Via Joanne's post at BLU is the Conservative Party 10th Anniversary Top 10 List of Accomplishments. In the BLU comments, Sandy of Crux of the Matter points to her comprehensive list of 70 accomplishments 2006-2011. Great stuff!
Question: I googled for a complete record of Conservative accomplishments and Sandy's excellent list was it, no others came close. However, Sandy says she's given up on it, as it's too big a job. Isn't this something the CPC should be doing and posting it on its web-site? It's certainly worth bragging about. Such a list, with links to the platform, would be a valuable reference for all conservatives, not to mention the general public.
Time to write another letter to the CPC.
Biggest deficits in CAnadian history. Gay marriage approved by Harper. No thanks. There is nothing conservative about him.
ReplyDeleteI don't this it is a case of approving or disapproving of gay marriage. I think he is indifferent to it, and that is fine with me. I'm also indifferent to it.
ReplyDeleteNot happy about the deficits, although the fact that Canada was the last to go into it in the G8 and will likely be the first to come out is somewhat of a good thing. Also the biggest deficit relative to GDP occurred under Pierre Trudeau not Harper. Harper was the biggest in absolute due to the economy being much larger than when Trudeau was in power.
ReplyDeleteAs for gay marriage, Harper would have liked to repeal it, but he understood it was a lost battle. Most Canadians support the idea and opposing it just makes the party look like a backwards looking one. The Conservatives in Britain have changed their tone while many younger Republicans in the US are arguing the party's position on this may hurt them in the long-run.
JR -- I'm thinking of updating the original list with the change of the wheat board and the EU trade deal.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of keeping up, the problem came in with Canada's Action Plan. I only wanted was over and above that and it was very hard to know.
When you write the CPC, they are most welcome to steal from my list so they can have no excuse.
Some of the comments here are hilarious.
ReplyDeleteBiggest deficit in history? Excuse me?
It was the Lib/NDP opposition who forced that deficit as they tried to push forward a coalition gov't with the Bloc -- just a few weeks after the 2008 election.
As I recall, the Harper gov't had a balanced budget until that time and had also made 2 major payments against the debt.
That kind of complaining now is a bit rich and hypocritical. Force the Tories to put forward a stimulation package and then complain about its cost.
With respect Sandy, that is not correct.
ReplyDeleteHarper ate through a $13 billion surplus and was in deficit before the recession hit.
And he then went and bragged everywhere he could about how much spending he was doing. The amount of spending won him votes and he was happy to continue it. You can't pin that one on the opposition. History even indicates that they would have spent less. Besides, a conservative takes responsibility for his or her own actions; not passing the buck.
And look at his other spending decisions to support that claim:
- promised to reduce spending on polling, but set records for spending on polling year after year
- promised to reduce the size of cabinet but set a record for the size of his cabinet and that doesn't even count the record number of sub-cabinet positions
- has nearly doubled the size of the PMO and most of that is communications (add own joke here about how effective that strategy has been of late)
- this doozy: half a BILLION dollars on Action Plan advertising, including advertising for programs that don't even exist
- record breaking spending on 10percerter advertising, including a record number of distributions by MPs outside of their own ridings
- spending has gone up in every single year under Harper, including in the first few years
- the only reason he has a chance of reducing spending this year and next is because of his mega cuts to the military and selling off government assets and leasing them back (like Eves/Flaherty did in their make-believe balanced budget in Ontario)
If you have to compare Harper's record breaking deficits to Pierre Trudeau's to try to defend Harper, you know you are very long way away from "conservative".
And just to be clear on one point as well regarding Harper's desire to spend away our tax dollars: in his second year in office, before the recession, we witnessed the single largest increase in spending in pure dollar amounts outside of war in our entire history. It was also the largest peacetime proportionate increase (7% or so, year over year) in our entire history after Pierre Trudeau.
ReplyDeleteThis guy is no fiscal conservative. Not one gene in his DNA.
Sandy,
ReplyDeleteWhen/if you update your list don't forget to include the repeal of Section 13 of the Cdn Human Rights Act.
When I write, I'll certainly point them to your excellent list. Say, maybe they'll offer to make it worth your while to maintain their list for publication by the CPC :)
P.S. Your comments on ssm and the deficit/debt are on the mark. The media also have their usual intentionally short memories on the opposition's role in forcing Harper's "stimulus" spending (and any other facts that might help bolster the Conservative image).
Sorry, JR, you can't pass the buck on Harper's record-breaking spending.
ReplyDeleteShow me where he was "forced" to spend so much?
Don't forget, he went on the road to sell the huge spending saying it was needed, that he received no influence from opposition parties or even any input.
AFTER we were out of the recession, spending continued to go up. He continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising his Great Spending Spree.
