Because there has been so much negative written about Harper’s budget, including Andrew Coyne’s MacLean’s cover story on Feb 9, that I essentially agree with, I have refrained from commenting on it myself until now. Aside from the folly of stimulus spending in general, a topic which I have dedicated many blog posts to, it occurred to me there is one aspect of Harper’s stimulus budget that has been neglected – the psychological aspect.
Ezra Levant has defended the budget in the National
Post by noting the
disagreeable fact that Harper has a minority government. Because politics is the art of the
possible, Stephen Harper has to take into account the fact that the
Conservatives need an ally in Parliament if they are going to continue to
govern, and that means they have to compromise with somebody. So, in grading
the budget, conservative critics should not be comparing it to their platonic
ideal of federal budgets, but rather to what the Liberals, in cahoots with the
NDP and the Bloc, would have concocted in its stead. For instance, “the most important reason
why conservatives shouldn’t be too depressed by this budget is that it doesn’t
create any new, permanent government programs that will continue to drain the
treasury for generations to come. There are no new ‘product lines,’ such as a
national daycare or pharmacare program that would be difficult to uproot. The
bulk of the spending is in tangible one-off programs, such as rebuilding roads
and bridges and low-cost housing.”
This is all very reassuring
and there is much to be said for this argument – after all, the essence of
practical politics is compromise, but Harper’s critics on the right
nevertheless have a residual point that Levant does not succeed in banishing.
And that is that Harper never tried to sell a conservative solution to the
Canadian public. If there is a question before the public, and they are
weighing two possible responses, but they only hear the arguments for one of
them, guess which one are they eventually going to be in favour of? Even if
they start with their instincts favouring tax cuts, deregulation and fiscal
responsibility, many will end up being browbeaten into supporting the magical
elixir that can cure everything, known as ‘stimulus’. And while conservative
bloggers (such as myself) and Andrew Coyne have been arguing for a conservative
solution, the Prime Minister of Canada has not been. From the time he prorogued Parliament to the throne
speech, there has been nothing but silence emanating from the PMO. Doubtlessly
there was much work to be done in the background, crafting the budget and
conjuring up backroom deals, but there was much to be done in the foreground,
selling the fiscal conservative message to the people. And this was not done.
Just because he knew he had
to accommodate Ignatief at the end of the day, this fact did not restrain
Stephen Harper in any way from taking his case to the Canadian people
beforehand. In fact, doing so would have helped those negotiations along,
ensuring that the ‘stimulus’ was as small as possible and the tax cuts and
deregulation were as large as possible. Because this was not done, we can say
almost for sure that the capitalism-socialism mix in the budget tilted further
in the direction of socialism than was necessary.
(Of course, if Harper had
unexpectedly handed over the keys to Canada to the ‘three stooges’ coalition
led by that consummate bumbler Stephane Dion, it is likely they would have
failed so spectacularly that the Conservatives would have been given a majority
with a substantive mandate that would have lasted a generation, but that is
another lost opportunity and another story.)
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