Federal Budget

[terrym]

Well it was predictably funny to watch Mansbridge attack Oliver last night, then again I wouldn't call them friends....LoL! What was fun was watching the CBC "at issue" panel who are paid by taxpayers to poop on everything Harper have very little negative to say and grudgingly admit the budget was generally well received. I'm sure somebody will try and explain it to Trudough but that could be a waste of time and angry Tom....well he is always angry and knows he is getting kicked out of Stornoway this fall and must be house hunting and that's a frustrating thing, LoL.
I think this budget served it's purpose and will definitely hurt the opposition. The media will ignore it as fast as possible but it sets the tone nicely for the campaign.

[Oddmott]

I don't like the robbing of the contingency fund for them to be able to claim they balanced the budget... but it is what it is.

[terrym]

I don't like the robbing of the contingency fund for them to be able to claim they balanced the budget... but it is what it is.

I agree. Let's not kid ourselves though, this is an election budget with all the BS tactics involved. All governments do it and the Cons are not any different. The other thing is these budget calculations are based on a assumed price of $55/barrel for oil. If the market tanks it will hurt but if it rises and let's not forget it traded at more than double that price recently then they come out looking like heroes. My bet is oil will eventually go up, it does seasonally every year anyway.
Harper has basically set it up that Trudough and Mulcair need to campaign against tax cuts to families and seniors and return to deficits. I think he played them very well. But then again he usually is 2 steps ahead of most people.

[Dythbringer]

I agree. Let's not kid ourselves though, this is an election budget with all the BS tactics involved. All governments do it and the Cons are not any different. The other thing is these budget calculations are based on a assumed price of $55/barrel for oil. If the market tanks it will hurt but if it rises and let's not forget it traded at more than double that price recently then they come out looking like heroes. My bet is oil will eventually go up, it does seasonally every year anyway.
Harper has basically set it up that Trudough and Mulcair need to campaign against tax cuts to families and seniors and return to deficits. I think he played them very well. But then again he usually is 2 steps ahead of most people.

From my understanding as long as ISIL is a threat oil prices are going to remain low. I don't like them touching the contingency cash but all in all not an overly bad budget I think.

[terrym]

I see ISIL as more of money drain on us than affecting oil markets unless they overtake Saudi Arabia.

[Dythbringer]

I see ISIL as more of money drain on us than affecting oil markets unless they overtake Saudi Arabia.

ISIL has control of the oil wells in Northern Iraq (300 I believe before we got involved) and it was estimated they were making $1 million/day.

[DGearyFTE]

I see ISIL as more of money drain on us than affecting oil markets unless they overtake Saudi Arabia.

Not sure how to qualify this one terry. When asked "How much do operations against ISIL cost?" there is never a complete answer because the question is not formed properly.
Here is how this goes. For any operation the military responds at the direction of Parliament. As operations commence there is always the question of how much will this cost. The real questions are: "What is the level of current DND funding that will be required to sustain this operation?" In other words, other budgets within the department will be re-allocated to sustain operations in theatre. If those funds are fully consumed then DND is compelled to go back thru the channels to request additional funding from the government.
Remember the including the salaries of the pilots, technicians and support personnel is not valid given that they will be paid irrespective of where they are on the planet.

Any reporter is therefore given a pretty wide variance on what can be attributed to spending on any particular operation. The real question is "How much additional money not already approved for military spending is required?"

The other part of the accounting nightmare is what happens when trading between coalition forces goes on. For example, Canada has an Air-to-Air refueling tanker in theatre. The tanker provides fuel to a British RAF aircraft. They Brits may get a bill for jet fuel or there may be an agreement on where there are offsets such as servicing, logistics support (we are feeding your soldiers from our kitchen) etc. So these transactions become difficult since the accounting can literally take a full year to sort out

[DGearyFTE]

ISIL has control of the oil wells in Northern Iraq (300 I believe before we got involved) and it was estimated they were making $1 million/day.

My question is how does one arrive at a number of $1million/day? Who are they selling the oil to since they are effectively cut off from the markets?

[Dythbringer]

My question is how does one arrive at a number of $1million/day? Who are they selling the oil to since they are effectively cut off from the markets?

Apparently corrupt Turkish dealers were the middle man.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/tur...&NewsCatID=359

[trimmer21]

Given the current world economic climate and the provincial economies here in this country,I think it's the only logical conclusion the government could arrive at for the budget unless they wanted to do what JT and Angry Tom want them to do like raise all taxes through the roof,reduce all tax breaks to everybody and their uncle and drive the Canadian economy off the cliff. I have no problem using the contingency fund to balance the budget. That's what "contingency" funds are for....to keep from going broke when things get dicey,right? Too much hinges on a rock-solid economy,something which is a completely foreign concept to Liberals and NeeDeePers.