Getting primed up for the budget debate
Budget 2015 will be Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Red Book, the document by which he hopes to show Canadians he is the dull, familiar, stable and dependable best choice to govern Canada. It is Harper’s last, best opportunity to push the debris of Mike Duffy and fatigue with his autocratic style to the background, with a straight play on consumer and taxpayer self-interest, as well as the fear of risk and change.
What follows is a primer on what we can expect Tuesday from Finance Minister Joe Oliver as he lays out the final budgetary blueprint of the 41st Parliament, and from the opposition parties by way of response.
You may not like us but you know you need us
Oliver’s nominal goal is to outline Ottawa’s spending priorities for the year. But his actual purpose is to offer evidence the Conservatives understand the needs and aspirations of ordinary working Canadians better than do either of the other two major parties, particularly the Liberals, and in the process persuade voters to overlook the Senate mess, the democratic deficit and the debilitating rancour in the Commons, to which the governing party has contributed mightily.
Because Stephen Harper does not ad lib, the surest cheat sheet to this budget is still the last throne speech, in which the government mapped its priorities. These are a balanced budget; reductions in the size and cost of government; economic stimulus through training, freer trade, and tax cuts; infrastructure spending, which is expected to include new money for urban transit; consumer protection; enhancements to high-speed Web access; safer streets and some related smiting of the wicked; and additional support for veterans, the military and Arctic sovereignty.
To that, this year, we can add more money for counterterrorism, at home and abroad.
No, we do not just love the rich
The Conservatives’ signature economic proposal, income splitting for couples, has already been unveiled; so has the enhanced universal child benefit intended to broaden the first measure’s relatively narrow appeal. Added to this we can expect Tuesday to see a doubling in the contribution limit for taxfree-savings accounts, which the Tories promised in 2011, as they did with income splitting, once the budget was in balance.
Because income splitting and larger TFSAs are vulnerable to charges they only help the wealthiest few, the budget book and speech both will likely spend time arguing the reverse. Expect a messaging effort to link this package directly to the bottom lines of typical hockey and soccer moms and dads in the Greater Toronto Area, home to 11 of 30 new federal seats.
You are not the fiscal boss of us
Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale telegraphed his party’s answer to the budget in a speech last week. In summary, it says those who broke the back of the federal deficit in 1995 and presided over the prosperous late 1990s will not take dictation from a government that has just balanced its first budget in the past eight, having borrowed and spent like, uh, Liberals, during most of its years in power.
Goodale has done a noteworthy job in the House on this front, of late. His seething contempt for the talking points emanating from across the floor (“Unlike the Liberal leader, we on this side do not think budgets balance themselves.”) has taken on an almost Mulcairian heft. Goodale is to be joined by other Grits with reputations for being handy with an abacus, including Scott Brison, Marc Garneau, John McCallum, Bill Morneau and Chrystia Freeland.
Which is all well and good, except for this: The Liberal leader has reached the point where rubber and road must intersect, come what may. The 2015 budget in hand, Justin Trudeau will be expected to respond not just with attacks, but with some detail of what he’d do differently. If he’s to retain any momentum as PM in waiting, the Liberal leader must make this moment count. Otherwise, as one wag put it to me on Twitter last week, why not just make Goodale leader?
We are not wild-eyed radicals!
Judging from current polls the New Democrats are not within reach of forming government this time. But it does looks as though Mulcair will hold the balance of power in a minority parliament. Realistically, the smartest strategy for him now is steady as she goes, and hope to excel in televised debate. So the NDP response Tuesday will likely be more of the same — bemoan the plight of the middle class, attack Harper for rewarding the rich, but perhaps with greater-than-Liberal emphasis on unionized industrial job losses in Ontario’s southwestern heartland.
If the NDP is to find seats to replace the ones it will lose to the Grits and Tories in Quebec, it must be seen to have a plan to bring more privatesector, unionized, well-paying jobs to Ontario. Nationally, Mulcair is now the underdog by a wide margin. That’s not such an awful place for him to be, biding his time, six months from an election. National Post