Macleans National Editor Andrew Coyne provides his scathing assessment of the Stephen Harper “Conservative” Party at the Manning Centre Conference 2009 in Ottawa (which I believe took place several months ago, back in the spring, but the video was just posted the other day).
h/t: CC, who mistakenly, I think, views this as a tragic case of “lost innocence.” In fact, however, this really isn’t anything all that terribly new for Coyne, who’s been quite witheringly critical of the government for some time now; for instance, blasting the Harper “Conservatives” during last year’s phony “baked in” election for their woeful “decline into incoherence” and throwing their fiscal principles and convictions under the campaign bus. This was a result, as Coyne put it, of having become “prisoners of power” — evidence of which he asserts can be demonstrated by them now being “entirely uninterested in spending cuts of any kind,” and so on.
20 Comments
July 15, 2009 at 6:10 am
I love when libertarians rewrite history to make what conservatism used to be into what they believe it should be. Yes indeedy, the tories were always about cutting taxes, free trade and slashing public programs.
July 15, 2009 at 7:01 am
Harper, speaking to reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a meeting of leaders from the Group of Eight nations, said he won’t adhere to a five-year timetable to balance the budget if that requires tax increases or reducing spending.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=apstl6pWVTz4
Appeasing those not in his core base as he knows his libertarian core base might complain, but will hold their noses and vote for him anyway. If, he doesn’t get in the next time, he’ll leave a humungeous deficit for the Libs to clean up, via tax increases or cuts to social programs, or if he does get in next time, he’ll use it as an excuse to do the same, which is to cut social programs & taxes for the rich. IMHO, this is premeditated. “You Won’t Recognize Canada When I Get Through With It” http://www.halifaxlive.com/content/view/690/32/
I’m just surprised that the MSM haven’t connected the dots.
July 15, 2009 at 7:39 am
Yes, and then he’ll bring in the Poor Law Act to put children in poverty to work.. and then he’ll repeal women’s voting rights and dissolve the charter..
..yes, “connect the dots”indeed. The dots that are getting connected are that there are many “progressives” who hate Harper, but don’t have enough actual reasons to complain, so they need to fabricate a fear of what he “is going to do”..
Tell me, just out of curiousity, which of the government’s massive spending programs have you been opposed to?
*chirp chirp*
Like Michael Ignatieff, there is nothing that Harper is doing wiht the budget that you can point to and say, “do this different”.
Go ahead. What should we cut, or would you prefer that we increase the GST and corporate tax?? Becuase if there is anything that southern Ontario, and all of Canada needs right now, it’s increasing tax on those greedy businesses like GMC and Chrysler..no?
July 15, 2009 at 7:48 am
“fabricate a fear of what he “is going to do”..”
We don’t need to fabricate anything.
We just listen and repeat what Conservatives themselves are saying, from Harper’s mentor and former campaign chair Tom Flanagan who’s written a whole book about Harper’s “incrementalism” plans to the many many pundits and MPs and commenters who tell themselves “he would do X if he had a majority”, “if only he had a majority, then he could act like a real conservative”, “he’s only passing this budget or doing X because he’s in a minority” etc.
There is nothing hidden – or fabricated – about the agenda.
July 15, 2009 at 8:04 am
“would you prefer that we increase the GST ”
Well, uh, yeah. That would be the smart thing to do once the economy rebounds, cutting it is right up there as one of the stupidest policies ever enacted. But instead we’re told that raising taxes once the economy is in order is “dumb”. Slashing and burning on the otherhand is brilliant.
July 15, 2009 at 8:26 am
“The dots that are getting connected are that there are many “progressives” who hate Harper, but don’t have enough actual reasons to complain, so they need to fabricate a fear of what he “is going to do”..”
Says you. I can think of plenty of reasons to complain of Harper. Hmm, his shitty handling of stimulus spending and the whole isotope fiasco is a good place to start.
Anyone else feel like contributing reasons to complain to counter Rob’s claim?
July 15, 2009 at 8:29 am
Lying to the Canadian public about our system of government in order to cling to power and shutting parliament down?
July 15, 2009 at 9:17 am
Yes, and then he’ll bring in the Poor Law Act to put children in poverty to work.. and then he’ll repeal women’s voting rights and dissolve the charter..
You’d think a lawyer would recognise reductio ad absurdum…
Anyway, Coyne will always be on my shit list, by virtue of the fact that he sees his role as an agent for the elites (Liberal, Conservative, media, business, political is doesn’t matter…though not academic.; he can’t get way that, since his background is in the pseudo-science called economics).
