Wait a minute – isn’t the government my friend? Don’t they look out for my own best interests when I lovingly pay my taxes to the corporation known as Canada?
Why is everyone so pissed off about $1.95?
Is Harper’s finance plan an effort to destroy the Liberals financially, or is it a sound belt-tightening policy? If your political dingle dangles to the left, you’d probably hold the former view; if it falls right, you’ll probably conform your views with the latter in order to avoid any cognitive dissonance.
If you’re a Canadian, and you lean to the left right now (politically), you might approach the propospect of a potential coalition government between the Bloc, NDP and the Liberals as a case of democratically elected officials going about their business, deliberating and trying to form a government. Harper might delay the parliamentary vote in an effort to get the coalition to self-destruct by January, which makes him akin to a dictator at worst, usurper of democracy at best.
If you dress to the right of the political spectrum, this coalition is dressed in rhetoric of a “bloodless coup”. You’ll say things like “Canadians don’t want to vote again” or “Canadians didn’t vote these guys in with the understanding that there’d be a coalition”.
If you’re like me, you might praise the fact that Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc will hold the balance of power in this scenario. Daveberta has pointed out this rather inconvenient truth.
Kelly McParland, writing for the National Post today, basically points out the end result of this: a political rape and pillage of the public purse as each party extracts what they want from the backs of taxpayers in order to fund their pet projects and special interests:
Should the coalition come to power it will be faced with immediately crafting a hugely expensive bailout, financed by massive borrowing, to be rushed into place without knowing the details of the much larger stimulus package U.S. president Barack Obama is introducing in January.
The NDP will demand bottomless support for the auto industry; Duceppe will demand similar amounts for forestry, and anything else that comes to mind between now and Christmas. The notion of balanced budgets will go out the window, since the justification for the coup is that the Conservatives didn’t pledge to spend enough money in last week’s economic update. (The Liberals, as Colby Cosh has pointed out, regularly railed against the Conservative government for spending too much money, noting that expenditures were at record levels. Now they’re complaining they aren’t spending enough.)
As Daveberta also points out, because the West voted blue last election, there won’t be too many seats for the West in such a hypothetical cabinet, which has Werner fuming mad and ready to pull the pin on the Western Separatist grenade.
In all likelihood, such a coalition will stoke the fires of Western Separatism. After the coalition has finished raiding the public purse in an effort to channel money into failing enterprises, the economy will fail. As The Politic has pointed out - what in the hell is the proposed alternative to Harper’s economic plan? Is the coalition proposing anything viable, or are they going to sit around the Christmas Turkey called Canada and fight like rabid dogs as the country goes down the economic crapper?
