Two governments released two very different budgets this week, both aimed at essentially the same voters.While the analysis in the middle part of the column is certainly food for thought, I'm not sure that I entirely share Walkom's view about the ultimate results - which seems to implicitly praise McGuinty's sudden rediscovery of progressive values as much as it criticizes and fears Harper for the Cons' longer-term intentions.
Stephen Harper's federal Conservatives are hoping to make a breakthrough in the suburban 905 region with tax cuts aimed squarely at middle-class families. The Ontario Liberals of Premier Dalton McGuinty are hoping to woo the same swath of middle-class voters with a budget that focuses on helping the poor.
In politics, this is about as close to a laboratory experiment as it gets. The McGuinty Liberals are heading into an Oct. 10 provincial election on their budget platform. The Harper Conservatives could face a federal election as early as this spring on theirs...
This week's duelling budgets say it all.
On Monday, Flaherty announced tax breaks for children that will help everyone but the poor.
On Thursday, Sorbara announced tax breaks for children that will help only the poor.
We shall see which version goes over better among the middle-class voters of Greater Toronto.
Of course, it's presumably true that the federal Cons are looking for opportunities to shape the Canadian political scene from top to bottom and see a current gloss of moderation as their way to get there. But that task is far bigger than can be accomplished solely through one budget...and even a couple of years in minority government don't figure to be anywhere near enough time to fundamentally rewrite the language and underlying principles of Canadian politics.
Until the Cons manage to accomplish that goal, their anti-effective-government bent - which is at best thinly disguised in this year's budget - figures to leave them on the wrong side of an awful lot of the voters they need to win over to have any chance of their desired transformation. And while it's certainly worth pointing out where the Cons are seemingly looking to shred Canada's social fabric, it's equally important to point out how that fabric can be strengthened as a long-term balance to the Cons' efforts to reshape political dialogue.
So much for the federal side. Let's turn now to the Ontario budget, which Walkom goes out of his way to paint as reflecting a benevolent impulse toward helping Ontario's poor. Sadly, though, even to the extent it's accurate to say that the Libs' budget is a shift leftward, it's not at all clear that the Sorbara's budget is any less aimed at influencing the future shape of his jurisdiction's political system than the federal Cons'.
The difference is that where the federal Cons are trying to rise to the top of a perceived one-governing-party system, the Ontario Libs seem less interested for now in the question of who's considered Ontario's default government than in trying to make sure that the NDP can't work its way into the picture. The apparent operating assumption appears to be that they can beat the Cons in a two-way race, or at least would rather take their chances in that type of battle than face the compromises that come with minority government. But the result seems equally to be based on a short-term leftward move in hopes of being able to win greater power for the governing party's right flank.
In sum, there's little reason to think that the Ontario Libs' long-overdue recognition of the needs of Ontario's poor is any more authentic than the federal Cons' pretense of generally favouring the middle class, rather than simply seeing middle-class votes as a means to the end of transferring more wealth upward. Which means that while the "experiment" comparing the two budgets certainly makes for interesting observation, no outcome involving either of the governments managing to improve its electoral standing appears likely to do much good in the long run.
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