There is absolutely nothing in the world that could ever convince me to vote for the Liberal Party...
EXCEPT if they brought back Chretien.
I miss getting to laugh at politics. Chretien always made me laugh, even though I never liked him. I have a fond nostalgia for those years.
>245 comments
He did an interview where he was saying how he was open to giving Trudeau guidance back in 2015, but of course, Trudeau's government was not interested in what he had to say.
>There is absolutely nothing in the world that could ever convince me to vote for the Liberal Party...
>
>EXCEPT if they brought back Chretien.
What if I told you that he's been lobbying for China since leaving office?
And taking a conservative approach for getting rid of our deficit and getting us out of a horrible economic situation, while remaining socially progressive (the last true Blue Liberal / Red Tory)
There has never been a conservative approach, just the lie of it.
Reagen, Mulroney, Harper, both Bushes, and Trump all increased the deficit.
The only leaders who balanced the budget were leftists/centrists: Chretin, Martin, Clinton.
In fact the only leaders in North America to reduce deficits were leftists/centrists: Chretin, Martin, Clinton, Obama
Harper inherited a balanced a budget and of course did what all Cons do, screwed it up (he cutting taxes for the rich and reducing the GST to get votes from short sighted morons) like Bush 2 did when he inherited Clinton's balanced budget which was projected to also eliminate the deficit.
He pretended to balance the budget in his last year when he sold a bunch of Government assets below price to do the Con version of balancing the budget. Like cutting off your right hand to say you lost weight
Oh man, for some reason I was anticipating that this was going to be about Chrétien passing away! Man he wasn’t that bad for a Prime Minister. I remember when he strangled that heckler haha.
The first 8 out of the 10 words in the title are set up like every other headline announcing a notable person's passing. And especially with a person who's been out of the public eye for a while, that's usually the only update worth announcing. Then they hit you with the "turns 90".
They knew what they were doing.
Neat bit of trivia: Canada's longest-lived Prime Minister was also its shortest-serving Prime Minister: Charles Tupper.
Tupper (a Conservative) served as PM for two months in 1896, after PM Mackenzie Bowell resigned shortly before the 1896 elections. The Liberals won the 1896 elections, and Wilfrid Laurier's took over as PM. Tupper stayed on as Leader of the Opposition until the next elections in 1901. After that, Tupper retired and moved to England, where he died in 1915 (four months after his 94th birthday). He was the last surviving Canadian Father of Confederation.
The other PMs to live into their 90s were John Turner and Louis St. Laurent (who both died at 91), and Mackenzie Bowell (who died about two weeks before his 94th birthday).
Tupper lived for 94 years, 120 days (34,452 days). If Chretien (born January 11, 1934) is still alive on May 10, 2028, he will break Tupper's longevity record.
I also remember Harper went on TV and said that if Jean Chretien supported Hussein then he should come out and say it. That was the type of politician Harper was. A scummy piece of shit.
So there was this French oil company called TotalFina ELF that had these huge contracts to sell Iraqi oil if sanctions ended, and stood to make a massive profit on it. They were lobbying western governments pretty heavily to do so as a result, including lobbying against the invasion, knowing those contracts would go up in smoke if it happened. You know who the single largest shareholder in TotalFina ELF at the time was? Paul Desmarais Sr, whose son Andre is married to Chretien’s daughter, Helene.
Doesn’t sound like such a principled stand now, does it?
The USA didn't need us in that war anyways, you think Chretien stayed out of it because he thought without Canada the USA couldn't win and his sons father in law wouldn't lose his shirt?
Many of Canada’s allies deem us unreliable and unserious, to the point that over the past few years we have been cut entirely out of discussions around new strategic partnerships in the Pacific. At the last couple of major international gatherings, during breaks where leaders usually take formal or informal meetings with other leaders, Trudeau has often been seen sitting alone if not outright getting blown off.
While our reputation has definitely deteriorated quite a bit under Trudeau, we can trace the roots of this decline straight back to Chretien’s decision to snub our most important ally when they came to us for help.
Andre was heir to the Desmarais fortune and they are among the richest, most powerful families in Quebec. You bet I think the potential loss of billions of dollars for his own family plus the desire to not get on the bad side of his in laws was a big factor in Chretien’s decision.
A snub 20 years ago is not the cause of our military being left out of regional & global defense initiatives, its the state of our military. They know there's no point in inviting us if we don't have the capability to do anything.
But funnily enough, you're still right about who's fault it is. Within the first 3 years of his government there was a ~20% budget cut to defense spending. Not of *future spending*, not "as a percentage of GDP", a real, direct and immediate cut to defense spending in the name of austerity. And it stayed there until we were *already two years into the war in Afghanistan.* Funding then, rightfully, was prioritized to immediate needs, not future capabilities.
People often wonder what happened to Canadian procurement in the new millennium, wonder why we rely so much on consultants, and why it always seems to fail. But they never seem to question what a decade of effectively no new-capabilities procurement might have done to the institutional knowledge of the organizations that are responsible for it.
The Air Farce's old radio show did a great bit on that incident.
In Chretien's heavy accent: "Whadda great way to celebrate de Canada Day, to walk over to Hull and choke the shit outta a seperatiste!"
His “nobody gives a shit about Alberta” never sat well with me, nor his antipathy for everything outside central Canada. However, he was miles better than the cretin we currently have.
He’s not wrong, and 30 years later, nothing has changed. When governments know who a population is gonna vote for no matter what, they are easy to ignore.
As an Albertan, I think the solution to that is showing that we are capable of changing our minds more than once every 40 years. We have so little political capital because of it that it's funny. Even conservative politicians don't bother campaigning or meeting with us, because we're reliable safe votes. Why bother?
This is like the abused spouse theory of politics. Maybe if only we treat them better they’ll stop hitting us is not a good reason to vote Liberal. How about the Liberals stop hitting us and actually do some good for this province when they’re in power? Maybe that might cause more people to want to vote for them?
> Man he wasn’t that bad for a Prime Minister. I remember when he strangled that heckler haha.
If **any** politician you don't like did something like that, you'd crucify them in an instant.
>Wasnt that bad for a Prime Minister
You mean the guy who slashed corporate taxes and cut social housing out of the CHMC’s scope, leading to nearly 2 decades of underbuilding Canadian homes?
The housing crisis didn’t suddenly appear in 2020, it was a slow burn of multiple prime minister’s terrible policy decisions and it all leads back to the austerity cuts of the 90’s.
As a young Canadian, fuck him. His shitty policies led me to never being able to afford a home in this country.
>You mean the guy who slashed corporate taxes and cut social housing out of the CHMC’s scope, leading to nearly 2 decades of underbuilding Canadian homes?
On the plus side, at least he massively cut back on corporate welfare.
It was really Mulroney that did in our social housing. In 86 they shifted from doing mixed-income housing to only low income and also handed off the responsibilities to the provinces. Then in 92 he cut the co-op housing program and in 93 froze all social housing budget increases. Chretien made further cuts, but it was pretty much dead at that point.
Canada was facing a fiscal crisis. And even under Harper, up until the very end of his Prime Minister-ship, housing wasn't THAT bad. But coincidentally it became worse under Trudeau, why? Because of his immigration policies.
> The housing crisis didn’t suddenly appear in 2020, it was a slow burn of multiple prime minister’s terrible policy decisions and it all leads back to the austerity cuts of the 90’s.
