O’Toole following Goldwater playbook
Erin O’Toole promises his Conservative government would move swiftly to simplify and reduce some taxes to stimulate a postpandemic recovery.
He says taxes are too high and regulations so complex it scares away investment. This has been a Conservative political mantra for decades and is a misleading attack at best.
It has been working women in particular and the hospitality and tourist business in general that were hardest hit by the pandemic.
But it is Canadian entrepreneurial tenacity and resilient spirit in the face of adversity, not the level of tax, that is a big part of the reason why the Bank of Canada is now saying the economy already exhibit signs of bouncing back stronger.
Former Arizona governor and failed presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s 1960 book “The Conscience of a Conservative,” became one of the bibles of the modern conservative movement.
Ronald Reagan’s political career began as Goldwater’s keynote speaker at the 1964 Republican presidential nomination convention. Goldwater’s book proclaimed the “conservative rejection of FDR’s New Deal big government thinking,” and a conservative policy tactic called, “starving the beast” – cutting taxes to reduce government revenue, which leads to deficits that offer the political cover conservatives can use to cut popular social programs with dire claims of the importance of a balance the budget.
This, according to Goldwater, will automatically bring about the smaller minimalist government, conservative’s desire.
Canada’s Conservatives use a similar playbook. O’Toole is offering a five-point plan to get Canada working again and it can not go unnoticed that, Stephen Harper’s first 2006 minority government campaigned on a fivepoint plan too.
Conservatives promote a false equivalency between government and private business. The cost-benefit-analysis for government is not the same. There may be certain similar aspects, but the underlying profit motive of private enterprise as the measure for success does not exist.
Government’s responsibilities and functions are multi-faceted and abstract — to safeguard national security and the health and safety of its citizens, to hold fast and ensure the continuation of the established bureaucratic system, uphold Charter rights, courts of laws, rules, regulations and traditions, which enable individuals to benefit and prosper from their own labours — all paid for by a fair-level of tax, which a lot of Canadians see as a fair exchange.
Jon Peter Christoff
West Kelowna