The current selection of ideas being proposed by the usual faces in Ottawa has to be among the most deluded I’ve heard in quite some time. The only party that appears to be displaying any fiscal common sense is the Conservatives, and that’s only because they’re not going to open the floodgates again until 2015.
It’s positively bizarre, actually, to listen to the Conservative proposals for the 2011 election, since they all take place in 2015, or the year that Canada’s deficit will magically be balanced. From the announcements he’s made, one would think Stephen Harper was actually running in a different time period than the others. A $500 fitness tax credit and income-splitting are just two of the big ticket items voters can expect a half decade from now.
Whatever spending promises have been made by the Conservatives, however, they pale in comparison to those made by the “Nanny State Professor”, with $8 billion in big-ticket social spending over the next two years. And they’ll somehow be paid for without raising income taxes (which isn’t exactly true, since they plan to raise corporate rates back up to 18 per cent).
The Liberal plan is big on the party’s attempt to corral the family vote from the Conservatives, adding $8 billion in new spending. $1 billion would go toward Registered Education Savings Plans (which personally appeals to a parent like myself, since my RESP isn’t tax-deductible while RSPs are), $1.2 billion would go to daycare, $700 million to better GICs and $400 million to energy retrofits (which is a bit of a policy lift from the Conservatives).
To say the Liberal budget is unaffordable is an understatement, although this seems remarkably similar to the same sort of pie-in-the-sky promises made by the Ontario Liberals when Dalton McGuinty reached out to put a chicken in every pot that was hard done by the Harris era.
It would be one thing if we were running large surpluses for Ignatieff to make these kinds of spending promises, but during a deficit it is frankly irresponsible. The sheer enormity of it all suggests the platform is aimed more at election racketeering than good policy-making. The last thing we need are more social programs that can be expected to balloon in cost over the next decade.
As for Jack Layton, he’s mostly out-to-lunch as usual. He’d create a jobs program that would be funded by returning the corporate tax rate to 19.5 per cent, proving once again that socialists don’t understand the fundamentals of economics.
There is one aspect of the NDP spending platform that deserves a closer look. His $103 million promise to improve benefits for military veterans is admirable, and certainly affordable when compared to the fact the Conservative government is willing to spend $100 million on the commemoration of the war of 1812.
Not that Layton is really in this two-horse race. Nor is Ignatieff, if you look at the polls lately. But Harper is taking some deserved heat for saying today that he wouldn’t meet the Liberal leader in a man-to-man showdown in front of the cameras (though it has been pointed out that Sun TV is willing to accommodate when they launch in late April), giving CBC reporter Terry Milewski the opportunity to call him a chicken to his face.
The Conservatives are also constrained by the fact that they have said on the record they won’t change their budget, so the amount of vote-buying they can manage is limited to things that extend beyond the current budget projections, hence the reason for their bizarre tax promises in 2015.
Perhaps the best thing to hope for is a majority government, not because I believe the Conservatives deserve one, but because it would test once and for all the argument that the government’s fiscal credibility has been compromised by the demands of the opposition. That, and the fact we wouldn’t have to hear about unaffordable universal programs until sometime in 2015.
I can’t even begin to imagine giving a majority government to a man who has openly stated that he wants to abolish the Canada Health Act and CBC, has shown open disdain for any protections on equality for gender and sexual orientation, and openly (okay, nothing the man does is open, he’s as secretive as they come) refuses to give anyone in his party any voice at all. He openly tells Americans that Canada is a second rate nation – letting a man who hates his own country run things?
A vote for a Conservative majority government is a vote for extreme change in Canada – as in a conversion to the US of C… I’m all for being responsible when it comes to spending, but I LIKE Canada, and Harper doesn’t. He wants to change what it means to be Canadian.
Also, the comment about corporate taxation increases affecting job growth? Not likely… Corporations hire when they need people, and fire/lay off when they have excess – but a sudden tax break does not equal more hiring, it equals more profit, plain and simple. Give Canadians more money to spend so they can’t keep up, and corporations will hire more – that requires putting more money in the hands of the average Canadian, to spend.
You don’t like the idea of fixing our broken health care system? You’d prefer to let it remain the most restrictive in the G20? Even socialist countries have user fees and deductibles.
As for the CBC, what’s wrong with making a broadcaster balance their budget? It doesn’t make sense to pay for it in 2011 when so many other choices are available. I want to move to a more democratic society, not one that foists a broadcaster on the people without consent.
I do think that corporate tax increases have a direct effect on jobs growth or stagnation. Increasing taxes doesn’t remove
profit, it makes them cut jobs. Conversely cutting taxes means most companies will reinvest in the company by hiring more
people in order to grow it.
It’s NEP II and Green Shift all over again with Iffy’s coalition appeasing enviro plan:
‘…Ignatieff’s proposed new energy scheme immediately raised hackles in the West, harkening back to Pierre Trudeau’s hated National Energy Program, which stripped an estimated $50 billion to $100 billion in provincial GDP from Alberta’s economy from 1980-1985.
“This policy could have come out of the Trudeau Liberals,” said University of Calgary economics professor Frank Atkins on the heels of the Grit campaign platform released Saturday….
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/CanadaVotes/2011/04/03/17862826.html
I’m not sure I would characterize income splitting and other Conservative goodies as “opening the floodgates”. This isn’t spending, it’s allowing taxpayers to keep more of their own money. The means to do so seems to be becoming more and more convoluted with the myriad of hoops one needs to jump through in order to keep more of your own money, but, still, it’s moving in the right direction.
Contrasted against the Liberals who want to immediately commit Canadians to billions in new spending year over year for the rest of eternity (because we know that once a program gets started it is virtually impossible to kill it), and will finance it by robbing the corporate piggy bank, it’s hard to believe that anyone would vote for these irresponsible imbeciles.
[...] See also Blue Like You’s “Corporate Tax Cut Canard,” Hunter’s “Instant Gratification,” N.B. Tory Gal‘s analysis and Adrian MacNair on “Nanny State Promises.” [...]
Andrew Leach at the G&M has done the math.
Iffy’s Cap and Tax would redistribute $30 Billion PER YEAR by 2020.
Got that Canada,
PER YEAR, $30B out of industry, redistributed to what?
Iffy doesn’t say.
”..If this were the case, the annual auction of permits could be worth about $30-billion dollars ($75/ton times about 400 million tons of industrial permits) by 2020…’
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/the-economists/liberals-significant-climate-plan-cloaked-in-silence/article1968885/
repost from BLY because it affects every Canadian.