Thursday, February 14, 2008

Pre-Budget Report: Party Positioning on Economic Issues

This is from the Progressive-Econ. blog. The Liberals continue to be disappointing in that their economic policies are no better often than those of the Conservatives. Sometimes as shown here they are even worse. More and more it seems that there at most marginal differences between Liberals and Conservatives. I guess that is why there is so much interest in the circus to the South between various marginal flavors of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle Dee that now come in different colours, genders, and ages.

Pre Budget Report: Party Positioning on Economic Issues
Posted by Andrew Jackson under budgets.February 8th, 2008Comments: 1
The House of Commons Finance Committee has just released its pre Budget report and recommendations. There’s a lot of common denominator all party agreement here, including on some modestly useful items. The report focuses on the impacts of thr high dollar and on tax measures.
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?SourceId=225139
What I find perhaps most interesting - and rather disturbing - is the lack of Liberal positioning to the left in their short additional statement. They actually castigate the Conservatives for increasing program spending at a faster pace than under Liberal governments, and explicitly call for a major focus on personal income tax cuts. That doesn’t mesh easily with a progressive social or environmental investment agenda now that surpluses have evaporated - and they are indeed pretty tepid in what they have to say on both of these fronts.
The NDP - now fronted by Quebec MP Thomas Mulcair - hits a few key progressive themes - the need to slow down the pace of tar sands development, the need for targeted industrial measures as opposed to across the board tax cuts, and the need for much more infrastructure investment.
Worth a quick read for its short summaries of positions taken by various and sundry associations, and for its costing of some proposals.

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