More Bizarreness from the Liberal party
August 30, 2007 · By Joel
First I read that Michael Ignatieff thinks a bird that covers up its shit should be the symbol of the Liberal party.
Then I see that they’re planning a campaign on jobs and the economy.
When unemployment is at its lowest rate in thirty-three years.
With a leader who, according to one former Cabinet colleague, “couldn’t balance a cheque book.”
And they’re laying the groundwork for this campaign by saying things like “I think we are going to be facing a recession situation” and “the economic outlook for Ontario, for Canada, for Toronto, is a whole lot more risky and less positive than it was 15 months ago.”
Two problems with this approach. First, the politics of pessimism is not popular, particularly at the polls (say that five times fast). As Kim Campbell and Jimmy Carter, among others, will attest, Morning in America beats malaise every time.
Second, the Star reporter Susan Delacourt points out, “the Liberals built a strong economic track record in their years in power, and Dion would no doubt lean on that past to assure voters that the economy was safe in Liberal hands.”
This is, in fact, true. As a fiscal conservative, I’d have to say the first years of Chretien were more appealing than have been the first years of Harper. But Chretien’s economic record was based on pruning government. The current group wants to do the opposite:
Ignatieff and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives – with their free-market approach – are ill-placed to play any constructive role in insulating Canadians from economic damage.
“We think the government has a role to play. It’s clear the manufacturing sector is struggling in this country,” Dion said. “We don’t see an inch of a strategy from this government.”
“I see nothing in these free-market guys,” Ignatieff said. “For them, the government is always the problem. And Canadians have always thought that government can be the solution.”
So any credibility gained by Chretien’s economic record will surely be burned by prescribing the opposite approach.
I’m always amazed at the ease with which we accept “good economic performance” from the Liberals.
After all, here’s a party which sent our dollar down to USD 0.625, partly from inaction and partly because no work was required if Canadian executives could make their numbers simply off the exchange rate. (And an amazing number of those CEOs were solicited by the Liberal Party to come to hear the Prime Minister, or the Finance Minister, and put down $1,000 a plate to do so - I know, I was one of them who was asked, as was every other CEO I knew in Vancouver during the early 2000s.)
The dollar did not move back up because Canada was doing all that well but because the US economy under the Bush Administration and the Greenspan 1% slack regime was (and is) inflationary as hell and deeply in deficit. The US dollar has been collapsing; the Canadian dollar has moved up relative to the US one. Only with oil price movement did we gain anything against other currencies during this period.
So I’d say the Liberals didn’t do anywhere near as well as everyone seems to think.
Downloading to the provinces, stripping back on transfers - yes, that they did. And it was the first step of a fix Ottawa needed. Unfortunately, using the cash machine that surpluses created to send money hither and yon without Parliamentary approval and without discipline was the result. Again, not very good management, if you ask me.
Of course, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while. Martin, 1995.
Actually, I think the Liberal campaign makes some sense. Sure, at the aggregate level, Canada’s economy is doing well. But the booming economy in the West masks the weakness in the manufacturing centre. Ask autoworkers in Oshawa or Windsor how the economy is doing: you’ll get very different answers than you get from the petroleum engineer in Calgary. The next election will be won or lost in Ontario and Quebec, where a high dollar is hurting manufacturing. So, a Liberal focus on the issue is a logical one.
Harper warned against being complacent regarding the economy in his speech to the Australian Parliament today.
http://canuckpolitics.com/2007.....arliament/
Almost sounds like he is expecting a downturn …