Canada: Economy: 1st Conserv Federal Budget in 13 years wins accolades and damnations; click here for complete text

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The federal Conservative government led by Prime Minister Steven Harper presented, in the persom of Finance Minister James Flaherty, its first budget (the first Tory budget in the 13 years). It was a good startup offering, and it came yesterday in a period of a huge revenue surplus based on a generally prosperous Canadian economy.

As Flaherty made clear, this budget was nevertheless an interim instrument, as it would take the next year to gain full knowledge of the leftover obligations incurred by the previous Liberal govt, the re-organization and culling of the system of entitlements left behind by the errant Libs - together with making the first round of Tory-conceived entitlements rational in terms of bureuacratic operations with efficiency.

Canada's Conservative Budget 2006

The Conservs are seriously committed to restraining govt-bureaucracy expansion, altho most Tory MPs don't seem to espouse the Liberatrain nonsense that "The govt which governs least governs best." Rather, the issue is one of optimatics: what is the optimal size of the number of paid employees on the (fed) govt payroll? But this can only be determined once the basic policy shifts have been determined - like expansion of the personannel of the revamped Canadian Forces, likewise of those of policing in domestic jurisdictions.

The new entitlements announced yesterday, such as the grants to famliies for childcare and for sports participation, may require no new hirings, should the umbrella departments drop other programs and then transfer workers from the phased-out projects to the new entitlements projects

Perhaps the best thing the govt did was to drop from income tax rolls thos who earned only #$10,000 or less. This doesn't mean such people will now "pay no taxes" as the extreme r+t and the extreme left have claimed. Rather, the class of small-earners like that of no-earners will still pay the fed General Sales Tax (which has indeed been lowered from 7% to 6% and then a year later on will come down to 5%). So, the needs of the very poor are being incrementally addressed. On the other hand, the Income Tax has been raised half a percent.

A representative economist for the Libertarian Fraser Inistitute in British Columbia, took to the airwaves to lament that the tax cuts for business were not enuff; they wouldn't stimulate intense new investment (but we all know that such investment does not necessarily go into companies that create further employment in Canada, so the extreme r+it wing on fiscal issues is a most unsure guide).

In the criticisms of the Conserv budget, the socialist bureacuracy-expansionist party, the New Democrats, vowed to vote against the budget (a move toward No Confidence, which if it won would force the resignation of the new Conseve govt). Principally, the NDP was foaming at the scuttling of the previous govt's scheme to saddle the country with a national childcare bureaucracy of unionized child-care careerists able to strike at whim and serving a one-size-fits-all mode of kidcare that would cut out many of those closest to each kid and otherwise unemployed (grandparents and other relatives, informal neighborhood carefolk who would be paid rather low fees in perhaps most cases, and religion-specific groupings that combine volunteering and modest-pay kidcare arrrangments based on single-religion commitment or not, as each such grouping chooses).

Using their flagship issue of bureaucratic-mode chlidcare as their excuse to vote against the govt, the Libs and NDP at the same time know full well there's no chance of winning and bringing down the Conserv govt, thus precipating a new election that the country doesn't want so soon after the last one only a few months ago. Fortunately, the Bloc Quebecois the second-largest of the three oppoistion parties, has announced it will support the budget because of the Conserv promise to address the problem that Quebec is so concerned about - "fiscal imbalance."

Quebec, for instance, claims to pay out far more than it receives from the feds (but so does Ontario now that it's lost its place as economic leader of Canada; and so could Alberta which is now the economic leaders and rolling in govt-revenues surpluses ). In any case, Harper and Flaherty have entered into discussions with the Lib provincial govt of Quebec, headed by its Premier Jean Charest around the issue of "fiscal imblance" to achieve a solution that will affect all provinces. Comparatively, we should note that Quebec already has a bureauracy-driven childcare system on a one-size-fits-all basis, and doesn't help a mother or her spouse who prefers to care for their child/ren at home, or make other arrangements with relatives, neighbours, or religion-specific groups existing for less formal childcare purposes.

The Q-Bloc realizes that Quebec already has done on its own for itself what the Lib/NDP coalition want to impose on the entire country; Quebec doesn't need a fed bureau-child encroachement; so the Bloc will test the Conservs on producing a solution to the problem of "fiscal imbalance," thus support the Conserv budget (altho the Bloc is a socialist party in most respects).

Now, what the Libs and NDP have done in voting against the resolution of the fiscal imbalance experienced by Quebec, Ontario and other provinces as to the ratio of their citizens' and corporations's payouts to the feds, compared to the monies received back by these provincial govts from the fed govt revenues, is vote for fed-favouring fiscal imbalance. This could function like a suicide-bomb they've strapped to their bodies politic. They want to maintain the fiscal imbalance against Ontario and Quebec, so that other provinces which don't want 1-size-fits-all-parents for bureaucratchild care in cauff-centers can't opt out - while those which do (like Ontario perhaps) could get their act together and impose a totalitarian bureaucare on children when both their parents want to hold jobs. The children thus to become creatures of the state.

The peculiar political logic of the Lib/NDP coalition in choosing the priority of statist childcontrol over balancing fiscal arrangments between the feds and provinces so that, if a province chooses for totalitarian child arrangements, it could do so on its own as Quebec has already modelled for all. In Quebec, this pattern is part of its overall extreme secularization process. - Politicarp

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