Federal Budget Will Pass: What About Election Fever?
To say something is in the wind this week is an understatement. I arrived home from a southern vacation to read newspapers full of speculation on a spring election. It would seem Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in full campaign mode without an election call.
However it might not work out that way. In fact I can see only one way that Stephen Harper will go to the polls this spring. That’s if he damns the torpedoes, full speed ahead and calls an election himself. That’s doesn’t make much sense in the current political environment where nobody holds a solid lead in the polls which would translate into a majority.
I’m not paid very well to decide those things. I’m sure the mandarins employed in the Prime Minister’s office have all of that figured out. What they were looking at earlier was a federal budget throwing a little money Quebec’s way combined with a few untenable budget items forging the government’s defeat. After Jim Flaherty delivered the budget last Monday, all of that looks unlikely. The Bloc Quebecois has decided to support it.
As budgets goes, it surely is an election budget. The budget surplus is projected over $9.2 billion for this fiscal year. This has freed up Jim Flaherty to push dollars into every fishpond, art gallery and farm field across Canada. A partial summary taken from the Globe and Mail is below.
The 2007 Federal Budget (Highlights)
-New child tax credit worth $310 per child for most families.
— Working Income Tax Benefit of up to $1,000 a year for low-income families, or $500 for individuals, to help get them off welfare.
— $1.5 billion for projects to cut air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
— Rebate of up to $2,000 for buying fuel-efficient vehicles; Green levy penalizing auto manufacturers up to $4,000 on inefficient vehicles.
— Billions in extra funding to the provinces (through equalization and other programs) for health, infrastructure, post-secondary education and other items to address the so-called fiscal imbalance.
— Tax Back Guarantee directs $1 billion a year in debt interest savings to personal income tax reductions.
— Eliminates the $4,000 RESP annual contribution limit, with a $50,000 lifetime cap.
— Raises to age 71 from 69 the age at which seniors must convert RRSPs to retirement income.
— Government spending projected to increase by $10 billion to $233 billion in 2007-2008, with program costs jumping by 5.7 per cent.
It’s a healthy list, something that middle class working families will appreciate. In many ways it’s a payoff of the heavy lifting done by previous Liberal governments who cut funding in an attempt to get the government deficit under control. When Paul Martin lost government the Conservatives could only hope to be so lucky. So far, that’s exactly what they’ve been.
Are there storm signals on the horizon? Hardly. However in this wonderful country we are only one Quebec election away from some type of “constitutional crisis” on whether we want to remain one country. With a week to go in the Quebec election campaign, it’s almost a three way dead heat. The Liberals have a very slight lead followed by the separatist PQ and the soft nationalist ADQ led buy former Liberal Mario Dumont.
This is very unusual for Quebec. The last minority Quebec government was in the 1800′s. Quebec is usually so polarized between separatists and federalists there is no in between. One or two percentage points shifting to the separatists in the last week might turn over the whole Canada-Quebec turnip wagon. And with that, our economic outlook will begin a familiar but now somewhat distant historical chill.
For Ontario farmers the budget was a bit of a victory. Last year many of them left their farms and stomped all over Ontario in tractor rallies and demonstrations. Stephen Harper rewarded Canadian farm country with an additional $1 billion in funding. However even more importantly Harper changed the focus of future agricultural policy radically by calling for a return to NISA style farm accounts, popular in the 1990′s. Maybe, just maybe all that activity last year has not gone for not.
So what is Stephen Harper suppose to do now. Its like he’s all wound up for an election and nobody will cooperate to get it done. I can’t say what I’d do because I’ll never be him. However, maybe its time for him to forget an election, sit down and maybe muse about our role in Afghanistan. At the end of the day, that might represent the place where every thing about doing something right may go awfully wrong.