Modeling Journey

Finance Minister Flaherty is starting to look like an onion undergoing a slow motion unpeeling. Every week, it seems, more facts are revealed, and one more layer of the Tory onion is peeled back, to reveal several things, all of which should concern Canadians.

There is the denial of reality syndrome that the Harper Tory government seems to have displayed for more than a year now. The Globe & Mail has a nice analysis of the series of inaccurate statements and projections put forward by the Tories.

Then there is disturbing reasoning of the Tory finance minister as to what has caused the deficits, and how unexpected such deficits are.

There is also the lack of detail. At a time when deficits are important items for Canadians to consider, we find our government releasing information reluctantly, and with little detail.

What Canadians have a right to know from their government is:

1. Why did the government not realize that deficits would balloon? Is it that incompetent?

2. Is the government stalling with respect to the expected position of our government's finances, and trying to deceive the public with half-truths, withheld-truths and absolute lies?

3. What is the deficit made up of?

4. What is a realistic expectation of government finances for the next 3 to 5 years?

5. Just how much of the deficit is caused by spending as part of the stimulus package, and how much by other things?

We as citizens have a right to know what our money (our taxes) are being spent on.

We expect our government to march in step with other countries by stimulating our economy through judicious stimulus spending. But we also want to be sure that the deficits so caused are 'good deficits'. A good deficit is one caused by expenditure to soften a recession, with the expenditure doing more than just shovelling money out of government coffers into trinkets. When Harper spends our money, we have the right to expect it to be spent on projects which will have an impact on jobs and which will be of long lasting, structural benefit to our society.

There is very little in the government's information to date which gives us the details to judge fairly whether the $50 billion plus deficits Flaherty has suddenly discovered looming over him, is a good deficit or a bad one.

And the government's main test (no long term deficits at all costs) does not comfort us. The test is not whether the government can balance the budget within 4 years but whether (1) the money was spent on the proper things (see above) and (2) whether in fact we need to raise taxes after the recession to restore financial viability to our federal government.

Harper and is fellow-ideologues have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in gutting the ability of our government to play a meaningful role, but their slashing of government income (through the tax reductions, including the asinine GST reduction), has made us weaker just when we needed a strong central government.

It seems to the Cat that it is now time for us to turf out this incompetent government, and put a better one in power. And we should expect our political parties to do everything that might be needed to achieve that objective.