On baseless distinctions

The Cons apparently do have an answer to the criticism that they're using this year's fiscal update for the purpose of electioneering just as Ralph Goodale did with last year's. But it should come as no surprise that the answer is purely a matter of form rather than substance:

The Tory government is poised to unveil its fall fiscal update on Thursday, along with an economic wish-list expected to include much talked-about tax cuts.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's office is adamant the document about to be released isn't a mini-budget.

"It's not the same thing that (former finance minister) Ralph Goodale came out last year with," Flaherty spokesperson Eric Richer told The Canadian Press.

"That was basically a platform to launch the election. We're not doing that."...

Sources told CP that a separate document, known in Finance Department circles as "the plan," will be a Tory blueprint for spending and tax cuts over the next 10 years.

"It's a road map for government policy for the Canadian economy," one official told CP. "The plan will outline the Conservative government's economic priorities for the next 10 years, at least."

In other words, the only difference is that the Cons are using two documents rather than one to release a long-term platform on the same day and in the same forum as the fiscal update. Which could at best offer a minor technical variation from Goodale's all-in-one document last year.

But that irrelevant point of distinction certainly doesn't counter the substantive problem of a minority government loudly trumpeting a long-term plan which it can't reasonably claim to be able to implement in whole or in part. And it may not be long before the Cons' continued eagerness to copy that which they decried in opposition leads to exactly the same fate that befell the Libs.