.
| Hearsay: |
[Enter political pundit armchair]
Well, the Conservative Canadian government that hijacked the country last year and essentially dissolved the government, junta-style, to avoid being ousted, has delivered a budget packed with spending designed to make them more palatable to middle of the road Canada, which usually votes centrist. This is a budget filled with opposition line items and it had to hurt chief dickwad and ultra-conservative religious nutbar Harper to approve it. It is also, of course, half economic necessity, given the times, as much as half political jockeying for power. If you’re either gullible or cynical, you might want to play with those percentages a bit. Anyway, after getting their pants pulled down by the culture vote in the last election, the wolves have decided get out their sheep costumes and try to buy a few votes back by playing nice. How nice? This is the question. Analysis seems to be confused in pinning down the amount. A good piece at the National Post (NaPo, Steven?) outlines the projects in question and puts the figure at $335M while the Ceeb, which seems increasingly a Conservative mouthpiece some days, is saying $438M. It’s funny to hear big business and conservatives congratulating the government on deficit spending when last decade they were screaming like babies at it. Another big question is how much of this will end up structural, meaning, there’s some question as to whether, given the likelihood of an extended recession, the Conservatives can ever dig us out of debt. How’s he going to reign in the tax cuts? And this is where you should look if you don’t trust their motives. I guess it doesn’t matter, so long as he gets power by playing to the suburban voters who may have been hesitant to buy his schtick last time. So, is this budget a vote-buy or a stimulus package? After months of saying don’t panic and that we were better off than everyone else in the world and that we were going to post a surplus, Harper sudddenly seems awfully ready to change his tune and spend spend spend into a huge deficit. Nearly losing power can change your perspective when you’ve got big plans for ramming right wing ideals through the moral sphincter of a centrist country. Yes, some of this money is good and overdue, but some is ill considered and ill spent (where’s the environment in here, in any sustainable way?) Tax cuts aren’t the way to go. And who gets left out? Quebec (all but ignored) and women (around equity and child care) are particularly neglected. But they don’t matter, do they, given that they’re statistically less inclined to vote for him in the first place. Perhaps there’s room in the budget for a dictionary so Harper can look up “karma”.
[Exit political pundit armchair]
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January 28th, 2009 at 9:33 am
“Given the likelihood of an extended recession” indeed. This whole budget is premised on the idea that the economy will be back on its feet by this time next year. Call me cynical, but this strikes me as a case of wolves in sheep’s clothing trying to buy votes from a gullible electorate. Call in the coalition!
Oh, and by the way, NaPo has a kinda nice ring to it. I’m not sure “venerable” is a word I’d use to describe the Post …
January 28th, 2009 at 10:16 am
If the Harperites want to cut taxes, they would have done a whole lot better to extend the tax credit on royalties which Quebec gives to creators to the federal income tax. The policy, in place since 1995, gives a tax credit for the first $30,000 of royalty income, which is then diminished on a sliding scale until it disappears at $60,000. This means that what the poorest writers, composers and others get from their creative work is tax free–and heaven knows this both encourages them and puts money into the system since without a doubt it is spent immediately.
Cheers
Mary
Line 297 of the Quebec tax form, for those of you who live in Quebec.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Excellent analysis, George.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Speaking of karma… the Harper government is trying to bankrupt the Liberal Party of Canada, by forcing one election after another, and thus one Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention after another, which was the exact same way that the Chretien government brought about the bankruptcy of the longstanding Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservative Party of Canada is not the same legal entity as the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Because the PCP and the LPC functioned for so long as opposites of each other, the death of one has brought about the eventual death of its other, unless its surviving other changes to adapt to the altered political landscape. To speak of karma, the end, or change, of the Liberal Party of Canada is being brought about by the karma that the excessive partisanship of the Chretien government generated.
As for the country itself, the only thing that got the federal government out of deficit spending, was the implementation of the GST, to the point where it was then able to direct billions of dollars towards the national debt. Now that the Harper government has reduced the GST by two percentage points, surprise, surprise, the deficit has returned. Obviously, part of the correct choice to satisfy debate that is in favour of deficit spending, is for the GST to be increased by two percentage points again, and for the GST to be maintained at that level until the national debt has been completely serviced. Another part of the correct choice is for the formula that the Martin government ironed out and tried to have legislated, to be legislated, so that revenue generated from a 7% GST, must produce a ‘rainy day fund’ in order to properly weather any reasonable period of economic recession, and be used to ’service the national debt during good times’. The whole correct choice is a combination of the economic philosophies of the PCP and the LPC, of Mulroney and his Conservative Party of Canada’s 7% GST, combined with Martin and his Liberal Party of Canada’s ‘rainy day fund’ legislation. But the PCP does not exist anymore, and because of that, the LPC will soon not exist along with it, unless it changes.
