The secret platform

It never figured to take long for the Cons to start making up numbers for lack of any legitimate criticism of the NDP's platform - and Jason Kenney has charged into the breach. But it's worth noting the source of many of the supposedly-costed items, which consist of NDP MPs' committee reports.

To be clear, committee reports represent an important contribution in Parliament's governance of public policy. And what makes them stand out is that fact that they offer independent review by representatives tasked with assessing particular issues - who can then be expected to reach their own conclusions on the optimal solutions for those issues in a vacuum.

But because reports are necessarily focused on specific areas of review, they can't generally be taken as a statement of the decisions which a party might make in balancing competing priorities. And that's exactly where voters normally have reason to look to a party's platform as an integrated set of policy choices for the next term of office - and to ignore any attempt to let opposition parties treat committee reports as a substitute.

That said, there is one exception which is only highlighted by Kenney's stance.

It's well-known (and recently confirmed) that due to the meddling of Stephen Harper's PMO, Conservative caucus members - MPs and Senators alike - don't have the freedom to conduct independent reviews of legislation or policy choices that we'd expect from the rest of our parliamentarians. And so it's probably fair to treat the Cons' committee reports as reflecting Stephen Harper's judgment - a conclusion which is only reinforced by his right hand man in saying he consideres other parties' representatives' reports to be party policy.

That means that Harper is on the hook to answer for, say, the proposals from his Senate caucus to pursue government certification of imams, or to gut the CBC. And the opposition parties may want to take a far closer look at the Cons' committee reports as the campaign progresses - since no less a figure than Jason Kenney considers them to be part of his party's platform.

On comparative options

I posted yesterday about my theory that tax harmonization may be just the issue to set up an election campaign where all of the opposition parties might stand to come out ahead. But in case there's any doubt, I do figure the NDP would likely be the largest beneficiary - in particular thanks to one side of the HST debate which has yet to be fully addressed at the federal level.

After all, the Cons' reflex action in response to any opposition call for substantive policy of any kind - particularly in the case of EI recently - has been to whine about future tax increases, on the premise that none of their current budgeting would be altered by a future government. The NDP sought to fight that argument in 2008 by attacking corporate tax cuts, but couldn't generate as much outcry on that front as I'm sure the party hoped for.

But the pools of money set aside for the HST would figure to present an ideal opportunity to point out some obviously-available fiscal capacity which is being used for ends which a large number of people would be glad to reverse.

So the NDP would not only be able to use the large costs involved as an argument against harmonization in particular, but would also get to point to the money as a source of funds for its electoral platform. Based on the cost estimates from its 2008 platform, that would pose a choice between paying off Ontario and B.C. alone to force their citizens to pay more in taxes, or any one of:
- two years of funding for the NDP's health care plan (including home care transfers and a catastrophic drug plan) and child care plan;
- two years worth of funding for improved intergovernmental fairness, including meeting the equalization accords with the provinces, reallocating a cent of the gas tax to municipalities, increasing funding for First Nations and investment in Arctic infrastructure and northern development;
- four years of funding to build increased social housing, along with investment in a national literacy strategy, nutrition, healthy living, drug and mental illness initiatives; or
- four years of funding for economic and educational priorities including student and research grants, student loan reform, sectoral strategic investments, apprenticeship funding, border infrastructure and an immigrant credentials qualifying program.

And of course, there's every opportunity to apply a similar principle to other ideas - say, improving EI in both the qualifying hours threshold and the amount of income replaced for a two-year period.

Again, any one of those would cost only what the Cons already have sitting around waiting to be handed to Ontario and B.C. as an incentive to harmonize. Which means that there should be plenty of opportunity to draw a strong contrast between an expensive, undesirable scheme from the Harper Cons, and an opportunity to use money already available in the federal budget to fund priorities which Canadians actually want to see addressed.