Photo: Arnold Lim / THE CANADIAN PRESS
You tink it’s izzy to make deficit predictions?
It was only a few days ago that I cited David Akin’s article that pointed to $10 billion in Conservative spending promises since June 22 alone. Well that spending spree has been a growing legacy of this government since it took power in 2006, only now the long-term outlook is massive consecutive structural deficits and rising debt until 2015.
From a political party that only one year ago promised it would never go into deficit to one that promises deficits for six more years is audacity heaped upon hubris. From a government that ridiculed it’s own department creation, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, for being too pessimistic, once again it is making Kevin Page look like Nostradamus. The crow patties that Jim Flaherty has had to stuff into his mouth over the past year is absolutely overwhelming, and the latest deficit revisions only leaves one shaking one’s head.
As I wrote a few days ago, this whole strategy of “incrementalism” is incrementally putting Canada on track to put up some record debt numbers. As the party moves more and more to the left with program spending, department creations, and government protections, it does so at a terrible cost to Canada’s debt burden. And while it may not be a good idea to raise taxes during the recession recovery, it simply refuses to cut back on spending. It is outspending the Paul Martin Liberals by a wide margin, a government that set the benchmark on excess and waste. As Kevin Gaudet wrote in the Canadian Taxpayer Federation blog:
Canada’s Finance Minister today announced the deficit will balloon to $55 billion. He says the budget won’t be balanced until 2015. That is 7 years of huge deficits. This is a financial disaster of immense proportions. Who would have thunk that a Harper government would oversee such an spending disaster.
Who indeed? And who can believe anything that issues from the lips of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty anymore? He said today in announcing his deficit revisions, that fixing the bleeding will “require decisions of government that won’t always be popular or pain-free.” He added it “will require a lot of saying ‘no’ to pet projects and special interests.” How very self-assuring that must be for him.
Let’s face it. The next election is make-or-break for the Conservative Party. If they win another minority government, we can expect the same saying “yes” to pet projects and special interests, and no decisions that will be unpopular or painful. This party is unlikely to do anything unpopular from here until the expected date with their majority destiny. Whenever that may be, and however they seem to believe it will materialize. But would the opposition tolerate yet another year, another month, another day of the dysfunctional and incoherent politics that take place in Ottawa these days?
A recent candid speech leaked onto the internet from Stephen Harper led to the same old “hidden agenda” rhetoric, but I’m absolutely in agreement with the Prime Minister here:
“I am not just saying that because we need a few more seats: you saw what happened last year. Do not be fooled for a moment. If we do not get a majority, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois will combine and they will form a government. They will deny this till they are blue in the face in an election campaign, but I guarantee it, if we do not win a majority, this country will have a Liberal government propped up by the socialists and the separatists.”
And far from Stephen Harper slipping up and revealing some kind of desperate plea for the party, I think Gerry Nicholls said it best. This is a party struggling with the jaw-dropping embarrassment of a deficit legacy that is shattering records like a hockey superstar. The speech given to the faithful is a means of trying to rally people away from the debt, and toward the magic “majority” word. And that’s really what this election could come down to. The promise that a majority Conservative government would bring the party back from the leftwing policies and spending orgy it is engaged in, and restore a genuine choice to fiscal conservatives. The paradox behind that is that one must decide to vote for the current version of fiscal incompetency in order to achieve it.
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