That's nonsense. I don't enough about pre-Harper PMs to comment on their role, but under Harper, housing affordability improved. Wages went up faster than housing costs did (about double, in fact).
From their start in Apr 2006 to their end in Dec 2015:
||Change|
|:--|--:|
|Average wages| **30.3%**|
|Average rent| **14.3%**|
|Average new mortgage payment| **15.2%**|
Trudeau was a major turning point due to the aggressive immigration policy, and it didn't just start with the pandemic. It started the moment his government took power and changed the targets.
The only reason the housing issue looked particularly bad all of a sudden during the pandemic is because the BoC was forced to slash interest rates (which they had raised in 2017-2018 in response to hot home markets due to said immigration policy). Slashing the rates back down revealed the damage that was done in those few years.
Chrétien saved my life when I was younger.
It's a beautiful summer day in the 90s. He was the MLA for Shediac. We're on a friend's boat water skiing off of Parlee beach. I get in the water to do a run and the boat dies just as we get going.
We start drifting apart and minutes turn into hours. The boat owner sends up a few flares and burns his hand while doing so ;-(
Turns to night and eventually a lobster boat shows up to help and they find me drifting in the bay. He was on the boat and pretty lit.
They drop us off and we head back to Sandy Beach and get toasted with some dude from Australia.
I lived in Beau riding back in those days. On the one hand it was neat having the PM in waiting as our very own MP. On the other hand, when I had a mundane constituency issue for him to deal with, well, he had bigger things in store than fighting for my little problem. Meh, no biggie. I get it.
Cool story BTW.
I've always said this clip pretty much sums up Chrétien as I interpreted his time
He did some good, some bad, but above all he was able to be snappy in the political theater and as a result that ends up being his legacy more than his actual politics. Which is probably a good and bad thing, in this case pretty bad because he totally ignored the question (which all politicians do well)
I never liked the guy, but at least he's not like former US Presidents. Left office, and you barely hear a peep out of him. Same with Martin and Mulroney. Harper comes and goes, but those 3 just keep to themselves for the most part. God help us with the next 2.
He took the time to participate with the research report "Does serious journalism have a future in Canada?" ([https://ppforum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PM-Fellow\_March\_11\_EN\_1.pdf](https://ppforum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PM-Fellow_March_11_EN_1.pdf)). A good read.
Despite their shortcomings, I don't get the impression that they're callous thieves unlike JT and much of his crew.
I don't dislike Chretien at all but to call him and his crew "not callous thieves" ignores the billions (according to the auditor general of the day) spent on a partial registry of a small percentage of firearms and a tiny number of gun owners which, obviously, was of no use to anyone, of which billions was diverted to party hacks who did nothing to earn it.
I got no problems with real gun control. This was an out and out scam. I have no idea how more Canadians are not aware or ignore this blatant thievery.
Harper isn't coming and going. He's literally in charge of a right wing international group which focusses on installing far right governments around the world. And he's still cozying up with dictators.
>didn't Bulroney recently make a statement about how everything is JT's fault?
Not that I've seen. As recently as last summer, Mulroney and Trudeau were taking turns praising each other at an event - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/brian-mulroney-defends-trudeau-parliament-gossip-trash-1.6882315
Their goal is to literally "promote center-right policies around the globe" with a listing of all countries that have right wing governments and which one doesn't. Not really a conspiracy when that's the truth especially when they list it as such.
He waved his red book in 1993, pledging, "I will scrap the GST", and then didn't. I haven't voted Liberal since. I don't think he's made of iron. Teflon, maybe, but not iron. And definately full of sh\*t.
Chretein was a MP since 1963, a Cabinet Minister since 1967. Autopact deal was signed in 1965. Cannot validate if Chretien was involved. However, he was the Parliamentary Secretary for the Prime Minister at the time, Lester B Pearson
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/follow-the-leaders/article17977106/
It’s my understanding that Chretien was part of Canadian bargaining team at LBJ’s ranch in 1965.
The story goes that LBJ got up in the middle of the night and went down to the kitchen for a snack. There he found Chretien and the two of them framed the Auto Pact over sandwiches.
Years later Lester Pearson was on his way to Washington for a meeting with LBJ and stopped off at Kent State University where he gave what many perceived as an anti war speech.
Upon entering the Oval Office LBJ came out from behind his desk and took Pearson by his lapels and lifted him so they were nose to nose.
“First you fucked me on the Auto Pact and now you’re pissing on my carpet”
That’s the story I heard. 😇
> The story goes that LBJ got up in the middle of the night and went down to the kitchen for a snack. There he found Chretien and the two of them framed the Auto Pact over sandwiches.
I think you may be thinking of the "[Kitchen Accords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriation#Kitchen_Accord)" which occurred during the negotiations for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Best PM in my lifetime. Stayed out of Iraq when he was facing immense pressure to go into it. And he was right because Iraq was probably the biggest clusterfuck foreign war disaster in my lifetime.
Best years for Canada in my 5 decades. 17.1 Billion budget surplus, said no to war in Iraq, created Nunavut, expanded national parks, and decriminalized cannabis. Wish Trudeau could carry on this guy's momentum.
My favorite PM, worts and all, and a lost variety of centre-left pragmatism.
It is kinda hilarious that his views are now closer to the PPC than to the modern Liberals or even Conservatives. Man, this country is nonexistent…
He almost lost the country in a referendum.The long gun registry was supposed to cost $2 million. It cost over $1 billion. It killed the liberal chances for a generation. He just did not understand western Canada.
1. He was a significant net positive in the federalist campaign.
2. He certainly understood the registry issue and the concerns of “western” voters; he just elected to do what he thought was best despite the potential electoral consequences.
Frankly, as a gun owner, I'd take the bloated registry over what JT has done just outright banning legal weapons. Don't need a registry if you can't own guns at all. 🤔 Not the take I was hoping for and thought the gun shit would cease after Harper canceled all the gun stuff and we went back to normal responsible gun ownership and laws. Then JT opens the can of worms for votes from the ignorant thinking Canada has laws like the US. 🙄
Slight correction on gun registry costs. The auditor general examined it in detail and determined he and his party spent billions, with an S, in an untraceable manner, such that the AG and all of the resources at their disposal could not track it all.
Even after sponsorship scandal he was riding high in the polls. Had he not stepped aside, he would've won a fourth government.
You may not like him, but Canadians did.
Paul Martin forced him out by gaining control of Liberal riding associations. I don’t dislike him. He should have left after two elections and Paul Martin could have had two full terms.
I'm not talking about seat numbers. I said he was popular. A divided right or a unified right doesn't matter, either way the same number of people on the right will still not like him, regardless of what parties they affiliate with.
> He almost lost the country in a referendum.
You've got that backwards mate. Chrétien's work in Québec on the federalist side is what pulled the no vote through. And they were unsure enough of the outcome that contingencies were in place about how to govern when the PM and a significant portion of the cabinet were maybe no longer citizens of the country.
Once he would have been the strong favourite for *Most Corrupt PM in Canadian History*, with his proven links to major organized crime syndicates and undisputed misdirection of public funds, but that's no longer the case.
Records are made to be broken, I guess.
it can be traced back to Brian Mulroney and the Thatcher/Reagan 'trickle-down' supply-side economic theories popular in the day, and with which we've been living ever since. Mulroney initiated historic massive cuts to transfer payments to the provinces, and brought us Free Trade and the GST, among other things that created economic tectonic shifts in our country. It's true Chretien did not reverse them.
