Harper Hasn’t Locked Canada Into Anything

Sure, the budget was last week, but I’ll still write on it.  In any case, Konrad Yakabuski of the Globe and Mail has echoed a sentiment that’s been running around for quite sometime now, namely that the Harper Conservatives have made it virtually impossible for any opposition party to expand the role of government.  This is bunk because there is quite a lot that the opposition parties can do.  Of course, I don’t expect the Liberals to follow through on any social justice measure that they promise given their history, but that’s a subject for another post.  Nonetheless, this idea that Harper has made irreversible changes is flannel.  Harper has not frozen Canadian society by any stretch of the imagination.  Canada is still an open and plural society and that means voters can swing to the Left or the Right on a whim.  What voters prioritize today may not be prioritized tomorrow and vice-versa.  Besides, however long they may last, voter shifts to the Left or the Right are never permanent.  Just ask the Alberta NDP.

Now, what can opposition parties do?  In order to raise revenue for new programmes, the opposition parties can get rid of the Conservatives’ boutique tax credits, many of which are either a de facto subsidy for personal consumption or business costs; neither should be partly paid for by the public purse.  Anyway, there you go.  No tax has been raised and Ottawa suddenly has a few extra billion in its pockets without even having raised a nickel in taxes.  Another thing that the opposition could do is to change priorities.  “Big government” means different things to the Left and the Right.  In fact, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the size of government has grown under the Harper Conservatives.  Naturally, their priorities were reflected in this expansion as public safety and corrections saw a surge in the number of staff.  Yet, this isn’t “big government” according to Harper and the Conservatives.  This points to a simple fact: spending priorities matter for the kind of government that voters select.  Whatever isn’t a priority goes into the column of big government.

There is also the matter of corporate tax cuts: raise them.  Whenever business taxes go down, the tax burden shifts onto individual income taxes.  Business needs to pay its fair share for the services that give them the stable environment to conduct their affairs.  Business owners, of course, will bleat about how this will kill jobs, but seeing how corporate Canada is currently sitting on $630 billion after seeing their taxes go down ever since Harper was elected in 2006, they can take their doomsday scenarios and go pump salt given the sluggishness of the Canadian economy and the decrepit state of the Canadian labour market.  The fact is that taxes do not figure into a company’s decision to invest in a jurisdiction.  Skills, pools of capital, and access to consumer markets are what matter.  There is a reason why China and not Mongolia is receiving a ton of investment.  Besides, if taxes are going to be the way that a country plans on being competitive, then there are some serious underlying structural problems with that economy.

Despite the measures mentioned here, voters’ attitudes remain the most important part of the problem of and the solution to establishing new programmes.  Undoubtedly, the Canadian political spectrum has shifted to the Right.  Over the past three decades, Right wing politicians and politicians pretending to be progressive — *cough* Liberals — have somehow gotten away with the lie that good government can be done on the cheap.  No one does more with less.  Less is done with less.  If you don’t believe me, try buying $20 worth of groceries with $10 and then let me know how that worked out.  The wisest thing that people could do to dispel themselves of the ridiculous notion that equates good public policy with low cost government is to walk into a top local tattoo shop and read the following sign that should be hanging: “Good tattoos aren’t cheap and cheap tattoos aren’t good.”  Much like tattoos, the same applies to governments.  The sooner this is realized, the sooner Canada’s public problems can be addressed.