The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The decision by Governor General Micha'lle Jean to suspend the House of Commons until January 26 was a smart one. An Ipsos-Reid poll suggests seven in 10 Canadians support the move. The extended Christmas break will hopefully allow parliamentarians to give their heads a shake and come back in the new year ready to work. Importantly, the country needs to design a fiscal direction through precarious times. If we are to take the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition at its word, its willingness to defeat the government was precisely because of the governmentÕs inability to map-out this fiscal direction. The coalition proposed a $30-billion Òstimulus packageÓ that included more funding for infrastructure, bailouts for the automobile, forestry and manufacturing industries, more money for the arts, more money for regional corporate welfare programs, a new childcare program, and other costly goodies. Considering the razor-thin surplus outlined in the recent fiscal update, this Òstimulus packageÓ would put Canada into what TD Bank economist Don Drummond suggests would be a structural, prolonged deficit. But from where does this near-crazed urgency for massive deficit spending come? Not the recent election, when all three national parties campaigned on balancing the budget. How about an outpouring of public demand for huge deficits? An Ipsos-Reid poll taken at the height of the Òworld financial calamityÓ in October revealed 82 per cent of Canadians support Ottawa cutting spending to keep the budget balanced. To follow media reports one would think the Canadian government was utterly rudderless when it comes to economic management. This is not true. The recent fiscal update contained direction on taxes, cost containment, more infrastructure spending, asset sales, improved management, and the like. Canada faces economic challenges, but our situation is not as bad or severe as it is in the United States and other parts of the world. We need not Ð and should not Ð overreact with reckless policies. The fiscal update was not a budget, but appropriately addressed fiscal issues consistent with what many leaders of all the parties were saying during the election. To be sure, there will be disagreements, but itÕs not impossible that lawmakers could try and build a consensus. The Governor General was correct in allowing the government to at least present a budget before allowing a confidence vote. What lawmakers might consider now is the most recent polling indicating 72 per cent of Canadians are Òtruly scaredÓ for the future of this country because of what is going on in Ottawa. Tough to blame them.
