very important agreement with the European Union. That’s a concrete way to promote free exchange between Canadians and the rest of the world. Finally, we need less regulation. Unnecessary red tape is a hidden tax on entrepreneurs and weighs heaviest on those least able to bear it: small business owners. Unnecessary red tape stifles economic growth and job creation, reduces productivity and can crush the entrepreneurial spirit of Canadians. On January 18, I unveiled the Report of the Commission to reduce Red Tape. It contains 105 recommendations to get rid of regulatory irritants and to prevent red tape from growing again. That’s a concrete way to free the private sector. We know that sustainable growth cannot be achieved with more government spending, more debt and more taxes. That’s the Keynesians theory. That’s what the opposition in Ottawa keeps asking for. Their only solution to everything is more spending, more artificial stimulus, more debt and more taxes. What they don’t realise is that too much stimulus will act as an economic sedative rather than as a stimulant. We cannot spend our way to prosperity. The Keynesian solution has been tested and has failed. What we need is a conservative approach witch emphasices the primary role of the private sector in creating wealth and sustaining economic growth. Free markets made Canada a prosperous country. Free markets will also insure a strong recovery. Thank you! read moreThu 5:29 pm | Quebec, Beauce - MP
libThu 5:00 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's
libGayle StuckeLiberal Statement on the 45th Anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of WomenOTTAWA– Chair of the National Liberal Women’s Caucus Dr. Carolyn Bennett made the following statement today on the 45th anniversary of the Royal Commission... read moreThu 12:08 pm | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libAnita NevilleLiberal Statement on the 45th Anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of WomenOTTAWA– Chair of the National Liberal Women’s Caucus Dr. Carolyn Bennett made the following statement today on the 45th anniversary of the Royal Commission... read moreThu 12:08 pm | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre- MP
libCarolyn BennettStatement on the 45th anniversary of the launch of the Royal Commission on the Status of WomenFor Immediate Release February 16, 2012 OTTAWA– Chair of the National Liberal Women’s Caucus Dr. Carolyn Bennett made the following statement today... read moreThu 12:00 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's - MP
ndpJohn RaffertyFrom the House - Week of February 17 - 24, 2012 - The Final Vote to End the Long Gun RegistryThis was the week in Ottawa where the fate of the Long Gun Registry was finally sealed as bill C-19 passed its final hurdle in the House of Commons. ... read moreThu 11:17 am | Ontario, Thunder Bay—Rainy River - MP
libBelow is my speech on today’s Opposition motion on First Nations education: That, in the opinion of the House, the government should adopt Shannen’s... read moreThu 10:35 am | Ontario, St. Paul's
ndpNycole TurmelStatement by Nycole Turmel on the 7th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol coming into forceSeven years ago today, the Kyoto Protocol came into force. Canadians were proud that Canada was one of nearly 200 countries to support this treaty, aimed... read moreThu 9:03 am | Quebec, Hull—Aylmer
Feb 15th
- MP
libCarolyn BennettMy speech on Kirsty Duncan’s Bill C-280, An Act to establish a National Strategy for CCSVIHon. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to rise here today to speak to Bill C-280, An Act to establish... read moreFeb 15, 2012 4:00 pm | Ontario, St. Paul's
libOTTAWA– Liberal Veterans Affairs critic Sean Casey made the following statement today about Conservative secrecy at the Veterans Affairs committee: “Yesterday,... read moreFeb 15, 2012 1:35 pm | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libOTTAWA– Liberal Veterans Affairs critic Sean Casey made the following statement today about Conservative secrecy at the Veterans Affairs committee: “Yesterday,... read moreFeb 15, 2012 1:35 pm | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre- MP
ndpC-19 Passes final parliamentary vote 159-130, heads to Senate OTTAWA – Thunder Bay – Rainy River Member of Parliament John Rafferty kept a long standing... read moreFeb 15, 2012 1:29 pm | Ontario, Thunder Bay—Rainy River
libOn this day 47 years ago, the maple leaf flew for the first time as our official national symbol. Since then the red and white maple leaf flag has been... read moreFeb 15, 2012 12:17 pm | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libOn this day 47 years ago, the maple leaf flew for the first time as our official national symbol. Since then the red and white maple leaf flag has been... read moreFeb 15, 2012 12:17 pm | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
True Democracy by Emily Brady and Christina Fong True democracy, also called direct democracy, is when citizens have the ability to directly... read moreFeb 15, 2012 12:15 pm | Ontario, Barrie
greTrue Democracy by Emily Brady and Christina Fong True democracy, also called direct democracy, is when citizens have the ability to directly... read moreFeb 15, 2012 12:15 pm | Ontario, Barrie- MP
libFor Immediate Release February 15, 2012 OTTAWA– The Liberal Party of Canada is proposing changes to the House of Commons Standing Orders to clarify the... read moreFeb 15, 2012 11:40 am | British Columbia, Vancouver Quadra
libOTTAWA— Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the National Flag of Canada Day: “On this day, 47 years ago, the maple leaf [...] read moreFeb 15, 2012 11:33 am | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libOTTAWA— Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the National Flag of Canada Day: “On this day, 47 years ago, the maple leaf [...] read moreFeb 15, 2012 11:33 am | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre
libOTTAWA– Liberal Public Safety and National Security critic Francis Scarpaleggia made the following statement today on the Conservative government’s... read moreFeb 15, 2012 10:57 am | Ontario, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
libOTTAWA– Liberal Public Safety and National Security critic Francis Scarpaleggia made the following statement today on the Conservative government’s... read moreFeb 15, 2012 10:57 am | Manitoba, Winnipeg South Centre- MP
libFor Immediate Release: February 15th is National Flag Day in Canada when we celebrate this enduring emblem of what it means to be a proud Canadian. On... read moreFeb 15, 2012 10:26 am | British Columbia, Vancouver Quadra
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