Provincial budget gives Trudeau fresh ammo

If Justin Trudeau’s main mission in Ontario next fall is to beat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, he has Premier Kathleen Wynne to thank for the small blessing of a provincial budget that should do little direct harm to his party in that battle.

The fiscal plan brought forward at Queen’s Park on Thursday may not give Trudeau a big boost in the upcoming federal campaign but it at least does not open a new flank for Conservative attacks.

The federal Liberals have taken hits from friendly Ontario fire in past elections, most notably at the time of the introduction by Dalton McGuinty of a health levy on the eve of Paul Martin’s 2004 campaign.

That provincial budget earned the then-prime minister’s Ontario candidates an earful on the doorsteps.

But if there is a flashpoint for a potential voter backlash in this week’s back-to-back Ontario and federal budgets, it is more likely to be the Conservative decision to double to $10,000 the maximum annual contribution to tax-free savings account (TSFA).

The measure has provided the opposition parties with fresh ammunition to frame the Conservatives’ pre-election budget as one that favours the rich. It is not the “typical” Canadian family — to borrow a favoured budget phrase — that has $10,000 to $20,000 to spare for tax-free savings purposes at the end of each year.

As a bonus, Finance Minister Joe Oliver gave the opposition an assist when he dismissed concerns that the measure would saddle future federal governments with a tax leakage problem as an issue for the generation of Harper’s granddaughter to address.

Focusing on one of the least populist sections of the budget was definitively not part of the Conservative marketing plan.

The Ontario budget also strikes a tone austere enough to deprive the Conservatives of fresh paint to depict Trudeau’s Liberals as ideologically programmed to tax and spend. Looking at the fiscal record of the Liberals in power in Ontario’s sister province of Quebec, there was already little to sustain that case.

In a drive to balance the books over the first half of his mandate, Premier Philippe Couillard has been streamlining the province’s public services (at some cost to the popularity of the Liberal brand at both levels).

But if the Ontario budget minimizes the risks to Trudeau’s Liberals on the right, the same is not as true on the left.

It paves the way to more battles to the finish between an Ontario Liberal government determined to pursue a policy of “net-zero” wage increases and its public sector unions.

To be on the wrong side of nurses and teachers at election time — even if only by association — is not a prospect to be relished by the federal Liberals.

Trudeau already stands to be hit by ricochet in what is lining up to be a fall of labour unrest in Quebec.

In Ontario, what is good for the NDP is usually good for Harper’s Conservatives.

In that spirit the prime minister’s strategists were privately alarmed by the results of the federal byelection in the GTA riding of the late Jim Flaherty last fall.

The Conservatives kept the Whitby-Oshawa seat but the NDP vote collapsed in favour of the Liberals.

In a general election, the same trend across the board could cost Harper many of the Ontario seats that were narrowly won four years ago.

In the wake of that byelection there was talk of finding ways to help the NDP help itself.

As it happens the New Democrats found a few measures to claim credit for in Tuesday’s federal budget.

Reducing the tax burden of Canada’s small businesses is a major platform plank and the party has long called for more labour code protection for the unpaid interns who toil in federally regulated workplaces.

At the same time, there have been renewed efforts by the Conservatives in the Senate to get a private member’s bill that even some Tories have described as an unprecedented frontal attack on Canada’s union movement passed before the election.

If Harper were trying to consolidate the NDP vote any way he can he would not act differently. If one of the collateral results of the Ontario budget is to do just that, he will be happy. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.