Federal Budget Stops Parliamentary Stalemate

NDP Says Liberals Concerned More About Politics Than Vulnerable

Feb 18, 2009 Angela Browne

After a near destabilization of Parliament last December, Canada's governing Conservatives finally figured out we are in a recession. But did this new discovery help?

Prior to Christmas, the threat of a coalition government-in-waiting taught the Conservatives that it would be prudent to admit there was a recession and they needed to act fast. During the holidays, the federal Conservatives and the province of Ontario handed over up to $4 billion for the big three automakers to get them out of their current spiral to alleged bankruptcy.

In December and January, news reports brought more reports of job losses, as company after company declared bankruptcy or downsized a substantial chunk of their staff. In January alone, 129,000 Canadians lost their jobs. Bankruptcies increased by 50% during these past three months alone. As our economy continues to get hollowed out by a global recession, governments including our own are struggling as to how to best address it.

During the early 1990’s, Bob Rae, then Premier of the Province of Ontario, together with his Finance Minister, Floyd Laughren, made a decision to “spend their way out of the recession” of their day. Both Opposition parties laughed at them and in particular, Mike Harris, then Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and later elected Premier of Ontario in June 2005 decried Rae’s approach and its resultant $10 billion deficit.

Key Cabinet members of then Harris’ government, including federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty himself, and Jim Baird, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Development, now part of the federal government, sworn they will never put Canada in a deficit. In fact, Flaherty was talking about small surpluses up until December 2008, when their magical change of heart took place. In particular, up until then when virtually every G-8 government had for the past several months spoke about the wisdom of Keynesian economics and fiscal policy to boost their economies, Stephen Harper’s own government remained in denial.

After the prorogue of Parliament on December 4th, 2008, the federal Conservatives held some town halls as well as met behind closed doors with others, including Opposition representatives, to develop their long-awaited budget. As part of this consultation process, both Opposition parties held meetings throughout the country to bring back ideas from Canadians they heard from, as well as input given by Canadians over the e-mail site set up by the Ministry of Finance.

The purpose of the prorogue of course was to destabilize the threat of the coalition government-in-waiting that was rapidly put together after the Conservative’s fall Economic Statement. The next step of the federal Conservatives of course was to put together a budget that would at least satisfy the Liberals enough so that they will not continue on with the coalition.

NDP Leader Jack Layton however felt that regardless of what was put in the budget, his party will vote against it. His reason for it was that he could not trust Stephen Harper. For example, in prior budgets, money for municipal infrastructure, such as money for roads, bridges and transit, was promised, although in speaking with big city mayors, none reported receiving a single penny from this fund.

However, when the budget did come out and was formally read, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff decided to give it his conditional support, even though Jack Layton felt this budget did not meet any of Ignatieff’s three main criteria for supporting it: (a) will it protect the vulnerable?; (b) will it protect the jobs of today, as well as jobs of the future; and (c) will there be a plan to get the country out of its deficit as soon as the economy begins to improve? At the same time, many Conservative loyalists cringe at the idea of a newly created $34 billion deficit, exactly what they promised they would avoid.

Ignatieff’s Liberal Party chose to support the budget for a reason. It is clear that with more job losses coming, the Liberals want the Conservatives to “wear this recession”. The Liberals do not want to be stuck as the party that governed over the bleeding of jobs and the economy. Ignatieff will likely strike at some point later this year or next, at his best opportunity to attempt to dissolve Parliament and have an election when times appear to be better for the Liberals.

Unfortunately, the vulnerable among us still have to wait for real help.

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