Nothing learned, nothing changed

With Stephen Harper's political career likely riding on the result of a single confidence vote, it isn't much surprise that he's once again putting on a media blitz. But even in the face of those high stakes, he apparently can't help giving away the fact that he doesn't plan on offering up anything more than his government's standard fare:

Ivison: You’ve talked about the deficit being “very, very large”. I know you won’t put a figure on it but that has the potential to strangle the public finances down the road. Are you worried that the legacy of this will be you will have to cut back program spending dramatically or raise taxes?

Harper: No...We have the financial situation that allows us to borrow money in the short term and spend that money, as long as most of that is time-limited spending. That’s what we’re going to be proposing — programs of one to two years duration for the most part. The key will be for us to resist calls that will be inevitable to extend some of those things indefinitely.

Ivison: So we don’t expect permanent tax cuts, for example?

Harper: I’m saying on the spending side, most of the actions we’ll be bringing forward are of a short-term nature, in terms of their financial impact. We do not have the intention of running a structural deficit or having a whole bunch of long-term spending initiatives.

Note the conspicuous change of subject in the last answer. Invited to suggest that the stimulus package as a whole - tax cuts included - would be time-targeted to deal with the financial crisis, Harper apparently can't bring himself to put an end date on another round of tax slashing. But when it comes to any spending, Harper draws a line in the sand to the effect that his government has no interest in anything but temporary actions.

Which raises an important question: how would a budget along those lines be any different from what the Cons have been doing their entire time in office?

From the beginning, the Cons have coupled low-efficiency tax cuts intended to permanently weaken the federal government with just enough short-term spending to paper over their lack of interest in social issues. And it's that combination which has already pushed Canada into at least half a decade of deficits to come, while securing Harper's image as somebody who's more interested in using the public purse to pursue his ideological agenda than in governing responsibly.

In sum, anybody holding out hope that Harper would take advantage of a last chance to try to put together a budget that's designed for the public interest rather than the pursuit of a right-wing agenda is headed for yet another disappointment. Instead, Harper has again signalled that he only knows how to govern one way - and that the mere combination of a financial crisis facing the country and a coalition waiting to replace him isn't about to take precedence over conservative dogma.