Thursday, November 12, 2009

A step behind or a step ahead?

So the province says we are headed for a recession. Historically governments have tended to try and spend our way out of a recession. Over this last year Saskatoon seemed recession-proof - we bucked the global trend. Apparently not. So I ponder whether Saskatoon is a step behind the rest of the world or whether we were so visionary that we were spending our way out of a recession before we were in one.

12 comments:

  1. Hey Civic Mistress,

    Obviously spending our way out of a recession doesn't work then. The Sask Party needs to be a lot more cautious - let's not forget the huge debt left by Grant Devine,(I think it was some $15 billion). The NDP had to clean up that mess and put the province on the right track financially, only to get booted out and replaced by the big spenders again, who have cashed in on the good times, mostly due to prudent managment by NDP governments.

    Is this going to be a repeat performance? Has the Sask party learned anything in the 16 years they were out of power?

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  2. The 'Boom' was a result of prudent management by NDP governments? Wow are you dumb. Was Lorne Calvert pumping oil into the grounds while on his bus tour? Was he sneaking other valuable commodities into the dirt around the province? Or are the Saskatchewan NDP responsible for the global price on oil, somehow edging OPEC out of the picture?

    Get a reality check Anon, the good fortune of this province was thanks to dumb luck that we sit on very valuable land. This boom was fueled by pumping out oil and selling it at record prices per barrel. Haha you must be really naive to believe the NDP were responsible for the boom. They were no more responsible than the Sask Party for the boom, actually maybe not as responsible as the Sask Party actually made it viable to drill the oil out whereas the NDP did everything to prevent it.

    Also people can we please stop with the Conservative and Sask Party link? We could just as easily call the Liberals the father of the Sask Party. The reality is, that it is a new party formed with new views formed from the disillusioned members of two other parties. It is just another attempt at fear mongering from the NDP.

    On a different note, can we make sure that we not vote the NDP back into power. Hopefully we have learned from the past transgressions of the Bolsheviks in Russia that the NDP cannot be trusted. Has the NDP learned anything from the Bolshevik roots?

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  3. Was the Sask Party in power 16 years ago? I thought this was their first time in power as a party?

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  4. I agree with Anon 1 we need to be cautious with our spending and I am sure glad the SaskParty canceled the Station 20 West project. It is obvious we can't afford a project like that with a recession going on.

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  5. Station 20 West should have been cancelled long before the Sask Party did it. I am not against a clinic, or some doctors offices there but do people note realize the huge subsidies paid to get Giant Tiger to build a grocery store out there? Now people want more subsidies to build another one that would essentially put Giant Tiger out of business? Scale the project down and maybe then it will be feasible.

    Station 20 West is a terrible idea as it is.

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  6. In this article and in previous postings a contributor insists on designating the Sask Party as the Conservative Party. To set the record straight the Sask Party was formed by a collection of elected Liberal and Conservative MLAs sitting in opposition to the governing NDP and joining together to form a new party.

    There exists today a provincial Liberal Party and the provincial Conservative Party is currently attempting to resurrect itself after being parked for ten years.

    Similarly the Green Party seems to be an off shoot of the NDP.

    In both instances the new parties (Sask and Green)seem to be the dischanted members of established parties branching out on their own.

    With a least five provincial parties, majority governments may be a thing of the past.

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  7. Is somebody truly attempting to say the Saskatchewan party is in no way connected to the former Progressive Conservative party? Of course the two are connected!

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  8. This argument is only one of the reasons the NDP will not form government for years. They keep chasing a Party that no longer is relevant in this province. The average person knows the difference in the Grant Devine Tories and the new Brad Wall lead SaskParty. There are always going to be connections to other political parties and that is what makes the SaskParty more appealing to the general public. Their politics is not to the extremes seen in the Conservatives or the current NDP. If you want to talk about a party with connections how about one that picks a leader that has more old baggage than Air Canada.

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  9. Re the person screaming that the saskparty and conservatives are not connected.....sounds like an over-reaction to me - must have hit a chord. Methinks madam doth protest too much....

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  10. I would suggest that Saskatoon just rode the wave of resource revenues created by Potash, oil, etc... (mostly Potash it seems). Unfortunately, we are now feeling the effects of the global recession - though it will probably be mild compared to other places in the world.

    Now we have to pick up the pieces that the "boom" has spread around the city - RiverLanding, 7 new neighbourhoods coming together, and the huge infrastructure deficit we've created as a result of spending on new, but leaving the existing unaddressed.

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  11. To whomever thinks that Giant Tiger is a grocery store - shopped there lately??? Planned your healthy meals for a week from Giant Tiger - do it a couple times and then say that that meets the needs of a neighbourhood.

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  12. No, the fact that the Saskatchewan party are doing the same things as the PC party is a pretty strong reason and argument not to vote SP in the next election. In two years they took a 2 billion dollar surplus and turned it into a 1.3 billion and growing deficit. And the recession is just starting!

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