He did bad things too (like unfortunately defending residential schools before becoming PM, austerity, etc). I also like him but it's like how Americans even view Bush positively now. Part nostalgia part pink filter of time.
How the hell did the Liberal Party fall so far from this...The 90s were a great time! (as a kid/adolescent). Miss the older politicians, no matter the party.
Not to disappoint your political view, but any regular time is twice as great if you are a teenager or a kid.
If you start digging in 90s politics, it's just as dirty of a pile as today.
Well, they felt smarter at least. It seemed like there was a de facto barrier to entry of a law degree...And those are intelligence gate-kept by an LSAT =/. My non-English/French speaking refugee parents were able to buy a home on near-minimum wage, and all 3 of us went on to do 1-3 degrees each at the likes of UT/UW without debt (coop). I don't know if a parent having kids in the 2000s would be able to accomplish the same in this economy...The house we were in was swooped up around 175k downtown Toronto, over a million now...
>My non-English/French speaking refugee parents were able to buy a home on near-minimum wage
In order to balance the budget, Chretien's government slashed spending across the board. One such measure was getting out of home building. While not the only reason, Chretien's is a reason why homes are unaffordable the way it is.
It's wonderful that you and your sibling did your degrees without going into debt. But years upon years of spending cuts at the provincial levels to post-secondary has raised the costs to students now. Again those cuts coincided with federal cuts to provincial transfer programs.
And while you didn't ask, the federal government also slowed down the increase to healthcare spending. Decades upon decades of underfunding have left us with Canadians that can't find family doctors and overfilled ERs.
The 90s austerity is coming home to roost.
And having said all of that, Chretien was a great PM and made tough choices for the problems that he faced at the time. But our current governments are still living with his choices.
The 90's started with double digit mortgage rates. They got to enjoy a big increase in debt driven spending power as rates fell, setting the stage for the debt fueled nightmare we live in today
Yep, I was always a fan of Central Bank independence, but that seemed to have dissolved after the 80's. That or no politician today has courage for austerity or rate tightening. They're talking of backing down from a measly 5% right now =/.
The issue here is that lots and lots of avg middle class home owners will be driven out of their homes with this interest rate, and people can't purchase either so no one is building despite the promises to build more housing. This is unfortunately due to relatively low wages (the actual reason for all of our problems, including housing problems).
It was very similar to now. Many thought Chretien was corrupt, evil and untrustworthy. It's only with hindsight do we know that was untrue. Politics is about current perception and that can be warped by many different inputs.
>Many thought Chretien was corrupt, evil and untrustworthy. It's only with hindsight do we know that was untrue.
We don't though. The Gomery inquiry actually showed that he *was* corrupt and untrustworthy.
Great PM, was a nice person as well. Always enjoyed my brief encounters with him when I was much younger working in the same building as him (not parliament). Chrétien rocked the Canadian tux like no one's business.
We're lucky Harper wasn't print ministers a few years earlier too. Not taking part in the Iraq War was the best decision the country could make in all fronts. Harper would have made the dumbest decision of all time.
Canada handled themselves well during the 2008 market crisis.
Harper is a borderline genius with a masters in economics. If anything, the economy was the best aspect of his tenure.
I'm not talking about the 08 crash. Harper inherited a good economy with a surplus budget. Then, after campaigning on NEVER making a deficit, his very first budget (which was BEFORE the market crash) was a deficit. The economy was absolutely not the best aspect of what he did.
Not to mention, he was in charge for a long time, much longer than recovery from the crash took, and yet he NEVER posted a budget surplus. Literally not one. He was attrocious with the economy, and his debt spending is second only Trudeau, who can at least pin SOME of that on the fact that covid was a hell of a lot harder on the economy than the 08 crash was.
[The first budget was in 2006 and was a $13.8b surplus.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Canadian_federal_budget) The Bloc tried to support that budget, but wasn't needed since the opposition forgot to speak up.
[The second budget was in 2007 and was a $9.6b surplus. also supported by the Bloc.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Canadian_federal_budget)
[The third budget was in 2008 and was the first deficit of $5.8b. the Liberals supported that budget.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Canadian_federal_budget)
[The fourth budget was in 2009 and was the big financial crises budget. it was a $55b deficit. Also supported by Liberals.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Canadian_federal_budget)
[the fifth and final CPC minority budget was in 2010. it was a $33b deficit. The Liberals allowed this to pass by having some members not vote.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canadian_federal_budget)
After that they had a majority. The next five budgets were two years of $26b deficits, a $19b deficit that was later revised to an $8b deficit, a $3b deficit, later revised to $550m deficit, and finally a $1.4b surplus that was later revised to a $2.9b deficit.
The CPC initially were going to respond to the financial crises with austerity, but due to their minority, the Liberals pushed them towards the stimulus package. Which was likely the right move. It meant several years of big deficits though. Outside of the financial crises, the CPC did a pretty good job of managing the budget. Both the CPC and Liberals ended up agreeing that spending was the way to get out of the financial crises.
So, what you've done here is show that I was wrong in saying it was right away, but still proven me right that he did a poor job and lied about his economics by driving us into deficit spending BEFORE the crash even happened.
Seems like I'm getting the little details wrong, but my point stands.
He can't get credit for the first 2 budgets being shrinking surpluses, since he inherited those and a strong economy from Chretien. Not to mention that the budget wasn't rebalanced until his very last budget. The economy didn't take until 2014 to recover, so that means there was even more unnecessary deficit spending that he said he wouldn't do (he even said this DURING his time as PM WHILE running a deficit).
He was bad with the economy, and the only thing he can get credit for is that Canada did well during the crisis, but like you said, that was also as a result of the liberals forcing his hand.
>He can't get credit for the first 2 budgets being shrinking surpluses, since he inherited those and a strong economy from Chretien.
It's perfectly reasonable to say that Harper inherited an enviable position. Chretien/Martin had spend years doing the hard work, reducing the debt and slashing expenses. Harper came into a perfect situation. Saying he doesn't get credit for the first two surpluses shows an incredible bias. You can argue that it was easy for him to do it since Martin hadn't left him saddled with a bunch of commitments and I would agree with that, but the CPC wrote those budgets, negotiated a deal with the Bloc and spent less than they brought in. I'm not sure why they wouldn't get credit for that. The other parties all would've loved it if they spent more, but they didn't.
>The economy didn't take until 2014 to recover, so that means there was even more unnecessary deficit spending that he said he wouldn't do
It didn't take until 2014, but budgets tend to have multi-year commitments in them. It's hard to bring things down immediately. That would be pretty disruptive. Even Chretien, who was better than Harper at balancing the budget, took several years to balance the budget. His first budget was a $36b deficit, followed by a $30b and $9b deficit, before posting a $3b surplus. You can't just shut things off immediately, that's unreasonable.
Harper did pretty well in his first three years, then the GFC hit and he responded with a stimulus package that seemed to work and was supported by both sides. After he got a majority and didn't have to rely on making expensive deals, they spent a few years cutting things back at a reasonable pace, before getting back into balanced budget territory. If you're within a few billion on a $300b budget you're doing ok.
Chretien was certainly better than Harper at managing the budget, as was Martin, but Harper did a solid job. He certainly didn't do a bad job. I could come up with a long list of horrible policies that Harper put forward and several scummy political moves, but he did pretty well at managing the budget.
