Archive for April, 2006

I am hosting the Carnival of Investing next week and I am starting to panic because so far, I haven’t received any submissions. Bloggers, please send in your favourite posts on investing topics to ccapitalist-at-yahoo-dot-ca. I promise to read each of your submissions and include all the posts in the carnival (Can you sense my desperation?).

Also, since it looks like the organizer, Retire at 30 (I hope he is okay), is AWOL, I would like to organize the carnival going forward. It would be a shame to let the Carnival die. Do let me know if there are any objections.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will present the new Tory government’s first budget on May 2, 2006. Here’s what we can almost certainly expect (from a personal finance perspective):

1. A 1% cut to the GST will be one of the key features of the budget. The key unknown here is when the cut would take effect.
2. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that the $1,200 child-care allowance will be included in the budget and dared the opposition parties to vote it down (which would mean another election).
3. A bevy of miscellaneous tax-cuts (transit tax credit, tax deduction for sports activities etc.) that Mr. Harper described as “all kinds of tax-cuts” during the election campaign.

Everything else is conjecture at this point. Personally, I would hope that Mr. Flaherty keeps the income tax-cuts introduced by the previous government. But, I am not holding my breath for any “surprise income tax cut I am sure Jim has up his Irish sleeve“.

Note: If you haven’t done so already, hurry up and file your taxes. The deadline is midnight on May 1, 2006.

I am adding The Confused Capitalist to the Canadian Financial Blogs page. The blogger, Jay Walker, writes mostly about investment topics and has a contrarian take on the markets. Recent posts covered subjects like prospecting for stocks, the (falling) US dollar and (the lack of) a housing bubble in Canada. Mr. Walker has been blogging since February 2006 and posts at least a few times every week.