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COMMENTARY
November 16, 2005
Gritwits
In their latest unbelievably cynical stunt, our ruling Liberals put a big tax cut before Parliament, while refusing a delayed election call, so that they can go to the people claiming the Conservatives scotched the tax cut in order to force an election campaign no one wants during the Christmas holidays. (With their majority restored, they could then scotch the tax cut themselves.)Will this work? Are Canadians that stupid? As a Canadian myself, I’d like to think we’re not. Of course, I’m being jaded myself, to suggest that the Liberals would ever run on a campaign promise they had no intention to keep. But remember their promise to get rid of the hated GST? Well, barely a decade has passed since that one clinched the election of 1993. I suppose they haven’t had a chance to get around to it. Were they not so tedious, I should think the best opposition literature for the coming election would be the Liberal “red books” for the last four. It’s not that they never deliver anything important. It’s just that what they do deliver (e.g. sponsorship programmes; gay marriage) is stuff they never campaigned on. Or mentioned. Indeed, the best I can say for them, is that, in defiance of their own party platforms, they more or less followed the fiscal strategy of Michael Wilson, the last Conservative finance minister, until it finally led the federal government out of deficit and back into routine spending increases. The big tax cut they tabled Monday, with the kind of surprise that can only be achieved by an afterthought, was part of a larger stunt. A whole budget was effectively tabled, far out of season -- tossed together with the speed at which they reversed various solemn fiscal pledges to save the government from falling late last spring. Monday’s non-budget also included a pumphouse shower of new spending, the widest nozzles aimed at known Liberal regional and ethnic voting constituencies. It was tabled by a finance minister who admitted in his last budget that he no longer had a significant surplus to play with; and it came on top of that extravagant pay-off to the NDP. Such credibility as Ralph Goodale, M.P., brought with him to the finance ministry is surely expended by now. Belinda Stronach and a pocket calculator could do the same sums. (Where is Ms Stronach, by the way? I thought she got the ethics brief. Where was she when Judge Gomery was reporting the other week? And incidentally giving Mr Martin an entirely gratuitous, campaign-usable line, exonerating him from suspicion on matters in which his involvement had never been suspected, whenas the matters in which his involvement was suspected were not in the power of the Commission to investigate.) To be fair, judging from Mr. Martin’s last election, the Liberals won’t really be campaigning on their own hallucinogenic platform. They will expect to sweep Ontario and dependencies with the mantra, “Stephen Harper has a secret agenda!” This is quite serviceable code for, “If you think you may be benefiting in any way from the Liberals’ comprehensive system of corporate and personal dole, you should be very afraid of Mr. Harper. Bogeyman’s gonna cut you off.” He wouldn’t really, and he will spend the whole campaign repeating that he really won’t -- while the freshly re-funded CBC and the Grits’ plump pampered pack of pedigree press poodles snarl at Mr. Harper’s ankles. “Can YOU trust him? Can’t be sure can you?” Whereas, you can certainly trust the Liberals, whose track record for breaking campaign promises and delivering on secret agendas is beyond challenge. And therefore won’t be challenged by the same media. Said the Right Hon. Paul Martin to the TV cameras yesterday, "We have an enormous amount of legislation, very important legislation for Canadians that we want to get through. But, the rules of Parliament are clear, you either have confidence or you don't have confidence." This plausible-sounding statement is perhaps the sleaziest thing he has said since, “You can’t cherry-pick human rights.” For this is the very man who ignored a series of non-confidence votes in the Commons last spring, until he could find someone to buy off with a cabinet position to restore his majority in combination with his purchase of the NDP. That was the lowest trick any party leader had pulled to recover power in the Great White North since John A. did the Double Shuffle in 1858. (I would have cited Mackenzie King’s impostures in the King-Byng controversy of 1926, but that wool was at least pulled over the eyes of the people directly.) The polls show the Liberals ahead, and the public willing to forgive them for -- anything at all. I believe the polls. I do not, however, believe they can predict the result of an election campaign, before it has started. During that, anything can happen. Please, Lord, make it happen, and make this government be gone. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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