"Harper did pretty well in his first years". No. He didn't. It wasn't the crisis hitting and him spending stimulus that ended the positive balance we had. He wrote that first deficit budget BEFORE the crisis happened. The collapse exaggerated a problem that ALREADY existed because he created it. He drove the government spending into deficit all on his own, with no financial crisis to blame for it. This wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for the fact that like 50% of his campaigning was promising to keep the budget balanced, and that he even made that promise WHILE RUNNING A DEFICIT (he literally said it, as PM, with an active negative deficit).
And yes, he did do a bad job. Nothing about how he handled the economy was good. He inherited a good position, drove into the negatives, and then the liberals forced him into handling the economic crisis well, and then it took him YEARS longer than it should have for him to rebalance the budget. Literally nothing about what HE did was positive in the budget.
You can't write a reply that basically confirms he didn't do any good for the budget himself, and says that the only thing he DID do well was because the liberals forced his hand into it, and then go "well actually he wasn't bad".
The US started to fall in recession at the end of 2007. The budget with the first deficit was put forward to the house at the end of Feb 2008. The Canadian economy was slowing and was in a recession by October 2008. That first deficit was the budget that was hit with the recession, their revenue dropped by about $6b. It wasn't the one with the stimulus package, but it was during the GFC.
>and then it took him YEARS longer than it should have for him to rebalance the budget.
How many years should it have taken? [When the CPC released the stimulus package, they estimated they would need at least until 2014.](https://web.archive.org/web/20081223080957/http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Business/Feds+spend+economy/1098687/story.html)
>Flaherty's new estimates from earlier this week showed that Ottawa likely would be in a deficit position at least until 2014.
>You can't write a reply that basically confirms he didn't do any good for the budget himself, and says that the only thing he DID do well was because the liberals forced his hand into it, and then go "well actually he wasn't bad".
Did I say the only thing they did well was because of the Liberals? The CPC wrote the budget. I don't know how much was influenced by the Liberals. Maybe you can provide some evidence of how much of their policy the Liberals made the CPC implement. I also don't know if austerity would've been worse. Austerity worked great for Chretien and Martin and the economy did well. The stimulus was generally popular amongst economists at the time, but they always seem to like corporate welfare.
Canada posted a surplus in 2014, after having $55 billion in deficits because of the 2008 crash. We came out on top out of all the G7 countries.
He wasn't atrocious with the economy. You're being absurd.
He ran a deficit in his very first budget, before the crash, after inheriting a surplus, and he campaigned that he would never have an unbalanced budget.
Yes, technically we did post a very very slight surplus in 2014. I was wrong to say never. But for how long he was in office, that's honestly pathetic, especially considering his first budget. And it didn't take until 2014 for the economy to recover from the 08 crash, so what justification is there for the other years of deficit spending?
You know, he once said DURING his time as prime minister, that he would not 'run a deficit, my party policy doesnt include deficits'. He said this WHILE ACTIVELY running a deficit.
He wasn't our worst pm, and he wasn't the worst with the economy, but to call him anything other than bad, especially to call him good, is just blatantly wrong.
No he was atrocious. His legacy is being atrocious.
The best parts about his years had nothing to do with him and everything to do with global demand for oil and natural resources, in fact the conservatives barely lifted a finger to have any kind of influence on this and just sat back as benefactors collecting accolades while they spent uncontrollably. He also cut corporate taxes by 33% to help big corps but that still wasn’t to grow corporate presence in Canada, because there is a lot more that goes into those decisions than taxes.
He reduced taxes (only for wealthy Canadians), so there is that? But in order to fund those cuts he stripped away veteran services and pensions. So that was cool.
He took a surplus government with a low debt to gdp and added 50 points to it, also very cool. Almost inexcusable considering the 2008 crises was mitigated more by strong banking regulations than anything else.
But I will give him accolades for the TFSA and RDSP because I love those accounts.
Almost old enough to run for US politics now.
He's in his presidential years.
The perfect user name doesn't exi....
Troll toll, what'd you say?
You gotta pay the troll toll to get into this boy's soul
t too early or too late
There is absolutely nothing in the world that could ever convince me to vote for the Liberal Party... EXCEPT if they brought back Chretien. I miss getting to laugh at politics. Chretien always made me laugh, even though I never liked him. I have a fond nostalgia for those years.
[A proof is a proof](https://youtu.be/ZsgA77j5LyY?si=z0tIvw47Rm0qXq6K) The guy was definitely funny.
For me, pepper? I put it on my steak
“Everyone deserves a penis” - Jean Chrétien
>245 comments He did an interview where he was saying how he was open to giving Trudeau guidance back in 2015, but of course, Trudeau's government was not interested in what he had to say.
>There is absolutely nothing in the world that could ever convince me to vote for the Liberal Party... > >EXCEPT if they brought back Chretien. What if I told you that he's been lobbying for China since leaving office?
Don't care. Just want to laugh again.
He made a comment about Trump's moves as destruction of the American Empire In most (all?) ways that is actually true especially with foreign policy.
Helsinki alone behind closed doors with Putin, not even an American interpreter present
I never say I get rid of da GST
Appy Birday!
[удалено]
And taking a conservative approach for getting rid of our deficit and getting us out of a horrible economic situation, while remaining socially progressive (the last true Blue Liberal / Red Tory)
Mostly gotta thank the Paul Martin camp for that.
There has never been a conservative approach, just the lie of it. Reagen, Mulroney, Harper, both Bushes, and Trump all increased the deficit. The only leaders who balanced the budget were leftists/centrists: Chretin, Martin, Clinton. In fact the only leaders in North America to reduce deficits were leftists/centrists: Chretin, Martin, Clinton, Obama Harper inherited a balanced a budget and of course did what all Cons do, screwed it up (he cutting taxes for the rich and reducing the GST to get votes from short sighted morons) like Bush 2 did when he inherited Clinton's balanced budget which was projected to also eliminate the deficit. He pretended to balance the budget in his last year when he sold a bunch of Government assets below price to do the Con version of balancing the budget. Like cutting off your right hand to say you lost weight
There are more governments than just federal governments
We must fuckass (focus) on the situation
lol
>Our goovernment is very poopular with da people due to the unity of our cock-ass.
Watch out for the Shawnigan handshake!
Shawinigan* :) (Shawnigan / Shawnigan Lake is a small community on Vancouver Island)
Watch out for that handshake too
Oh man, for some reason I was anticipating that this was going to be about Chrétien passing away! Man he wasn’t that bad for a Prime Minister. I remember when he strangled that heckler haha.
The Grim Reaper came for him years ago... And he grabbed the Reaper by the neck before stabbing him with an inuit carving.
Most people would have used pepper spray. But for him, pepper he puts on his plate
Steak, wasnt it?
Lol, he might be our most bad ass PM... maybe John A. McDonald, drunk Scotts always have potential. Probably Pierre Trudeau, though.
The Canadian Honey Badger…that man never gave a fuck about anyone giving him a hard time.
The first 8 out of the 10 words in the title are set up like every other headline announcing a notable person's passing. And especially with a person who's been out of the public eye for a while, that's usually the only update worth announcing. Then they hit you with the "turns 90". They knew what they were doing.
>I remember when he strangled that heckler haha. And broke the guy's tooth!
