conservative budget …and a majority?

The Conservatives are polling in majority territory following the government’s 2007 budget. Eek!

The good news is that Stockwell Day might finally burn after allegations surfaced that the old Canadian Alliance party under his leadership offered the Okanagan riding’s MP $50k to step aside and let Day run in his place. How many lives does this guy have left, anyway? For his sake, I hope he has to leave politics over this one. Please let’s just put this lame, tired politician out of his misery.

So about that budget. There are a few things I like about it and many more things I don’t like. The biggest thing I like about the budget is the return to rules-based federal transfer payments rather than the ad-hoc approach adopted under Paul Martin. I like the basic approach used to reduce medical waiting times (the feds will give a province a big bag of cash if they agree to meet new standards on waiting times), but in reality a province only has to agree to improve one procedure to receive this cash and there are absolutely no controls on spending once the agreement is made. Harper gave a big bag of money to Québec to pacify the Bloc and ensure that his budget would pass through the Commons. He gave tax cuts to his support base (middle class suburban families and corporations) and did very little for lower class families and individuals.

Jim Flaherty was rather boastful after he waved his hands and corrected the fiscal imbalance: “It’s certainly the end of the bickering. It’s the end of the discussion. C’est fini.” Well at least he can speak some French (he had to bring a Québecois MP to the media scrum after the budget to communicate with the French media). Anyway, you’re kidding yourself if you think that this is the end of the discussion on federal-provincial fiscal relations. As long as Canada exists in a federalist framework, a significant portion of the political dialog will focus on the federal purse strings.