28 May 2004

An Alternative View of Election Platforms

Well, it’s finally happened; Prime Minister Paul Martin has asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament to accommodate new elections. I think that the Prime Minister wanted it to happen sooner, but circumstances forced him to sacrifice his desire for a fresh electoral mandate.

The last few months have been instructive on a number of levels. We’ve learned a few things about our former Prime Minister, the Right Dishonorable Jean Cretin, and the minions he had scattered throughout the federal service. We’ve learned that despite the inherent divisions within the Liberal Party they have more unity at their core than the fledgling Conservative Party of Canada. We’ve learned that Conservatives aren’t quite as horny as I originally gave them credit for and are actually capable of electing the closest thing to a real politician they had who was willing to step up to the plate. We’ve also learned that in spite of ten years of Liberal Party mismanagement of public resources they’re still more likely to win the coming election because, whether we like it or not, they’re still the only game in town.

First of all, I believe very firmly in the right of franchise. I believe that we have a civic duty to execute that right when the opportunity is given to us. The right to vote is the only real expression of political power than an ordinary, average citizen has, and I believe that if you’re going to succumb to apathy and sacrifice your right of franchise then you don’t have any right to complain about the government you’re going to get because you didn’t do anything towards contributing to the choice. That being said, the unfortunate thing about Canadian elections is that, for some bizarre reason, we believe in Representation by Population, which means that the highest concentrations of population get the most seats in the House of Commons. The largest concentrations of our population are located in Eastern Canada, specifically within the boundaries of Quebec and Ontario, so, as a result, that’s where the real political power is located. Us poor Albertans really have no means to influence which political party is going to earn the right to form the next government, but we do get to contribute to the process. I suppose that counts for something.

Despite the fact that my vote cannot directly influence the distribution of political power I still have every intention of voting in the coming elections and I encourage Canadian who reads this to do the same thing. At the very least voting gives me the right to complain, but if you really need a reason to vote then think of this: Voter apathy is one of the prime reasons why we had ten years of Jean Cretin and Liberal Party mismanagement.

Now, on to more concrete matters.

All of the news reports that I’ve been seeing of late concerning the coming election voice the conclusion that the Liberal Party, under the leadership of Paul Martin, will likely be the first minority government more than a decade. This means that despite the fact that the Liberal Party will hold the most seats in the House of Commons, their seats will not comprise more than half of the House. Personally, I have no problem with that. I’ve always believed that Paul Martin was the only real star in an otherwise lackluster Cretin cabinet and I think that he should be given a chance to prove what he can do. I’ve said this before and I stand behind it.

Now that the conservative side of the political spectrum has reunified there is finally a single, viable political alternative to the Liberal Party, but I don’t think that the Conservative Party can win the election. The reason is one of perspective. Stephen Harper and his associates claim that the Conservative Party represents a truly unified front, but I believe that statement to be less than truthful. It wasn’t that long ago that the old Progressive Conservative Party fractured because some Right Wing Extremists believed that the Party was old and fossilized, incapable of responding to the changing moods and desires of the Canadian voting public. These Right Wing Extremists seceded from the Progressive Conservative Party to form the Reform Party under Preston Manning. The Reform Party was a good idea, but it was largely a western phenomena only and was thus easily ignored by the powers that be in Ottawa. The mutation of the Reform Party into the Canadian Alliance allowed these disaffected Conservatives to claim a few seats in the East, but they still didn’t have a chance in hell of winning an election.

The reunification of the fractured Conservatives into a single political voice was a necessity, and I applaud the members of the Conservative Party of Canada for doing it because we now have a viable political alternative to the Liberal Party, but only on paper. The Conservative Party of Canada has only been in existence for a handful of months and hasn’t really had a chance to form a coherent set of policies. What progress they have made is impressive will not help them in the coming election. Maybe they’ll stand a better chance in the next one.

What really caught my attention about the individual campaigns, though, was the stances taken by the two parties on the subject of taxation.