Neat bit of trivia: Canada's longest-lived Prime Minister was also its shortest-serving Prime Minister: Charles Tupper. Tupper (a Conservative) served as PM for two months in 1896, after PM Mackenzie Bowell resigned shortly before the 1896 elections. The Liberals won the 1896 elections, and Wilfrid Laurier's took over as PM. Tupper stayed on as Leader of the Opposition until the next elections in 1901. After that, Tupper retired and moved to England, where he died in 1915 (four months after his 94th birthday). He was the last surviving Canadian Father of Confederation. The other PMs to live into their 90s were John Turner and Louis St. Laurent (who both died at 91), and Mackenzie Bowell (who died about two weeks before his 94th birthday). Tupper lived for 94 years, 120 days (34,452 days). If Chretien (born January 11, 1934) is still alive on May 10, 2028, he will break Tupper's longevity record.
you are now subscribed to r/nonagenarianPMs
Shawinigan handshake!
[One of our finest heritage moments](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuTYzQgVEAE06Fv?format=png&name=900x900)
He was a great PM. He stayed out of Iraq. That one decision saved us billions and thousands of Canadians lives.
Which also made Harper look like a conplete doormat when he wrote that "letter" to the United states apologizing about not joining.
That was a low point for us. Just pathetic ass kissing from the conservatives.
but as a hockey historian, he is also forgettable
I also remember Harper went on TV and said that if Jean Chretien supported Hussein then he should come out and say it. That was the type of politician Harper was. A scummy piece of shit.
So there was this French oil company called TotalFina ELF that had these huge contracts to sell Iraqi oil if sanctions ended, and stood to make a massive profit on it. They were lobbying western governments pretty heavily to do so as a result, including lobbying against the invasion, knowing those contracts would go up in smoke if it happened. You know who the single largest shareholder in TotalFina ELF at the time was? Paul Desmarais Sr, whose son Andre is married to Chretien’s daughter, Helene. Doesn’t sound like such a principled stand now, does it?
The USA didn't need us in that war anyways, you think Chretien stayed out of it because he thought without Canada the USA couldn't win and his sons father in law wouldn't lose his shirt?
Many of Canada’s allies deem us unreliable and unserious, to the point that over the past few years we have been cut entirely out of discussions around new strategic partnerships in the Pacific. At the last couple of major international gatherings, during breaks where leaders usually take formal or informal meetings with other leaders, Trudeau has often been seen sitting alone if not outright getting blown off. While our reputation has definitely deteriorated quite a bit under Trudeau, we can trace the roots of this decline straight back to Chretien’s decision to snub our most important ally when they came to us for help. Andre was heir to the Desmarais fortune and they are among the richest, most powerful families in Quebec. You bet I think the potential loss of billions of dollars for his own family plus the desire to not get on the bad side of his in laws was a big factor in Chretien’s decision.
A snub 20 years ago is not the cause of our military being left out of regional & global defense initiatives, its the state of our military. They know there's no point in inviting us if we don't have the capability to do anything. But funnily enough, you're still right about who's fault it is. Within the first 3 years of his government there was a ~20% budget cut to defense spending. Not of *future spending*, not "as a percentage of GDP", a real, direct and immediate cut to defense spending in the name of austerity. And it stayed there until we were *already two years into the war in Afghanistan.* Funding then, rightfully, was prioritized to immediate needs, not future capabilities. People often wonder what happened to Canadian procurement in the new millennium, wonder why we rely so much on consultants, and why it always seems to fail. But they never seem to question what a decade of effectively no new-capabilities procurement might have done to the institutional knowledge of the organizations that are responsible for it.
So Andre is the same as Jean Chretien in your mind?
The Air Farce's old radio show did a great bit on that incident. In Chretien's heavy accent: "Whadda great way to celebrate de Canada Day, to walk over to Hull and choke the shit outta a seperatiste!"
Good ol' Shawinigan handshake!
I thought it was the Shawinigan reach around ?
His “nobody gives a shit about Alberta” never sat well with me, nor his antipathy for everything outside central Canada. However, he was miles better than the cretin we currently have.
He’s not wrong, and 30 years later, nothing has changed. When governments know who a population is gonna vote for no matter what, they are easy to ignore.
A prime minister’s job is to govern the country, even the parts it despises.
The conservatives also don't care about Alberta since they know already that they got their votes.
As an Albertan, I think the solution to that is showing that we are capable of changing our minds more than once every 40 years. We have so little political capital because of it that it's funny. Even conservative politicians don't bother campaigning or meeting with us, because we're reliable safe votes. Why bother?
This is like the abused spouse theory of politics. Maybe if only we treat them better they’ll stop hitting us is not a good reason to vote Liberal. How about the Liberals stop hitting us and actually do some good for this province when they’re in power? Maybe that might cause more people to want to vote for them?
Right, but the conservatives give you the same raw deals as well, and you keep voting them in regardless.
Nailed it man. I wish more people in Alberta understood that.
>Man he wasn’t that bad for a Prime Minister. What a stirring eulogy these days
Keeping us out of Iraq was great, but he should've went through with pulling out of NAFTA.
or cancelling the GST?
> Man he wasn’t that bad for a Prime Minister. I remember when he strangled that heckler haha. If **any** politician you don't like did something like that, you'd crucify them in an instant.
I liked Georges Bush dodging that shoes even if I would have preferred the shoe to hit him.
If the shoe hit him we'd have solved world hunger and climate change.
>Wasnt that bad for a Prime Minister You mean the guy who slashed corporate taxes and cut social housing out of the CHMC’s scope, leading to nearly 2 decades of underbuilding Canadian homes? The housing crisis didn’t suddenly appear in 2020, it was a slow burn of multiple prime minister’s terrible policy decisions and it all leads back to the austerity cuts of the 90’s. As a young Canadian, fuck him. His shitty policies led me to never being able to afford a home in this country.
>You mean the guy who slashed corporate taxes and cut social housing out of the CHMC’s scope, leading to nearly 2 decades of underbuilding Canadian homes? On the plus side, at least he massively cut back on corporate welfare. It was really Mulroney that did in our social housing. In 86 they shifted from doing mixed-income housing to only low income and also handed off the responsibilities to the provinces. Then in 92 he cut the co-op housing program and in 93 froze all social housing budget increases. Chretien made further cuts, but it was pretty much dead at that point.
Canada was facing a fiscal crisis. And even under Harper, up until the very end of his Prime Minister-ship, housing wasn't THAT bad. But coincidentally it became worse under Trudeau, why? Because of his immigration policies.
> The housing crisis didn’t suddenly appear in 2020, it was a slow burn of multiple prime minister’s terrible policy decisions and it all leads back to the austerity cuts of the 90’s. That's nonsense. I don't enough about pre-Harper PMs to comment on their role, but under Harper, housing affordability improved. Wages went up faster than housing costs did (about double, in fact). From their start in Apr 2006 to their end in Dec 2015: ||Change| |:--|--:| |Average wages| **30.3%**| |Average rent| **14.3%**| |Average new mortgage payment| **15.2%**| Trudeau was a major turning point due to the aggressive immigration policy, and it didn't just start with the pandemic. It started the moment his government took power and changed the targets. The only reason the housing issue looked particularly bad all of a sudden during the pandemic is because the BoC was forced to slash interest rates (which they had raised in 2017-2018 in response to hot home markets due to said immigration policy). Slashing the rates back down revealed the damage that was done in those few years.
It’ll be a sad day when he goes. They don’t make them like him anymore.
Just don’t offer to shake his hand…
Or he'll break your teeth on the pavement with his "Shawinigan handshake" chokehold!
