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Originally Posted by rickholio
To be fair, conservatives aren't the ONLY ones with opaque spending practices. Any power base that's been entrenched too long will have it's system gamers, as evidenced by the cretien liberals
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...and the Trudeau Liberals. After all, they were in power for what, 11 years straight? Lots of good and bad in every long-term 'regime'.
I of course was speaking mostly from the perspective of my own province and our provincial goverment. Federaly the conservative party of Canada has walked in the bizarro world for much of the past 10-15 years, especially during that whole right-wing split when the "Stockwell Day" Reform party existed. Make no mistake, they still exist those reformers and are alive and well and influencing policy within the PC caucus. Not all of their policies were evil... but many were in my opinion.
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Originally Posted by rickholio
I've always been more of a "social liberal, fiscal conservative" type of voter, which meant that my votes often split between the libs and the PC (although I couldn't stomach it after mulrooney fucked us over with the GST and NAFTA).
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Mulrooney had 'mistake' written all over him. Timing was everything where he was concerned, and during that time he was presented as "Canada's salvation" and the country bought it hook, line and sinker. Hopefully, we not only lived but learned as well.
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Originally Posted by rickholio
Apparently the people of nova scotia, at one point before I arrived, voted in a tax on utilities in order to raise the money to clean up halifax harbour, which is kinda nasty. Decades later, there SHOULD be hundreds of millions in that fund... but it's all been spent, because the 'fund' never happened. They just poured that cash into general revenue and spent it on whatever they spent it on. I believe Hamm claimed that it (at least in part) went to 'salting and then repairing the roads in winter'.
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Absolutely similar situation, except that our gambling revenue is ongoing, and reports indicate that it is growing every year exponentially. I'm sure the growing efforts to bring in more gaming tourism to the city here contributes much of that growth. I continue to be blown away that with that size of a revenue spurt the government still has all of the usual complaints about not having enough to go around.