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A picture (and caption) are worth a 1000 words

I couldn’t help but laugh at the picture and caption the Toronto Star is using of Jim Flaherty coming out of an igloo up in Iqaluit where the G7 Finance Ministers are meeting.

The caption reads:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty exits an igloo in Iqaluit on Feb. 6, 2010, moments after destroying the snow-brick entrance arch [...]

Today's edition of silly Conservative messaging on prorogue.

The first comes from Jim Flaherty, who completely contradicts Prime Minister Harper’s claims on prorogue being necessary to “recalibrate” the government’s economic priorities:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says shutting down Parliament doesn’t affect his budget consultations – they would be happening whether Parliament was in session or not. But that’s not what his boss, the Prime [...]

This is your speech to convince the Canadian public the nation's finances are in good hands?

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty decided to hold a press conference today, which initially led to all sorts of speculation what it might be – perhaps a crafty move to try and pressure opposition parties not to vote the Conservative Government down?

If that was the goal, I’m not sure this speech is going to do [...]

The Parliamentary Budget Office contradicts the Conservatives (yet again)…

…this time over the issue of whether our deficit we’ve acquired is a temporary thing that will disappear once good economic times come back (the Conservative government/ Jim Flaherty/ Stephen Harper’s view) or whether this is a “structural” permanent deficit that will have to be dealt with. The independent Parliamentary Budget Office led by Kevin [...]

Jim Flaherty doesn’t take defeat well..

A funny story in the Star today (if true) about Jim Flaherty’s reaction to his wife Christine Elliott placing 3rd in the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race, won by Tim Hudak:

While Elliott coped well with defeat, her husband, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, appeared bitter during the crowded celebration at a downtown pub, astonishing Tories [...]

Remember, this is a “mild” recession, according to Finance minister Flaherty.

What would a bad recession look like to him, I wonder? Some more terrible numbers out today:

Canada is shedding jobs at a rate not seen since the deep recession of the early 1980s, as March saw another 61,300 workers join the ballooning ranks of the unemployed. The loss brought Canada’s official unemployment rate to eight [...]

As predicted, Jim Flaherty writes Gritgirl’s newest video.

Our sometimes furious Finance minister couldn’t have handed Gritgirl better material on a silver platter if he’d tried, as I predicted a couple of blogposts ago:

Love the music!

Who do you believe: Jim Flaherty, or the TD Bank?

There’s a wee bit of a discrepancy between Flaherty’s forecast and the TD Bank’s:

The worsening recession will drive Ottawa $18-billion deeper into deficit over the next two years, a leading economist is predicting – an increase beyond existing government forecasts that appears set to push annual budget shortfalls into record territory. The Toronto-Dominion Bank’s calculations [...]

Shorter Jim Flaherty:

Don’t worry, be happy.

Oh, and by the way, it’s the media’s fault for Canadians thinking we’re going into an economic decline:

“There is a steady drumbeat of negative media coverage on the state of the U.S. economy,” he told a business audience this morning. “Sometimes I think this spills over into Canadian readership and influence on [...]

Another day, another Cons scandal.

Maybe the Cons. are trying to do so many scandals at once, they’ll hope Canadians throw up their hands and not care about what they’re doing anymore, or lose track of them, or something.

Here’s the latest one:

The federal ethics watchdog is investigating a sole-source contract Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s office awarded to a well-connected Conservative…Flaherty [...]

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