Don Martin is one of the best political analysist in Canada, and I think he hits it bang on with the Conservative plan to "save money" by eliminating public financing of political parties. Having followed the Green Party since the 2004 election, it is clear that they would not have been able to mount the past two campaigns without public financing. By having public financing, it allows smaller parties who may have more support with people less able to donate money, it allows these smaller parties to operate. What is really jarring is that the Conservatives have such a high amount of donations, that the relative amount they get with public financing is far less than the other parties. All of the opposition parties get more than 50% of their funding from the public financing, while the Conservatives only rely on 37%.
The sad thing is that this was likely just a way to divert attention from the fact that this fiscal update offers up no plan to help the economy. The only way they balanced the budget was by putting in $10 billion in anticipated sales of crown corporations. Selling crown corporations is the worst way to budget, as once they are gone they will never again provide benefit to the government. There is no stimulus package either, something that every other major economy is putting forward. As exports decrease, unemployment will increase, and there needs to be plans in place to create jobs now, before the rate increases too much and tax revenue goes away to start those jobs. Shoring up infrastructure is an obvious way to create jobs and create important spinoffs.
Considering how bad this fiscal update is, there may very will be another election. I hope instead that the opposition parties can come up with some sort of agreement to make a coalition government for a year or two in order to give these delusional Conservatives a time out and to let them recover from the election.
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