RHammer, that was a very good post and I think most do not realize the taxation difference we have in Canada vs the US. In the US, you have very low personal taxation, the interest on your mortgage is tax deductible, business/corporate taxes are lower there...you get my drift. Well, they have done this to stimulate the economy to the max, to squeaze out every .1 they can out of the GDP. However, they have run up huge deficits and debts in the last few years because of this (and the banking BS) where our debt level is much more manageable and our budget surpluses have done a wonderful thing of putting us in this very enviable position.

Now, the surplus is shrinking, not sure if this is because of lower revenues because of economy or policy changes by the conservatives (the 2% GST for sure helped reduce our surplus). However, if our next government wanted to stimulate our economy, we still have tools we can use. We could lower personal taxes, business taxes, corporate taxes, gimicks like mortgage interest being deductible and the best option in my mind would be to cut the GST completly for the next year only!! This will cause people to want to buy now instead of waiting for this tumult to stop. In a year you can decide to bring it back or not but the resultant spending by the population to save this 5% will help drive our economy and lessen our GDP dependance on exports. We can afford this because of our surplus position and our relatively low debt to GDP ratio. Now the US cannot afford much more tax cuts as they are at or below the apex of the tax/revenue curve and so are in much worse financial because of this as well.

Glorieux

PS sorry for off topic...