Canadian Pork

Canadian Tory leader Stephen Harper is singing my song:

If you want lower business taxes, you must be willing at the same time to stop receiving government subsidies. I won't lower one without lowering the other.

Comments

[Highway]

Is he also going to stop the government from enacting regulation on those companies that they agitate for in order to squash their competition? I think that's closely related.

[Pedro]

I don't know what to think about this party...

Lower Taxes - Good
Lower Subsidies - Good
Lower Spending - Good
Stop Corruption - Yeah, right
Abolish Gun Registry - Good

Raise Health Spending - bad
Introduce Sex Offender Registry - bad

I don't know how the whole Gay Marriage and Pot issues would play out with a Conservative government. And honestly, the above list references Harper's words, not his actions - Conservatives have traditionally been voted in with a mandate of fiscal responsibility, and then went on to break new records in spending. The Liberals, on the hand, were given a mandate of higher spending and more restricted trade, but instead, they continued encouraging free trade (relatively speaking), balanced the budget (finally), and didn't raise taxes as much as the previous Conservative government.

I think people who expect a Conservative government (even a majority one) to deliver on their promises are fooling themselves. The longer I'm exposed to politics (it's only been about 7 years), the more inclined I am to believe that the actions of any particular government have much more to do (perhaps only to do) with the circumstances in which they find themselves and the trend of public opinion, and less to do with any particular ideology they claim to follow. And if this is true, then it really doesn't matter who wins the upcoming election.

[Jay Jardine]

Pedro, that's why I'm voting for the Marijuana Party instead.

[Dan]

You can't really compare the parties. Canada's baseline is different. For example, the conservatives tend to support socialized medicine, because that's what they have to deal with. In th same vein, A Republican wouldn't dare speak out against any of the major entitlement programs that are already in place in the U.S., because once they are in place they develop powerful constituencies and become untouchable.

On the other hand, our Conservatives, or at least the remnants of the Reform party within the conservatives, are much more socially conservative (something I don't like).

I'd say the closest the Conservatives come to an ideological match would probably be the 'DLC Democrats' like Clinton or Lieberman. The NDP are way out on the left in Kucinich territory. The Liberals are all over the map, and often are indistinguishable from Conservatives, except when they get on their populist bandwagon and do stupid things like enacting the miserable failure of a gun registry.

BTW, polls in Canada now have the Conservatives and Liberals statistically tied. And the trend lines are Conservatives up, Liberals down. This will be a very interesting election. It's closer than I would have thought possible even two months ago.

[Ruthless]

As a hillbilly, originally from Tennessee, I don't want to follow in the footsteps of the peanut farmer President from Georgia and go meddling in the elections of foreign countries, but I will risk saying this about:

"If you want lower business taxes, you must be willing at the same time to stop receiving government subsidies. I won't lower one without lowering the other."

Society's "progress" can be impeded for years by just such Alphonse and Gastone routines.

This represents just one of the reasons why I'm an anarchist: In a democracy, voters are Alphonse; their elected "leaders" are Gastone.
And the purer the democracy, the greater this impediment.

Even Aristotle neglected to mention this little flaw, eh?

[OL]

This guy's not looking to get re-elected, is he? How dare he state the obvious?

[Walter Wallis]

I will trade you any ten American politicians for him.

[matt]

remember that you can always blame canada too.

[MALAK]

The reason they are neck and neck is because the provincial Liberal party in Ontario reneged on just about EVERY one of their election "promises" from last year's vote. Ontario, federally is the kingmaker in our first past the post system of voting, so the electorate seems hell bent on puinishing Paul Martin as a result. It will be very interesting, especially if the party which holds sway over a possible minority government is the one expressly dedicated to breaking up our confederation. We could have two elections in pretty short order folks.