Tories: We’d like to know what they talked about too...
Former prime minister Jean Chrétien met with Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday, despite a Harper government policy to isolate the regime. “We would be curious to know what was discussed,” says Canada’s defence minister.
Stephen Harper haters may want to look away. A new poll suggests the Conservatives are in majority territory for the first time in nearly four years.
The Abacus Data poll — which has the Conservatives at 36% support, the Liberals at 28% and the NDP 24% — suggests the federal budget has been well received by many Canadians, who quite like the idea of getting some of their own money back.
Gloomily for the opposition parties, it suggests an absence of the levels of recrimination necessary to oust a sitting government.
Only one in two voters think it’s “definitely time for a change in government” — a challenge for a divided progressive left, since that 50% is split equally between the Liberals and NDP.
The budget, supported by a heavy rotation of pro-government advertising during the hockey playoffs, has brightened the outlook for the Harper government, which was darkened in the first quarter of the calendar year by sluggish jobs and growth data.
Polls are snapshots and we are still six months out from a yet-to-be-called election, with the most politically sensitive of the Mike Duffy trial testimony still to come. Six months ago, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were enjoying an eight-point lead over the Conservatives, so no one should get carried away.
But the trend lines are established — Liberal fortunes have waned, while the Conservatives have waxed. The Abacus survey suggested 56% believe the economy is in very good shape or good shape, compared with 44% who say poor or very poor. More people expect things to get better than worse — a sharp drop in the pessimism seen early this year.
Perhaps most distressing for the Liberals and NDP, only 30% of those who think the economy is poor blame Ottawa.
As Bruce Anderson, chairman at Abacus, put it, with numbers like those, the opposition parties may be well advised not to campaign on the economy. “The Conservatives were looking forward to the budget as a pivotal moment and they have used it to their advantage. If people know anything about it, they know it is going to give them some money back.”
Part of the Liberals’ problem is their lack of a compelling alternative. This will be remedied, in part, when Trudeau unveils his response to the Conservative budget this month. It remains to be seen whether it is compelling.
There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest it may not have the desired effect for the Grits.
Much recent speculation has centred on the Liberals tabling a re-distributive plan that increases taxes for the rich and uses the savings to reduce rates for the middle-income band of workers — those who earn $44,700 to $89,400. The suggestion by pundits like my colleague, Mike Den Tandt, is that the Grits will target the universal child benefit and tax cuts at lower and middle-income Canadians, and finance any enhancements by cancelling the Conservative income-splitting plan and the expansion of the Tax Free Savings Account. The speculation suggested the plan may also include a tax hike for the rich.
This is where things will get sticky for the Liberals. As we have seen in Alberta, people don’t vote for parties that promise to make them worse off. If the Liberals increase the 29% top rate for those earning more than $138,586 they will catch voters who don’t think of themselves as rich, including many Liberals.
They could impose a surtax on the “super-rich” as the Ontario government did when it targeted those earning more than $500,000 a year.
The problem is that tax cuts to the middle band are expensive; there are 7.5-million taxpayers who earn more than $50,000 a year. To give them each a $1,000 tax break would cost more than $7 billion. A tax hike for the “super rich” would simply not raise enough money.
If Trudeau wants to make a noticeable difference to the incomes of Canada’s middle class, it seems likely he will have to raise rates for those earning $150,000 or more.
If he does, the Conservatives will have a field day — and quite rightly. Such a policy would be a disincentive to work and would likely lead to compliance issues. It would impact not only the 600,000 or so Canadians who earn more than $150,000, but also all those who aspire to reach that salary level. It would be not so much an attempt to tackle income inequality, as a naked tax grab.
The Liberals will get away with reversing an incomesplitting policy that has not yet ingrained itself in the psyche of the taxpayer.
The promise to reverse the increase to the TFSA limit to $10,000 from $5,500 may not arouse too much ire.
They could even reverse some of the Conservative tax credits that came in for such criticism from the auditor general this week.
But an income tax hike is something else entirely. It would validate Conservative attacks about the Liberal “high tax agenda”.
The Grits will try to explain that they are putting money in the pockets of the middle class by taxing the rich. But a cardinal rule of politics is that when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
The past week has seen the Harper government consolidate its reputation as competent stewards of the economy in the eyes of many voters.
In doing so, they have made the prospect of another majority government plausible for the first time since the fall of 2011.
“It’s playoff hockey and the Conservatives have brought their A-game,” said Abacus’ Bruce Anderson.
If it’s anything but a Prentice majority, this former conquering hero will be hugely diminished, perhaps crippled. — Den Tandt