It is the home stretch of the federal election campaign and three leaders’ debates and endless commercials may have done more to blur lines between the parties and leaders than to clarify them. The Liberals and NDP may have even switched places, with Justin Trudeau being anxious to corral the anti-Conservative vote with ambitious talk of redistributive tax adjustment and deficit spending on infrastructure, and Tom Mulcair striving to reassure centrist voters and buttressing the NDP’s “balanced budget” record.
If it’s any help, here are three interesting observations about what I think should happen both during and after the election.
First, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s attempt to portray himself as a practical, sensible fellow who is only interested in being a good manager is highly misleading.
He is far more ideological than that, and if he is re-elected, his American-style neo-conservatism will have consequences for democracy and health care and the environment that are potentially far-reaching.
It is difficult to discern a large economic dividend from the government’s attempts to privilege the corporate sector, and the oil and gas sector in particular.
However, we definitely need that dividend if we are to be persuaded that this Conservative government’s game is worth its candle.
Second, the NDP’s “balanced budget” mantra is genuine.
Mr. Mulcair has latched onto the fact that, according to the historical record, NDP governments balanced budgets more often than either Liberal or Conservative governments did on average between 1980 and 2010. (Although there are some very spectacular exceptions do tend to stick in voters’ minds).
This is a basis for fiscal respectability and marks a return to the fiscal tradition of Tommy Douglas.
Of course, several of the Conservatives’ tax loopholes will need to be closed in order to afford this, and the corporate tax rate will need to be raised to something closer to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s average.
However, when you balance the negative impacts of raising corporate taxes to the still-competitive rate of 17 per cent against the positive benefits of lower small-business rates, a lower proportion of tax burden being borne by ordinary Canadians and the economic benefits of more infrastructure and a million child care spaces, it should work out OK.
Third, I like what Mr. Trudeau has said about the importance of infrastructure spending when the need is great, the debt-to Gross Domestic Product ratio is low, and interest rates continue to be rock-bottom.
Although Conservative infrastructure spending is large in absolute terms and has risen sharply (to more than four per cent of Gross Domestic Product), under the circumstances we should have had more, especially on transit and transportation of various kinds, and less on advertising and political spending in Tory ridings.
Mark Crawford is a former public servant and a professor of political science at Athabasca University.
