My brother mentioned to me a little while ago that he was patiently waiting for some actual Canadian politics on this blog. Now is a good a time as any since on second consideration I do have one or two other things to say about the House of Commons political situation.
It took me a little while to get my head around this budget and what it meant. Maybe I'm slow. But like lots of you I was waiting for the big ELECTION BUDGET!!!!! But it didn't seem to come. I know this is being called the everybody gets a cookie budget. But there was absolutely no cookie in it for me. I have gotten used to cookies over the last few years. In every budget I either personally benefitted or some aspect of my ideology (cut my taxes. Cut the debt Cut my taxes. Cut the debt) got pandered to. This time I didnt get pandered to. And no surprise. I don't speak French and don't live in Quebec. What I realised is that this clearly ISN'T the election budget. This is the Bloc Support budget.
I know some of you are saying "d'uh Cory. Of course" right now. But up until the last minute all the pundits I saw were viewing this through that other prism. The one with the spring election. But since we now know that this was a budget designed not to increase power (through the acquisition of a majority government) but rather to extend power. Where does that leave us?
Well - I don't know.
The Tories would have ideally liked, I think, to have the conditions in place to call an election so that they could give us a bunch of new priorities, get a majority and have a mandate to implement those changes. But now what? They've been so damned efficient that most of their big priorities have been put in place. They've won back as much of the environmental vote as can be expected, and they have "fixed the fiscal imbalance". So they basically don't have much mandate to do anything else - at least as far as I can see.
This situation is no problem for Liberals. Enough Canadians love the Liberals enough that Canadians will follow them. But not so the Tories. By and large voters don't trust the Tories. So they demand that the Tories follow them. Which is why you are seeing this huge rush to the left by the Tories. Basically the Tories can stay in power, say Canadians, as long as they act like Liberals. If they try to go off on their own with no mandate Canadians will get spooked.
But at what point do the Tories actually get to govern? Actually get to put in place some more policies that they would like to see? To actually move the country in a direction they imagined in the halcyon days of the Reform party conferences of yesteryear? I don't know. But I bet that will be the grumbling in Caucus next week behind closed doors. I expect Harper will get an earful. They can't have a majority AND they are throwing money around like this? Well well well.
On the other side, how frustrated right wing commentators seems to be that the Tories aren't playing their appointed role. This is how it is supposed to work. The Liberals are the natural governing party. The tories are the clean up crew. The Liberals are supposed to throw money around, keep the country together and by and large keep this Canada thing working. When voters get bored with seeing the same faces on the news they are supposed to throw the bums out and put tories in. THEN THE TORIES ARE SUPPOSED TO FALL ON THEIR NOBLE SWORD by making the rough and tough decisions. Get thrown out for making these necessary but unpopular choices and the cycle begins again. Rinse and repeat.
Stephen Harper doesn't want to play that game. He may not want to be a Liberal but he REALLY doesn't want to be a chump. Let the Liberals clean up HIS mess, I bet he thinks at night. Yes, I'd like to run the country one way but Canadians won't let me. Pundits want me to be a good little tory but the end result of that will be the return of the natural governing party. So screw this. Let's flip the script and see what happens.
So when Andrew Coyne rants today he is right as rain but missing the forest for the trees. Stephen Harper doesn't want the Conservatives to be the stick you beat the Liberals with. Oh no. His plans are grander.
But where does that leave us? Since this is now defined as a very political government instead of a truly policy minded government. What will they have in store for us in the next 365 days? And will it be decent policy AT ALL? To be honest, from a policy perspective I'm nervous. Lots of the five priorities are more flash than substance and now he doesn't even have those. So I'll be fascinated to see what his next move is because at the moment I have no idea what he wants to do with the time he just bought himself.
One last thing - policy commentators are 100% wrong when they say there aren't any tax cut toys available in the future budgets. They'll be there along with all the really exciting toys in the REAL pre-election budget. Which is probably this time next year.