Due to the political vacuum created by the karma of the Liberal Party of Canada that was generated by the Chretien government, before the ‘New Goverment of Canada’ can be willing to act in good faith upon any ideas that would be of longstanding benefit to the country, it must first take care of the country’s unsettled business, by destroying the ‘Old Government of Canada’, or forcing it to change; it must, so long as the ‘Old Government of Canada’ or LPC continues to have the majority of opposition votes in a Parliament that has a CPC minority government that is not able to pass any legislature on its own. If the CPC ever succeeds to become elected to a majority government, then in its aftermath, those members that were able to politically survive the death of the LPC, will work to form a new party with which to unite the left, the same way that Harper united the right, with members that have resigned from the NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois.
That ‘new left party’ would thus be the only opposing party that can work in a minority Parliament with the ‘new right party’ that is Conservative Party of Canada. But by the time that that party has come into existence, the CPC will have a majority of seats, and not require the cooperation of an opposing partner in order to pass legislation. A new era of right wing politics in this country will have begun.
However, Dion’s proposal for there to be a coalition that consists of the LPC, the NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois, is able to GROTESQUELY mirror the idea of a ‘new left party’, but because of the way that the current system is modeled, it is not possible for a coalition government to ever directly win an election, for each citizen when voting must vote for the candidate of a party in particular. Therefore, THE ONLY WAY for the LPC to not become politically irrelevant in the affairs of the country, the only way for it to successfully adapt, is for it to lead a coalition government that is willing and able to pass legislation that will permanently change Canada’s system of governance, and therefore itself along with it, by the implementation a federal political system that elects its citizens’ Members of Parliament based solely upon the method of proportional voting and to do away with the method of first past the post.
A new era of minority governments in this country, that does not tolerate an excess of partisanship from any party, will have begun.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Correction – 2nd paragraph: *”of Mulroney and his Progressive Conservative Party of Canada’s 7% GST,”
January 28th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Update: Ignatieff has announced that he is not going to bring down the Harper government. Big surprise, eh? It seems to me that he would rather wait until the Liberal Party of Canada has its leadership convention in the Spring, before doing anything that might jeopardize his wishy-washy status as sort of officially elected leader of the LPC; such as campaigning in a federal election, and losing.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:55 am
That’s some pretty bitter-tasting NeoCon sping. You from Alberta?
January 29th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Paul: When the goal of one country’s political party is to force another of that country’s political party out of existence, then that behaviour is usually called ‘excessive partisanship’. Part of my reply to what George had posted, opined that excessive partisanship is what the Chretien government of the LPC based its actions on in regards to the PCP, and, that that is also what the Harper government of the CPC has been basing its actions on in regards to the LPC.
Karma is usually a two-way street, but not always. Do you opine that what the Chretien government did, by forcing the PCP into bankruptcy through the calling of numerous snap elections, and knowing full well that those consecutive defeats would force the PCP into hosting numerous leadership conventions, was not excessively partisan? If so, then I would be interested in hearing about that from you. This thread would be much better served were you to post a reply that is democratic enough to intelligently elaborate upon that, rather than for you to put forth another stupid personal attack against myself, and those that are from Alberta.
Furthermore, what I wrote and posted is not ’sping’. This blogazine does not seem to have a feature whereby its participants are able to edit and add updates to their posts.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:30 am
What a hackneyed, uninformed response Paul. You from Ontario?
January 29th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Lannie, I think you over simplify the causes of the PCP’s demise, or at least you give too much credit to Chretien alone. Remember, at it’s lowest point, the PCP had only two seats in Parliament, and at the same time Preston Manning was turning Alberta into the political equivalent of an oil-sands Gun ‘n’ Jesus Show, siphoning off Western support, and money, from the PCP. Brian Mulrooney’s failed leadership and Preston Manning’s political opportunism had as much, or more, to do with the demise of the PCP as Chretien’s maneuverings from Ottawa. The parasite worm of the Reform Party was already feasting on the dying corpus of the PCP before Chretien could drive the final nail. It wasn’t a matter of Chertien’s actions; Mulrooney had already poisoned his party and fled.
And for the record, I’m in favour of coalitions. Far from being grotesque, they keep everyone’s ideological extremes in check and foster cooperation. Good government is reasonable government. They work wonderfully in many European countries, and Canada could use some of that reasonableness and cooperation. We don’t elect leaders in Canada, we elect a parliament, and the parliament forms a government. There’s no law that says it has to be a minority government of one party if there isn’t a majority. A coalition is the very essence of parliamentary democracy.
sj, good one. You got me.