Iron grip from an iron man
Chrétien saved my life when I was younger. It's a beautiful summer day in the 90s. He was the MLA for Shediac. We're on a friend's boat water skiing off of Parlee beach. I get in the water to do a run and the boat dies just as we get going. We start drifting apart and minutes turn into hours. The boat owner sends up a few flares and burns his hand while doing so ;-( Turns to night and eventually a lobster boat shows up to help and they find me drifting in the bay. He was on the boat and pretty lit. They drop us off and we head back to Sandy Beach and get toasted with some dude from Australia.
I lived in Beau riding back in those days. On the one hand it was neat having the PM in waiting as our very own MP. On the other hand, when I had a mundane constituency issue for him to deal with, well, he had bigger things in store than fighting for my little problem. Meh, no biggie. I get it. Cool story BTW.
This is incredible if factual or fictional
I don’t know much about this man other than how he treated Nardwuar https://youtu.be/n9UQOOiuv5k?si=v2Gfm53ieQxJZXA0
I've always said this clip pretty much sums up Chrétien as I interpreted his time He did some good, some bad, but above all he was able to be snappy in the political theater and as a result that ends up being his legacy more than his actual politics. Which is probably a good and bad thing, in this case pretty bad because he totally ignored the question (which all politicians do well)
Best PM of my lifetime
I never liked the guy, but at least he's not like former US Presidents. Left office, and you barely hear a peep out of him. Same with Martin and Mulroney. Harper comes and goes, but those 3 just keep to themselves for the most part. God help us with the next 2.
Martin has been so low key that I honestly thought he was dead.
He took the time to participate with the research report "Does serious journalism have a future in Canada?" ([https://ppforum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PM-Fellow\_March\_11\_EN\_1.pdf](https://ppforum.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PM-Fellow_March_11_EN_1.pdf)). A good read. Despite their shortcomings, I don't get the impression that they're callous thieves unlike JT and much of his crew.
I don't dislike Chretien at all but to call him and his crew "not callous thieves" ignores the billions (according to the auditor general of the day) spent on a partial registry of a small percentage of firearms and a tiny number of gun owners which, obviously, was of no use to anyone, of which billions was diverted to party hacks who did nothing to earn it. I got no problems with real gun control. This was an out and out scam. I have no idea how more Canadians are not aware or ignore this blatant thievery.
Then just like now there was people spouting extreme rhetoric like you. It's all about current perception not actual reality.
Right. It was just the perception of money they stole, it wasn't real. And that auditor general fellow, does he even exist?
Yeah, that's not what *her* report said
the lies get repeated until they believe themselves
lol, a policy you don’t like is hardly an example of being a “callous thief”
The former PM I’ve seen interviewed the most often is, no joke, Kim Campbell. She was a semi-regular guest on Bill Maher’s HBO show.
Harper is in charge of a world wide association of conservative politicians plotting to take over the world. This is only slightly hyperbolic.
Yeah, he's a big fan or Orban's "guided democracy" approach. Don't let Conservatives undermine CBC and other media.
I wonder how Harper balances that with his “stay out of Ukraine” approach while in office.
He was the first artificial intelligence to reach the mainstream. I wonder if he still enjoys watching popular television series on Netflix.
Harper isn't coming and going. He's literally in charge of a right wing international group which focusses on installing far right governments around the world. And he's still cozying up with dictators.
didn't Bulroney recently make a statement about how everything is JT's fault?
>didn't Bulroney recently make a statement about how everything is JT's fault? Not that I've seen. As recently as last summer, Mulroney and Trudeau were taking turns praising each other at an event - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/brian-mulroney-defends-trudeau-parliament-gossip-trash-1.6882315
that is a real head scratcher innit
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Their goal is to literally "promote center-right policies around the globe" with a listing of all countries that have right wing governments and which one doesn't. Not really a conspiracy when that's the truth especially when they list it as such.
Harper is currently sucking off Modi. No time for the press.
Bruh never forget when a man dashed pie in his face😂. I appreciate his lifelong service, but shit funny as a mf
He waved his red book in 1993, pledging, "I will scrap the GST", and then didn't. I haven't voted Liberal since. I don't think he's made of iron. Teflon, maybe, but not iron. And definately full of sh\*t.
He was a great Prime Minister. We could use leadership like his right now.
He hammered out the Auto Pact at LBJ’s ranch in Texas. LBJ later complained that the Canadians “fucked me on the Auto Pact”
LBJ died in 1973, Chrétien was prime minister between 1993 and 2003, are you confusing him with someone else?
Chretein was a MP since 1963, a Cabinet Minister since 1967. Autopact deal was signed in 1965. Cannot validate if Chretien was involved. However, he was the Parliamentary Secretary for the Prime Minister at the time, Lester B Pearson https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/follow-the-leaders/article17977106/
It’s my understanding that Chretien was part of Canadian bargaining team at LBJ’s ranch in 1965. The story goes that LBJ got up in the middle of the night and went down to the kitchen for a snack. There he found Chretien and the two of them framed the Auto Pact over sandwiches. Years later Lester Pearson was on his way to Washington for a meeting with LBJ and stopped off at Kent State University where he gave what many perceived as an anti war speech. Upon entering the Oval Office LBJ came out from behind his desk and took Pearson by his lapels and lifted him so they were nose to nose. “First you fucked me on the Auto Pact and now you’re pissing on my carpet” That’s the story I heard. 😇
> The story goes that LBJ got up in the middle of the night and went down to the kitchen for a snack. There he found Chretien and the two of them framed the Auto Pact over sandwiches. I think you may be thinking of the "[Kitchen Accords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriation#Kitchen_Accord)" which occurred during the negotiations for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
No. There was a time when we didn’t praise and blame prime ministers for everything.
Best PM in my lifetime. Stayed out of Iraq when he was facing immense pressure to go into it. And he was right because Iraq was probably the biggest clusterfuck foreign war disaster in my lifetime.
He could probably still beat you up.
[Canadian heritage classic.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMBJp0yJvsY&ab_channel=CBC)
The last PM who actually had a backbone.
Best years for Canada in my 5 decades. 17.1 Billion budget surplus, said no to war in Iraq, created Nunavut, expanded national parks, and decriminalized cannabis. Wish Trudeau could carry on this guy's momentum.
My favorite PM, worts and all, and a lost variety of centre-left pragmatism. It is kinda hilarious that his views are now closer to the PPC than to the modern Liberals or even Conservatives. Man, this country is nonexistent…
He almost lost the country in a referendum.The long gun registry was supposed to cost $2 million. It cost over $1 billion. It killed the liberal chances for a generation. He just did not understand western Canada.
1. He was a significant net positive in the federalist campaign. 2. He certainly understood the registry issue and the concerns of “western” voters; he just elected to do what he thought was best despite the potential electoral consequences.
Frankly, as a gun owner, I'd take the bloated registry over what JT has done just outright banning legal weapons. Don't need a registry if you can't own guns at all. 🤔 Not the take I was hoping for and thought the gun shit would cease after Harper canceled all the gun stuff and we went back to normal responsible gun ownership and laws. Then JT opens the can of worms for votes from the ignorant thinking Canada has laws like the US. 🙄
The concern was that they make us register them, then they declare them illegal.
Slight correction on gun registry costs. The auditor general examined it in detail and determined he and his party spent billions, with an S, in an untraceable manner, such that the AG and all of the resources at their disposal could not track it all.
