Stephen & Me
A few years ago, a Canadian bank talked me into switching my small locked-in pension (about $10,000) from a G.I.C. to a Balanced Mutual Fund. It hasn't done much, but while the New Conservatives have been on the campaign trail in the midst of an expensive and entirely unnecessary election (which they called), telling Canadians all is well up here in Canada, not to worry, New Conservatives aren't Republicans, and we won't get a majority government anyway - my Balanced Mutual Fund has lost $2,000.
Meanwhile, 2007 was the first year of my life that I didn't get a tax refund. That's right. I made about the same amount of money, almost the exact same amount of money, as I did in 2005 and 2006 - but it turned out I owed several hundred dollars instead. Me, little miss fair to middlin', office clerk at large.
So please, someone, tell me - why are Stephen Harper and his New Conservative Party portrayed as friends to the middle-class and defenders of average Canadian pocket books? I mean, I'm not making this stuff up and I can make a pretty direct connection from my income tax payments to Stephen Harper and his New Conservative government. And I can say with some certainty that, although my retirement isn't entirely dependent on a $10,000 mutual fund (mostly because I plan to work until I die) I'm getting nervous for all those Canadians who have surely been harder hit me by this nasty economic situation brought on by the Republican administration's mismanagement of the American economy. Do people not realize that Stephen Harper and his New Conservatives have adopted as their style of government that very same model of governance?
What's going on with the truth up here in Canada, anyway? Doesn't anybody tell it anymore?
