Harper was right: High ranking Liberals "lie" about Canada's economic situation

A few days ago, Harper criticized Dion and other high ranking Liberals for undermining confidence in Canadian's economy, and misrepresenting Canada's economic position in relation to the rest of the world.

A combative Mr. Harper argued that economic commentators are saying the fundamentals of the Canadian economy remain solid despite the slowdown, but what we see is “the Leader of the Opposition and his leading critics going around and trying to tell Canadians the opposite, trying to drive down confidence in the Canadian economy without foundation.”

“And quite frankly sitting on the sidelines virtually cheering for there to be a recession.”

Dion and his cheerleaders reacted strongly to this, and flatly denied it. And yet today on CTV's Question Period, Senator David Smith the Liberal campaign co-chair reiterated some of these same comments that Harper attacked them for.

You can view the segment here.

Senator Smith get's it wrong on many accounts, around the 3:40 second mark on the video Senator Smith talks about the 42 billion dollar debt that the Liberals "inherited" from the PC government of Brian Mulroney. Perhaps this is the end of the story right here, I mean, can we really believe the worlds from anyone who doesn't even understand the difference between deficit and debt?

Senator Smith also conviently forgets to tell what happened to the 12 billion surplus -- also known as massive over taxation that the Conservatives inherited. That surplus was redistributed to tax payers through tax cuts, and increased transfers to the province. Stephen Harper also ensured adequate funding for our Canadian Forces.

Senator Smith goes on to tell misrepresent the truth on the financial states of the Government to Canadians when he talks about a deficit last quarter. He briefly talks about the surplus in this quarter but then talks about the deficit from last quarter. This is just plain wrong. There hasn't been two quarters in this fiscal year.

First off Senator Smith, there has only been one complete quarter in this fiscal year. The fiscal year for the Government of Canada goes from 1 April to 31 March. This means the first quarter of this year is the months April, May, and June.

The fiscal results for the first quarter of the 08/09 fiscal year was a surplus of 1.2 billion dollars. That total recorded surplus to date (April-July) is 2.9 billion dollars. These are the numbers reported by the Department of Finance. So Senator Smith, who is wrong? The Department of Finance or you?

So here we have a very senior Liberal Senator talking about Canada being in deficit last quarter. Since we all know deficits are bad, we can only assume he is trying to scare us.

Mr. Dion, why do you have senior Liberals lying to us about being in deficit in the first quarter of this fiscal year? Why do you support their lies, and the way they talk down about the economy? Why?

We're better off with Harper.