Reckless US economy led world to recession: Canada PM
14 Mar 2009
Canada, America's largest trading partner has squarely blamed reckless US spending and investments for the current global recession and said the marketplace is not the solution to the problems.
In the first such attack by any western leader, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper also criticised President Barack Obama's multi-billion dollar stimulus package to kick-start the economy.
Americans were reckless in believing that they could continue to borrow without impunity, Harper said at a fundraising dinner in the capital Ottawa on Thursday night.
"We are in a global recession principally - and we have to face this - because a lot of people on Wall Street, because of a lot of people in the private sector more generally - homeowners or consumers - pushed or bought into a very unconservative idea that they could live beyond their means,'' Harper said.
Harper, however, said the Conservative philosophy of big-spending and big government was not to be blamed for the current crisis.
"Regulators may have failed to prevent it but, in the end, it was a failure of the private sector to live according to the values we as conservatives know to be true,'' Harper said.
Harper, who criticised US President Obam's stimulus package, which raises taxes on those earning more than $250,000, however, said welfare state was not the solution to all problems.