Norquist North

Murray Dobbin reminds us of PMPM's real legacy:

While Martin's (1995) budget has gone down in history as the "deficit slaying" budget, this is not how Martin himself described it in the House of Commons on February 27, 1995. He proclaimed that he intended to "redesign the very role and structure of government itself. Indeed, as far as we are concerned, it is … the very redefinition of government itself that is the main achievement of this budget.… This budget overhauls what government does." Announcing over $25 billion in spending cuts over three years, he boasted: "Relative to the size of our economy, program spending will be lower in 1996-97 than at any time since 1951."

The deficit was gone in two years. If Martin had simply frozen spending, the deficit would have disappeared just two years after that...

In slashing Medicare funding and eliminating the EPF, Martin created what neocon strategists call a "useful crisis," weaknesses in the system that critics can use to promote for-profit as the solution. The evidence that the "crisis" was deliberate is irrefutable. Mr. Martin could have easily reversed the cuts if he had chosen to. Between the years 1999 and 2002, Martin, again deliberately, underestimated the accumulated surpluses by over $36 billion. I say deliberately because others were consistently making more accurate estimates, including the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives whose estimates were out by less than one billion.

The surpluses were so enormous that by 2000, Martin could no longer simply hide them. So he cut taxes by $100-billion over five years (77 percent of the personal benefits going to the wealthiest 8 percent of the population). Billions also went to Canada's largest corporations. Paul Martin gained the reputation as someone who dealt decisively with the deficit crisis. But that lasted just three years of his term. He should be known as the man who solved the surplus crisis, because for a politician who wants to take government programs back to 1951 levels, a chronic surplus really is a crisis.

No wonder there's plenty of surplus money to be promised around election time. Though it hasn't hurt matters any that PMPM and company could also be secure in the knowledge that their recent spending promises wouldn't stand a chance of making it through Parliament anyway.

Of course, the past cuts and inflated estimates have been election issues before. But voters should still keep Martin's past refusal to acknowledge the real state of Canada's finances in mind before buying into any claim that the Liberals are particularly competent as money managers. And any Liberal claim to want to fix our ailing social programs should be met with the reality that it was PMPM who eagerly broke the programs in the first place.