Face it, just like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has, Harper is a big spender. It's in his very nature. Doesn't mean he should be dumped but by pretending otherwise, it makes it easier for him (or his eventual replacement) to keep increasing spending.
(As for SSM, he was strongly opposed to it and campaigned on it, but then decided/realized that he would lose power if he did anything about it, so he didn't. Same with abortion.)
Well, anon, I recall that just as the fin crisis was starting the Conservatives' advertised budget plan was to lower taxes and cut spending. But as the crisis built so did the clamor for "stimulus" spending from every corner of the developed world ("we're all Keynesians now" - remember that?).
ReplyDeleteThen, as Sandy says, the Lib/NDP/Bloc "coalition" debacle threatened the survival of Harper's minority while taking up the call for spending to help save the world. So I would say Harper reluctantly went along with the stimulus idea. In any case he'd have had a tough being a lone crusader against the near world-wide unanimity in favour of "stimulus". So what choice did he have, especially as a minority? Just imagine the Maggot Media Party's [©Bubba Brown] response - they hate the Harper Conservatives with a passion even when everything's going well.
Anyway, long story short, Harper strategically switched gears, went for stimulus which he then owned and has had to defend ever since. Lots of conservatives, like me, hated it, but understood. Others just think Harper et al embraced "stimulus" way too enthusiastically and are very disappointed.
I wasn't keen on the stimulus but agree he really he didn't have any choice. Actually the biggest mistake that resulted in the deficit was the GST cut. I am all for tax cuts but most economists will say corporate tax cuts and income income tax cuts create more bang for their buck. Off course in the long-run I would like to see way less government spending which would make all possible.
ReplyDeleteJR, I agree with you that Harper doesn't have the conviction of his principles and would rather be a follower than a leader in order to keep his hold on power.
ReplyDeleteBut I think you are missing the point. Which is not whether or not to abandon your principles, but just how much you are prepared to abandon them. We have never spent that much money all at once. EVER. Are you telling me that he had absolutely no choice whatsoever to break historical spending records, records that even the Liberals never broke?
Because I just don't buy that. I get the lack of a backbone on the general idea of deficit spending - of the very exact kind Harper wrote against in his Master's thesis - and accept that to a certain degree. But not the quantum. Anyone who think the Liberals would have called an election over half that amount of spending, or a quarter that amount, is smoking crack with Ford.
And I agree with anon. The GST cut was also not a fiscally conservative thing to do. Especially since it has no economic effect and had a disastrous fiscal effect by putting us into deficit when everyone knew a big recession was coming. In fact, Flaherty himself said it was a stupid thing to do when he was Minister of Finance of Ontario.
Throw in the 40 year mortgages with no money down and guaranteed by the government, half a billion dollars on advertising, the size of the cabinet, increasing the size and cost of the PMO, etc. and there is no way you can claim this guy is a conservative.
He's Jean Chretien and Brian Mulroney without the personality. And he lies just as much and just as badly as they do.
Anon, I'm trying to decide, are you a disgruntled conservative insisting on ideological purity or a Harper hating left/lib troll?
ReplyDeleteAssuming the former, you make some valid points about the virtue of sticking to principles, but have you considered that in a country of largely left-of-centre voters, conservative purity may not be wholly feasible. I'm not happy about some of the Harper "accomplishments" either but real retail politics involves the art of navigating some ideologically dicy, Maggot Media Party infested waters.
But JR, we're so afraid of those left of centre voters that we give up on everything. So what's the point?
ReplyDeleteAnd you keep changing the frame of my question. I get that political survival dictates some compromise and not sticking to principles.
But Harper has gone far far beyond that. Do you actually believe the Dion-led Liberals or the Ignatieff-led Liberals would have voted against a budget that increased spending by only a quarter as much as Harper actually increased spending? Not a chance.
And then there is all the rest of the waste which has gone unabated if not increased (PMO, Communications, advertising, new Action Plan spending) since he got a majority.
I believe that, deep down, Stephen Harper is a true conservative. And I also think that every effort should be made to try to convince left-of-centre voters that conservative principles are in their best interest. How best to do that, while trying to stay in power in the real world is not a simple problem. And, don't forget that the CPC itself isn't ideologically homogeneous - another minefield the PM has to tip-toe around on a day to day basis.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether the Libs would have opposed a much smaller budget, I don't know. Maybe. That's a question for someone who was actually involved at the time, say Jim Flaherty.
That last one (PMO, Comms, etc) is a nit-pick, a drop in the bucket, and I'd say a lot of it is justified in the first place. Even if it were a total waste, there is a lot more than that going on, and has been for decades. For starters, whole departments (Heritage (CBC, etc), Multiculturalism, Bilingualism ...) could be dumped, for $billions in annual savings.
Anyway, I'm still curious. I've enjoyed the discussion but I would like to know - are you really a conservative, or have you just been pulling my chain? :)