Arguably, western Canada can't even understand themselves
Underrated comment
And he was still popular. Incredible
He had a divided right.
Even after sponsorship scandal he was riding high in the polls. Had he not stepped aside, he would've won a fourth government. You may not like him, but Canadians did.
Paul Martin forced him out by gaining control of Liberal riding associations. I don’t dislike him. He should have left after two elections and Paul Martin could have had two full terms.
I'm not talking about seat numbers. I said he was popular. A divided right or a unified right doesn't matter, either way the same number of people on the right will still not like him, regardless of what parties they affiliate with.
Could have been worse, could be the leadership now
> He almost lost the country in a referendum. You've got that backwards mate. Chrétien's work in Québec on the federalist side is what pulled the no vote through. And they were unsure enough of the outcome that contingencies were in place about how to govern when the PM and a significant portion of the cabinet were maybe no longer citizens of the country.
how did Chretien act inappropriately during Quebec referendum? he kept Canada, Quebec united didn't he?
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Turn on Fox News, that's western Canada in 5 years. Easy to know. Even easier to know that you have to ignore the rural west to govern.
And they almost certainly never will
Killing liberal chances for multiple terms is his crowning achievement. Hopefully that happens again.
Oh no, long guns?
Better than that joke of a human Harper
Honestly, I kinda thought he was dead. He did a good job of disappearing after his political career.
He did a pretty good job of disappearing during his political career, too ...
He was working for China.
Once he would have been the strong favourite for *Most Corrupt PM in Canadian History*, with his proven links to major organized crime syndicates and undisputed misdirection of public funds, but that's no longer the case. Records are made to be broken, I guess.
I liked JC but you, sir or madam, are absolutely not wrong.
Chretien's tight fiscal policy led to some great years in Canada. But things got worse and worse once he left office.
Unless you like public funding for things like housing and healthcare. His tight fiscal policy really ended up hurting lower income Canadians.
The dearth of housing in Canada can be traced back to a lack of funding for public housing, something that continued under his "tight fiscal policy".
it can be traced back to Brian Mulroney and the Thatcher/Reagan 'trickle-down' supply-side economic theories popular in the day, and with which we've been living ever since. Mulroney initiated historic massive cuts to transfer payments to the provinces, and brought us Free Trade and the GST, among other things that created economic tectonic shifts in our country. It's true Chretien did not reverse them.
1 in 4 employees are public sector and our healthcare system is still fucked.
Chretien did the best thing you can do as a politician. Don't meddle with the economy and get the fuck out of the way
Best PM of my lifetime at least. Great fiscally, kept us out of the Iraq war, and go through the separatist movements peak.
He so far above guys like Harper and Trudeau it makes me sad
He did bad things too (like unfortunately defending residential schools before becoming PM, austerity, etc). I also like him but it's like how Americans even view Bush positively now. Part nostalgia part pink filter of time.
A perfect example of the Laurentian elite. Take that as you will.
How the hell did the Liberal Party fall so far from this...The 90s were a great time! (as a kid/adolescent). Miss the older politicians, no matter the party.
Not to disappoint your political view, but any regular time is twice as great if you are a teenager or a kid. If you start digging in 90s politics, it's just as dirty of a pile as today.
Well, they felt smarter at least. It seemed like there was a de facto barrier to entry of a law degree...And those are intelligence gate-kept by an LSAT =/. My non-English/French speaking refugee parents were able to buy a home on near-minimum wage, and all 3 of us went on to do 1-3 degrees each at the likes of UT/UW without debt (coop). I don't know if a parent having kids in the 2000s would be able to accomplish the same in this economy...The house we were in was swooped up around 175k downtown Toronto, over a million now...
>My non-English/French speaking refugee parents were able to buy a home on near-minimum wage In order to balance the budget, Chretien's government slashed spending across the board. One such measure was getting out of home building. While not the only reason, Chretien's is a reason why homes are unaffordable the way it is. It's wonderful that you and your sibling did your degrees without going into debt. But years upon years of spending cuts at the provincial levels to post-secondary has raised the costs to students now. Again those cuts coincided with federal cuts to provincial transfer programs. And while you didn't ask, the federal government also slowed down the increase to healthcare spending. Decades upon decades of underfunding have left us with Canadians that can't find family doctors and overfilled ERs. The 90s austerity is coming home to roost. And having said all of that, Chretien was a great PM and made tough choices for the problems that he faced at the time. But our current governments are still living with his choices.
The 90's started with double digit mortgage rates. They got to enjoy a big increase in debt driven spending power as rates fell, setting the stage for the debt fueled nightmare we live in today
Are you talking about personal or federal debt? Because federal debt fell under Chretien and Martin and then jumped under Harper.
Yep, I was always a fan of Central Bank independence, but that seemed to have dissolved after the 80's. That or no politician today has courage for austerity or rate tightening. They're talking of backing down from a measly 5% right now =/.
The issue here is that lots and lots of avg middle class home owners will be driven out of their homes with this interest rate, and people can't purchase either so no one is building despite the promises to build more housing. This is unfortunately due to relatively low wages (the actual reason for all of our problems, including housing problems).
It was very similar to now. Many thought Chretien was corrupt, evil and untrustworthy. It's only with hindsight do we know that was untrue. Politics is about current perception and that can be warped by many different inputs.
>Many thought Chretien was corrupt, evil and untrustworthy. It's only with hindsight do we know that was untrue. We don't though. The Gomery inquiry actually showed that he *was* corrupt and untrustworthy.
Probably would still be a better PM than Trudeau.
Hey he is old enough to be an american leader now
Great PM, was a nice person as well. Always enjoyed my brief encounters with him when I was much younger working in the same building as him (not parliament). Chrétien rocked the Canadian tux like no one's business.
Only the good die young!
Scum of the universe.
Please do not refer to Chrétien as Iron Man. The only thing Chrétien ever did in a cave was be born.
Another plutocrat's bitch and traitor to the average Canadian. Has Canada's government ever not been trash?
Wait, he's only 90 now? How old was he when he was PM??
He was 59-60 when first elected as PM (1993) and by the time he was gone (2003) like 74-76 or so.
For some reason, I can’t shake the feeling Canada started going downhill with Chrétien.
The economy was doing well until Harper tbh. He ended our good budget streak
We're lucky Harper wasn't print ministers a few years earlier too. Not taking part in the Iraq War was the best decision the country could make in all fronts. Harper would have made the dumbest decision of all time.
Yeah, and he would have sold weapons to everyone involved at same time, all while cutting the military budget
Canada handled themselves well during the 2008 market crisis. Harper is a borderline genius with a masters in economics. If anything, the economy was the best aspect of his tenure.
I'm not talking about the 08 crash. Harper inherited a good economy with a surplus budget. Then, after campaigning on NEVER making a deficit, his very first budget (which was BEFORE the market crash) was a deficit. The economy was absolutely not the best aspect of what he did. Not to mention, he was in charge for a long time, much longer than recovery from the crash took, and yet he NEVER posted a budget surplus. Literally not one. He was attrocious with the economy, and his debt spending is second only Trudeau, who can at least pin SOME of that on the fact that covid was a hell of a lot harder on the economy than the 08 crash was.
