Be fearful of kept promises

So, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ditched plans to reform the Canadian electoral process. This comes as no surprise to me, although many Canadians are now talking about broken promises.

It is a broken promise, but let’s face it, our sitting prime minister made this promise when he was simply the leader of the Liberal party, with his party holding third- party status. From that viewpoint, a more representative electoral process had the promise of benefiting his all but disenfranchised party.

Fast forward to the federal election of 2015, and riding on an ‘ anyone but Harper’ national sentiment, the Liberal Party became the governing party and Justin Trudeau became the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada.

The current first- past- thepost electoral system benefited the Liberals as they came to power having received 39 per cent of the votes. If you think that this is a paltry foundation upon which to establish a new government, then consider the fact that actual voter turnout on Election Day was about 68 per cent. That means then, that the Liberals came to power based on the wishes of only 25.5 per cent of eligible Canadian voters.

This is little different than the results that led to the victories of previous governments. To many people this seems wrong. Of course, you would mostly hear that sentiment expressed by supporters of parties that lost the given elections.

I do believe that we need electoral reform. I’ll even take that a step further and suggest that we need to revise the entire Canadian party system as well as the make- up of Parliament.

Many people will complain about a thing, but few are the number who actually step up and provide a solution. I will propose an alternative in a coming article, split into two parts, so please stay tuned!

Trudeau still has a few years to go in his mandate, and as the topic of electoral reform is not at the top of the to- do list of most Canadians, I doubt he’ll receive much of a spanking in the polls over this one, as much as the opposition parties will trot this out as one of a series of broken promises from the Liberal Party.

As a taxpayer, I’m a bit more concerned by the promises that he has kept and the ones it looks like he will keep.

For the moment, let’s set aside the huge deficit financing; that could be a rant all in itself. The Liberal government has already reduced the maximum amount that you can safely save in tax- free savings accounts ( TFSAs) from the $ 10,000 per year that we had in the latter Conservative days, to the considerably lower maximum of $ 5,500 per year.

This is a big deal for folks with a few bucks to invest, as the interest earned in TFSAs does not need to be declared as income, unlike most other forms of investment. This constitutes a Liberal tax- grab.

The latest thing of course that he had promised to do was to institute a carbon tax. Even assuming that the revenues derived by the federal government from these measures, which promise to look different in each province, actually goes towards improving environmental conditions, it is an additional tax burden to consumers. Most folks already live paycheque to paycheque, so how are Canadian families to absorb this new tax? Do they reduce their grocery budgets? Do they forsake for- fee after- school programs for their children?

While these are only a couple of examples, there will be many more.

Again, be more fearful of kept Liberal promises than the ones they don’t keep.