Here in Canada we pay what can easily be percieved to be a horrid percentage of our income in taxes to both Federal and Provincial governments. As a result of this high taxation our government is able to provide for its citizens a series of services that other governments cannot provide. Health care is one of those services. I rather like a having a health care system in which a visit to the doctor doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. I rather like the fact that we have far fewer incidents of medical expenses bankrupting people on this side of the border than they do in the States. For those and a variety of other reasons I have no problem with the concept of paying higher taxes, as long as I’m getting services in return that are worth what I am paying.

On the one hand we have Stephen Harper promising Canadians that he will lower our taxes to something approximating a more American level of taxation. On the other hand Paul Martin says that nine years as Minister of Finance counts for something and that we cannot suffer such a low level of taxation without sacrificing valuable services such as health care. He’s even gone so far as to promise large infusions of cash into the health care systems of the individual provinces.
Here’s what I think. I think that by promising to lower taxes Stephen Harper has caught the attention of a lot of Canadians who are less than happy with the amount of money we’re funneling into the Federal Government for things like the Gun Registry and adscam, which was probably all he really had in mind. However, Harper was one of those disaffected Conservatives who flocked to the banner of the Canadian Alliance, so there’s no telling what he really thinks. Regardless, I tend to filter those kind of comments through the same set of filters I use when listening to any other politician, which means I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s a nice pipe dream, though.

However, I freely acknowledge that it costs money to run this country and that, over the last couple of years, a horrendous amount of that money has been squandered on less than intelligent objectives. To me that says that the system needs to be overhauled, and that what is needed is a new approach to the way the government spends its money. The promise of lowering taxes is a nice pipe dream, but it’s just not practical because there are worthy causes to which that money can be diverted. In fact, I can think of several ways to streamline the system right here and now.

The first thing that I would do as Prime Minister would be to inform all the Members of Parliament that there will be no raises in pay throughout the course of my government. You guys already make many multiples of what the average Canadian earns and if you can’t manage to live within those means then you have some serious problems and I encourage you to seek help in dealing with them. Besides which, I’ve noticed how quick you’ve been of late to tell us all the wonderful things you’ve done to deserve the extra money you want us to give you, but you’re just as quick to deny funding to the military on the grounds that they really have all the equipment they need so why should we spend money on them at all. I mean, it’s not like we actually need the soldiers with the United States sitting just south of us, do we?

The next thing that I would do is direct the Minister of Finance to formulate a plan to pay down the national debt. The plan will call for the significant reduction of said debt within five years, and the retirement of the entirety of the debt within ten years. If you’re incapable of formulating such a plan then I would suggest that you tender your resignation and allow me to appoint someone who can. Oh, and about that slush fund of several million dollars that we’ve been talking about? I want every single penny applied to the national debt, and I want that done now. This country will be debt free in ten years and that is all there is to it.

Now, those first two orders would go a long ways towards making me the popular person that I know that I could be (feel free to call Bullshit) so I would give Parliament a couple of weeks to settle down before unveiling the next phase of my plan. Now this is the one that would be really controversial. I would gather together the Minister of Finance, his critics from the other political parties, and a handful of other Members of Parliament, also from the other parties, and form a committee. I would chair this committee myself and it would have the mandate of recommending policies and procedures for making the operation of this Government more efficient and less vulnerable to the kind of pork barrel embezzlement we’re seeing in the adscam scandal. Now, the reason the Minister of Finance would be a part of the committee process is that he would be required to implement all of the reforms suggested in the committee’s final report.

The problem with the government isn’t how much money we’re paying in taxes, but how that money is being spent. The government has invested our money in far too many lemons of late, and something has to be done to make sure that doesn’t happen again. That’s one thing that neither Stephen Harper nor Paul Martin seem to understand. The only thing that lowering taxes will accomplish is to make us even more Americanized than we already are, and I don’t thing that’s a good thing. As for funneling all that money into services without addressing the lessons learned from the Cretin administration, all that does is perpetuate the status quo, and I like that even less than I like the thought of blanket tax cuts.