Month: April 2012

Wait, what?

From the Vancouver Sun,

Twelve of the world’s poorest countries – including Afghanistan, Pakistan and seven nations in Africa – are going to be hit as the Conservative government cuts its foreign aid budget by $377 mil-lion in the next three years.

Many of the affected countries rely on international assistance to provide food and other ser-vices to millions of citizens.

A source within the Canadian International Development Agency said Benin, Niger, Cambodia, China, Nepal, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe are expected to lose virtually all Canadian aid.

We were giving aid dollars to China?

According to the World Bank, Canada’s GDP in 2010 was $1.58T. China’s comparatively was $5.93T. China’s GDP is increasing at a rate of 10.4% a year.

New rule: if your country has a space program, Canada will not send you aid dollars.

Poll: Wildrose and PC gap tightens to 8

Campaign Research’s third weekly tracking poll shows that the Alberta election gap between Wildrose and the PC Party has tightened to 8 points.

Some key findings of the poll:
– Wildrose: 42.8%, PC: 34.4%
– PC party gain comes at expense of Liberals and NDP. Wildrose drop within margin of error.
– PCs lead Wildrose by 22 points in Edmonton
– Wildrose leads PCs by 18 points in rural Alberta and Calgary (49% of popular vote)
– Best Premier – Smith: 32.1%, Redford 27.1%

Asked and answered

Here is the new leader of the NDP, Thomas Mulcair in his first Question Period as leader of the opposition,

Questions about middle-class jobs. That was only a few days ago.

This morning, Statscan had welcome news for Canadians,

OTTAWA – After months of stagnant or even falling employment, Canada’s economy began churning out jobs again last month — and in a big way — adding 82,300 workers to the labour force.

The eye-popping gain, almost all in full-time work, was about eight times economists’ expectations and dropped the unemployment rate two notches to 7.2 per cent.

Of those numbers, 70,000 of those jobs are full-time.

Of course, if the NDP had their way their would sap the Canadian economy of its ability to attract investment and capital.

Anyhow, Thomas Mulcair’s NDP released a new ad this morning as well. Mulcair promises to build a more green and prosperous economy. Unfortunately for him, today was not the best of days to release an ad contrasting his economic vision with that of the real economy.