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Monday, 15 December 2008 |
The untold story of how elements of
the first Conservative budget in 2006 encouraged the entry into Canada
of such big U.S. players as AIG, creating our version of subprime
mortgages
JACQUIE MCNISH AND GREG MCARTHUR
December 13, 2008
In
the first half of this year, as the subprime mortgage crisis was
exploding in the United States, a contagion of U.S.-style lending
practices quietly crossed the border and infected Canada's previously
prudent mortgage regime.
New mortgage borrowers signed up for an estimated $56-billion of
risky 40-year mortgages, more than half of the total new mortgages
approved by banks, trust companies and other lenders during that time,
according to banking and insurance sources. Those sources estimated
that 10 per cent of the mortgages, worth about $10-billion, were taken
out with no money down.
The mushrooming of a Canadian version of subprime mortgages has gone
largely unnoticed. The Conservative government finally banned the
practice last summer, after repeated warnings from frustrated senior
officials and bankers that the country's financial system was being
exposed to far too much risk as the housing market weakened.
Just yesterday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty repeated the mantra
that the government acted early to get rid of risky mortgages. What he
and Prime Minister Stephen Harper do not explain, however, is that the
expansion of zero-down, 40-year mortgages began with measures contained
in the first Conservative budget in May of 2006.
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Sunday, 07 December 2008 |
Canadian Parliament suspended?
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Thursday, 04 December 2008 |
by Garth Turner
There will be a federal election on Monday, March 9th. The campaign
for that election will be the longest in Canadian history, since it
started a few hours ago, in the first week of December.
There will be essentially no spending limits for this election,
since the bulk of it will take place before the writ is dropped in the
final few days of January, after the Harper government is defeated on
its budget. This, of course, is of immense benefit to the
Conservatives, who are sitting on a pile of cash, while the
election-weary Coalition forces are bereft of money.
Furthermore, a ton of money to be spent on this campaign will be
coming from you, the taxpayers. That’s because the Conservatives are
still government until defeated on January 29th or 30th, and will be
using ministerial budgets, free MP travel, householders, ten percenters
and every other resource to wage war on the Coalition. These things, as
you might imagine, are a huge advantage to the governing party.
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Wednesday, 03 December 2008 |
Bloc part of secret coalition plot in 2000 with Canadian Alliance
A
document obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that the scheme would
have propelled then Alliance leader Stockwell Day to power in the
coalition. A lawyer who was described then as being close to Day, says
he didn't discuss the matter with the MPs
DANIEL LEBLANC
OTTAWA — The separatist Bloc Québécois was part of
secret plotting in 2000 to join a formal coalition with the two parties
that now make up Stephen Harper's government, according to documents
obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The scheme, designed to propel current Conservative minister Stockwell
Day to power, undermines the Harper government's line this week that it
would never sign a deal like the current one between the Liberal Party,
the NDP and the Bloc.
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