ToppyVann wrote:While many don't like Jean Chretien, if you look at what happened on his watch as PM, the deficit went to surplus, the economy grew in leaps and bounds, and Canada was respected around the world except by George Bush who has little respect for those who don't like his jack boot techniques on countries he doesn't like.
I give Chretien little credit for "solving" the deficit, as he, with Trudeau and Turner created it in the 1970's and early 1980's.
The inaction of Mulroney and Wilson in the 1980's resulted in the Reform Party.
In the 1993 campaign, Chretien campaigned on having an annual deficit of 3% of the size of the economy. If this had happened, our national debt would be double its present figure.
Instead, the Mexican meltdown in 1994 frightened Chretien and Martin enough to whittle the deficit away.
The fact that the Liberals are able to credibly (in the media, anyway) claim that they did away with the deficit (which they themselves helped create) still makes my blood boil when I think of Mulroney, Wilson and Mazankowski - they were not Conservatives, they were Socialists (they were the ones who NATIONALIZED GULF OIL!!). These IDIOTS, with decent management, could have eliminated the annual deficit by 1990; instead, the morons ran it up as high as $43Billion.)
In addition, the economic growth of the 1990's was based, in no small part, on the dot com boom which abruptly ended near the end of 2000. I can find the exact date, as I was a shareholder of Microsoft at the time.
Finally, lucky for the Liberals that Ignatieff was not their leader at the time, because he had made it perfectly clear that he was in full support of the invasion of Iraq. Pity no mainstream media asks the question of him any more.
