Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I was going to post about the public sector bloating and that reply. I just think it’s the wrong metric. Firstly, to look at it over a decade isn’t really accurate. But second, and probably more important, is that they hired a lot of new employees across the sectors in general. People I know in parks were driving around with nothing to do (their words, not mine). They had people hired and paid with literally no job duties. It’s pure ideology, and frankly laughable that people would characterize this as somehow prudent or responsible.
And on that fiscal front, the carbon tax was terribly implemented. All those funds flowed to general revenue which added a few billion to the budget and they still couldn’t manage to stick to it. I know it’s not in the romanticized version of their government, but it’s financially concerning to say the least.
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Except most of what you just said is wrong. Maybe you have some anecdotal parks friends who drove around and did nothing, but if you look at the FTE during the NDP time you can easily see that 90%+ of new hires went to three departments, Education, Health and Justice. It wasn't causing bloat, it was filling needs at the time, and driven by the need to ensure we had the health and education supports to deal with a recession. Almost every other department was on a hiring freeze and most didn't even fill vacated positions. I also have friends and family who work in the public service and anecdotally what I heard was more work, but no new people for the vast majority of ministries.
Next you claim that the carbon tax all went to general revenue. This is fully false. They even tracked exactly where carbon tax dollars went because it was specifically meant for green initiatives and NOT general revenues. 25% of it went to rebates, another 25% went to Transit programs, 20% went to ERA and EEA, 10% went to the Small business tax reduction and then there was a blob of 20% of "Other" which I guess you could call "general revenue" but I think it would have been more targeted than that.
The NDP practiced some pretty standard and straight forward keynesian economic policies. I can totally get behind debating Keynesian vs Neoliberal policies because I would argue that the conservative neoliberal policies are much worse for the economy as a whole.