His function is to periodically wet his finger, put in the air and see which the way the wind is blowing. He’s clever enough to write sufficiently vaguely as to provide the semblance of principle and consistency over the medium term, but that only condemns him more.
Everything he’s complaining about here are realities about neoliberalism that have been known for quite some time.
July 15, 2009 at 9:46 am
Tell me, just out of curiousity, which of the government’s massive spending programs have you been opposed to?
Bailouts, military spending and the haphazard municipal spending….
As for GST cuts, it was a stupid idea. Harper was going into deficit mode even before the crisis.
July 15, 2009 at 9:57 am
“Slashing and burning on the otherhand is brilliant.”
Unfortunately, Harper said that cutting spending was also “dumb”. That is what is so ludicrous about Harper’s understanding/lack of understanding of our finances.
He either truly thinks it will just magically disappear with the economy growing, which is completely batty, or he is crudely calculating that, as Dick Cheney said, “deficits don’t matter” to voters so it is OK to add billions and billions and billions of dollars to the debt, and increase our interest payments just before inflation starts to kick in, because he’ll be gone before any of the problems his lack of a plan create.
July 15, 2009 at 10:18 am
he is crudely calculating that, as Dick Cheney said, “deficits don’t matter” to voters
Dick Cheney’s correct. Deficits and debt don’t matter to voters…American voters that is. They’re only supposed to matter to the rest of us, because the World’s Largest Deadbeat can still work the levers of the global economy to make sure we either cut our spending on social programs, raise our taxes or increase productivity at the expense of labour or the environment to make sure its consumption-based economy can continue more or less as it has, which of course, long ago ceased to benefit most Americans.
Remember when Canada was hitting the debt wall in the early 90’s? On the road to IMF? intervention? Two seconds away from going 3rd World? Well, that was one lever being pulled.
July 15, 2009 at 10:31 am
Rob — The massive deficits that are presently being racked up by this government (and are projected to continue over the next several years) will eventually have to be paid for somehow or other. All those shortfalls contribute to our accumulated national debt, as you know and as the cost of servicing that debt rises (which it surely will — just due to borrowing rates coming up from record lows and inflation, if nothing else) then either government programs/services will have to be cut, or taxes/revenues will have to be increased. It’s really just as simple as that. To suggest that economic growth alone will somehow be sufficient to get out of this debt trap is fantastic nonsense. It seems quite clear that Harper has no “exit strategy” — at least not one that he’s sufficiently forthright to publicly disclose — for climbing back from the economic black hole that’s been created.
That said, I don’t hear much of anything coming from the Liberals about how they’d plan to attack the deficit and debt problem should they ever be returned to power. It would be refreshing for a change to hear some straight talk from the official opposition in this regard, but I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. People don’t like to hear the “awful truth” when it comes to politics.
To answer your challenge about spending cuts, they could start with the subsidies going to the biofuel interests. There’s almost a billion dollars that could be saved over the next few years. But I’m just yanking your chain there as that’s a notable exception — the truth of the matter is that there aren’t really a lot of significant spending cuts that could be made without seriously impacting people’s lives. And, contrary to what the Bloggin’ Tories might have folks believe, our level of government spending on essential services (health, education, income security, etc.) is roughly comparable to that of our friends down south — about a third of GDP p.a. (hard to say exactly because the methodologies of arriving at that figure vary).
July 15, 2009 at 10:41 am
Hard answers… but the idiots are taking over.
July 15, 2009 at 11:07 am
Sadly, yes.
July 15, 2009 at 11:12 am
That last part was awesome.
July 15, 2009 at 11:16 am
Poetic justice… or something like that.
July 15, 2009 at 11:24 am
That last part was awesome.
I don’t know. I think it was staged.
Anyway, time to remove all the child-safety improvements and set the monkey bars, slides and swings in concrete again. Provide more enriched “learning experiences” earlier…or cull the herd.
July 15, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Quite probably staged, but still kind of funny. I thought for sure it was going to plow into the garage of the house at the end of the street.
July 18, 2009 at 9:14 pm
RT,
Coyne remains one of the pundits I will pretty much always read.
I think he is pretty accurate here too. If Harper truly wants to change Canada he should be dragging the mushy middle to where he wants to stand, and not slide over to where he thinks it is.
He would do more and better if he did.
July 19, 2009 at 6:01 am
How about we just forget about changing Canada and just get rid of Harper.
We would do more and better if we did.