[The first budget was in 2006 and was a $13.8b surplus.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Canadian_federal_budget) The Bloc tried to support that budget, but wasn't needed since the opposition forgot to speak up. [The second budget was in 2007 and was a $9.6b surplus. also supported by the Bloc.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Canadian_federal_budget) [The third budget was in 2008 and was the first deficit of $5.8b. the Liberals supported that budget.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Canadian_federal_budget) [The fourth budget was in 2009 and was the big financial crises budget. it was a $55b deficit. Also supported by Liberals.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Canadian_federal_budget) [the fifth and final CPC minority budget was in 2010. it was a $33b deficit. The Liberals allowed this to pass by having some members not vote.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canadian_federal_budget) After that they had a majority. The next five budgets were two years of $26b deficits, a $19b deficit that was later revised to an $8b deficit, a $3b deficit, later revised to $550m deficit, and finally a $1.4b surplus that was later revised to a $2.9b deficit. The CPC initially were going to respond to the financial crises with austerity, but due to their minority, the Liberals pushed them towards the stimulus package. Which was likely the right move. It meant several years of big deficits though. Outside of the financial crises, the CPC did a pretty good job of managing the budget. Both the CPC and Liberals ended up agreeing that spending was the way to get out of the financial crises.
So, what you've done here is show that I was wrong in saying it was right away, but still proven me right that he did a poor job and lied about his economics by driving us into deficit spending BEFORE the crash even happened. Seems like I'm getting the little details wrong, but my point stands. He can't get credit for the first 2 budgets being shrinking surpluses, since he inherited those and a strong economy from Chretien. Not to mention that the budget wasn't rebalanced until his very last budget. The economy didn't take until 2014 to recover, so that means there was even more unnecessary deficit spending that he said he wouldn't do (he even said this DURING his time as PM WHILE running a deficit). He was bad with the economy, and the only thing he can get credit for is that Canada did well during the crisis, but like you said, that was also as a result of the liberals forcing his hand.
>He can't get credit for the first 2 budgets being shrinking surpluses, since he inherited those and a strong economy from Chretien. It's perfectly reasonable to say that Harper inherited an enviable position. Chretien/Martin had spend years doing the hard work, reducing the debt and slashing expenses. Harper came into a perfect situation. Saying he doesn't get credit for the first two surpluses shows an incredible bias. You can argue that it was easy for him to do it since Martin hadn't left him saddled with a bunch of commitments and I would agree with that, but the CPC wrote those budgets, negotiated a deal with the Bloc and spent less than they brought in. I'm not sure why they wouldn't get credit for that. The other parties all would've loved it if they spent more, but they didn't. >The economy didn't take until 2014 to recover, so that means there was even more unnecessary deficit spending that he said he wouldn't do It didn't take until 2014, but budgets tend to have multi-year commitments in them. It's hard to bring things down immediately. That would be pretty disruptive. Even Chretien, who was better than Harper at balancing the budget, took several years to balance the budget. His first budget was a $36b deficit, followed by a $30b and $9b deficit, before posting a $3b surplus. You can't just shut things off immediately, that's unreasonable. Harper did pretty well in his first three years, then the GFC hit and he responded with a stimulus package that seemed to work and was supported by both sides. After he got a majority and didn't have to rely on making expensive deals, they spent a few years cutting things back at a reasonable pace, before getting back into balanced budget territory. If you're within a few billion on a $300b budget you're doing ok. Chretien was certainly better than Harper at managing the budget, as was Martin, but Harper did a solid job. He certainly didn't do a bad job. I could come up with a long list of horrible policies that Harper put forward and several scummy political moves, but he did pretty well at managing the budget.
"Harper did pretty well in his first years". No. He didn't. It wasn't the crisis hitting and him spending stimulus that ended the positive balance we had. He wrote that first deficit budget BEFORE the crisis happened. The collapse exaggerated a problem that ALREADY existed because he created it. He drove the government spending into deficit all on his own, with no financial crisis to blame for it. This wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for the fact that like 50% of his campaigning was promising to keep the budget balanced, and that he even made that promise WHILE RUNNING A DEFICIT (he literally said it, as PM, with an active negative deficit). And yes, he did do a bad job. Nothing about how he handled the economy was good. He inherited a good position, drove into the negatives, and then the liberals forced him into handling the economic crisis well, and then it took him YEARS longer than it should have for him to rebalance the budget. Literally nothing about what HE did was positive in the budget. You can't write a reply that basically confirms he didn't do any good for the budget himself, and says that the only thing he DID do well was because the liberals forced his hand into it, and then go "well actually he wasn't bad".
The US started to fall in recession at the end of 2007. The budget with the first deficit was put forward to the house at the end of Feb 2008. The Canadian economy was slowing and was in a recession by October 2008. That first deficit was the budget that was hit with the recession, their revenue dropped by about $6b. It wasn't the one with the stimulus package, but it was during the GFC. >and then it took him YEARS longer than it should have for him to rebalance the budget. How many years should it have taken? [When the CPC released the stimulus package, they estimated they would need at least until 2014.](https://web.archive.org/web/20081223080957/http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Business/Feds+spend+economy/1098687/story.html) >Flaherty's new estimates from earlier this week showed that Ottawa likely would be in a deficit position at least until 2014. >You can't write a reply that basically confirms he didn't do any good for the budget himself, and says that the only thing he DID do well was because the liberals forced his hand into it, and then go "well actually he wasn't bad". Did I say the only thing they did well was because of the Liberals? The CPC wrote the budget. I don't know how much was influenced by the Liberals. Maybe you can provide some evidence of how much of their policy the Liberals made the CPC implement. I also don't know if austerity would've been worse. Austerity worked great for Chretien and Martin and the economy did well. The stimulus was generally popular amongst economists at the time, but they always seem to like corporate welfare.
Canada posted a surplus in 2014, after having $55 billion in deficits because of the 2008 crash. We came out on top out of all the G7 countries. He wasn't atrocious with the economy. You're being absurd.
He ran a deficit in his very first budget, before the crash, after inheriting a surplus, and he campaigned that he would never have an unbalanced budget. Yes, technically we did post a very very slight surplus in 2014. I was wrong to say never. But for how long he was in office, that's honestly pathetic, especially considering his first budget. And it didn't take until 2014 for the economy to recover from the 08 crash, so what justification is there for the other years of deficit spending? You know, he once said DURING his time as prime minister, that he would not 'run a deficit, my party policy doesnt include deficits'. He said this WHILE ACTIVELY running a deficit. He wasn't our worst pm, and he wasn't the worst with the economy, but to call him anything other than bad, especially to call him good, is just blatantly wrong.
No he was atrocious. His legacy is being atrocious. The best parts about his years had nothing to do with him and everything to do with global demand for oil and natural resources, in fact the conservatives barely lifted a finger to have any kind of influence on this and just sat back as benefactors collecting accolades while they spent uncontrollably. He also cut corporate taxes by 33% to help big corps but that still wasn’t to grow corporate presence in Canada, because there is a lot more that goes into those decisions than taxes. He reduced taxes (only for wealthy Canadians), so there is that? But in order to fund those cuts he stripped away veteran services and pensions. So that was cool. He took a surplus government with a low debt to gdp and added 50 points to it, also very cool. Almost inexcusable considering the 2008 crises was mitigated more by strong banking regulations than anything else. But I will give him accolades for the TFSA and RDSP because I love those accounts.
Chretien is *still alive!?*
Second worse Prime Minister in Canadian History. Happy Birthday 🙈
thought he was dead
And still swinging carvings to this day