Just for laughs, I decided to pick up each of the major parties' platforms for this election and see where I agree and disagree with their stated policies. For reference, here are the online versions of the platforms:
I wanted to include the Libertarian Party platform, except that they don't have one online this time around. They only just got re-registered with Elections Canada on May 19, so I suspect they have too much else on their plates to put up a platform document.
To start with, being an Ontarian, the BQ is not directing their platform or policies to attract my vote — they're not running candidates outside the 75 seats in Quebec. Plus, as a party that was founded with the express intention of seceding from Canada, my basic inclination is to put them all up against the wall be unsympathetic to them and their causes.
Gilles Duceppe, the current party leader, has certainly done a good job of presenting himself and his party as being rational, even-tempered, democratic advocates of provincial rights. He must be given a lot of credit for this, because his profile before the election campaign was very low outside Quebec. I've even seen sneaking admissions of liking the man from staunch Western conservatives!
Expand this into a general comment for all provinces, not just Quebec, and I'd support this point.
This is a non-starter, in my opinion, but not because I'm against the notion of separation — if they can get a majority of Quebec voters to vote in favour, then fine. What I'm against is the notion that they can separate and still take "full compensation" along with them. Separate yes, but taking their fair share of the national debt, sure.
I don't know the voting record of the Quebec National Assembly, but aside from "motherhood" resolutions, most legislative bodies can't get unanimity for adjournment, never mind more contentious issues that cross party lines. That being said, sure, whatever.
Maybe I'm indulging in creative interpretation here, but this sure sounds like a demand to be funded for whatever they want to do, without restriction or oversight. If that's what they mean, screw 'em.
Can we find anyone in Canada (who does not have a Liberal Party membership card in their pocket) who would object to this plank? I thought not.
On the whole issue of transfer payments, I'm not particularly in tune with most Canadians: I think that, as much as possible, taxes should be raised in the communities, regions, or provinces where they will be used. And as damned few of them as possible! Transfer payments should only be used in rare cases of extreme need, not as a standard way of funding government operations.
While I think that Kyoto is dead, and while still alive was a hare-brained attempt to blackmail the developed nations, there is still a good issue here that merits support: "the principle of polluter-pays". A key element that has been lacking in our environmental policies as a whole is that the costs should be borne by the polluters, not by the communities or the taxpayers as a whole. Assigning costs properly really requires enforcing property rights . . . which previous governments at all levels have been allergic to.
If you discount the cost ot the environment of the loss of all the birds who will be battered to death by the vanes of all those windmills, and the visual pollution of all the windmills themselves, perhaps. There are certainly some locations which could be used to generate power through windmills, but from the projections I've seen, there is no hope of wind turbines replacing much of our current power generation plant. As an aside, private owners may be encouraged to try generating some of their own power needs using turbines, but they will almost certainly face municipal opposition and neighbour disapproval: most of us don't want the guy next door putting up a huge eyesore, do we?
The St. Lawrence Seaway is a joint US-Canadian project, at the federal level. Quebec may want to take on jurisdiction of those parts of the Seaway that traverse Quebec territory, but at the moment they do not have this power. Should Quebec become sovereign, this is one of the big issues that the new Quebec government would have to negotiate with the Canadian and American governments. Blocking expansion now seems to be a bit of token noise, IMO.
If this means shutting off the financial taps to multicultural organizations, I'm all for it. It is not the legitimate role of the federal government to be subsidizing cultural expressions, especially cultural expressions which, by their nature, exclude other Canadians. The federal government should get out of the multicultural area and let the individuals and private groups organize, fund, and run their own cultural activities.
This, of course, is not what the BQ is demanding — they want the financial taps remaining open, but the federal agenda removed (in other words, just spend even more blindly than they currently do, while avoiding implying tht they are funding any of it).
In other words: soak the rich. Never mind that oil company profits are earned after all the normal taxes have been paid and after all bureaucratic regulations have been obeyed. This plank should match pretty exactly with the NDP platform.
This, translated, means that the federal government should never move a bureaucratic job outside Quebec. And, it also means using the full powers of the federal government to prevent private companies from moving jobs outside the province. Another plank that could have been lifted straight out of the NDP platform. The government is assumed to know what is better for business than the owners and managers of those individual businesses. If you already believe in the omnipotent and omniscious state, this plank is a slam-dunk. If you know anything about economics, it's pure socialism.
Again, the NDP and the BQ are happy to cohabit this segment of the political spectrum. The dice have been consistently loaded in favour of unions and against business owners for decades (reversing the early slant of laws which heavily discriminated against organized labour). I would ask, hypothetically, what in the heck is wrong with a level playing field in law? If a labour union and an employer can't agree about what a job is worth, why does the union have the legal right to interfere in the operation of the business? Why can they indulge in physical intimidation (and sometimes outright physical assault) to prevent other workers from accepting the offer of the company? If the company can't find replacement workers to take the jobs, then the work is worth more than they are willing to pay, and the company must either raise its offer or go out of business.
Again, open those taps, close your eyes and think of Canada. Why is the federal government involved in healthcare anyway? Isn't that a provincial responsibility? If so, they should devolve the tax-collection for healthcare to the provinces and get out of the whole mess. My personal opinion is that the governments at all levels should be looking to privatize as much of the healthcare system as possible and allowing competition to keep prices down and service quality up. But that's just me . . . I know many Canadians feel that socialized medicine is the only thing that makes us different from Americans.
This is another area that I feel the federal government has no business being involved in. I also think that the provinces are wrongly involved, but that's not the issue here in the federal arena.
If Quebec or any other province wants to institute such a program, they should do it with money raised in that province. I'm against it personally, and I don't think it will improve life for most Canadians, but it's again a provincial matter.
Hey, I've got a kid under 18 . . . send me money! A good appeal to the pockets is always gold in an election campaign. I'd prefer to see taxes lowered for everyone, but this proposal at least would lower taxes for some people.
Another issue that the federal government should not be involved in. If a provincial government wants to do it, do it with money raised in that province. I don't think it's a good idea, but it's not a federal responsibility.
If we didn't tax 'em so heavily during their working lives, they wouldn't need the income supplements after they retired. But, for many seniors who believed that the federal government has a moral responsibility to look after them, this income top-up is very important. The feds should phase out their whole scheme of Canada Pension and supplement programs and encourage individuals to provide for their own retirement. It would be unfair to do this for those who are within 10-15 years of retiring, but for those of us who still have 20 or more years of working life, we should be allowed to direct the CPP/QPP portion of our mandatory payroll deductions to private investment vehicles.
I'm astonished to see this one in the party platform. One of the big issues the last time that separatism was imminent was that many aboriginal tribes and nations did not want to be part of a separate Quebec and would have attempted to stay within Canada. The Quebec government did not see their claims as being valid ("We can separate from Canada, but they cannot separate from Quebec").
Another plank that could have come from the NDP platform. Employment insurance is an important social policy as far as most Canadians are concerned: it's another of the differentiations with the Americans we seem so proud of. Whether it's good economic policy is much less clear. As individuals, we like to feel that, should we lose our jobs, there will still be an income stream to tide us over until we find new jobs. Because this is a government monopoly, there is no real opportunity for private alternatives to develop, and no real way of determining whether the system is properly run. Using EI as a form of regional transfer (especially for Atlantic Canada's highly seasonal labour) is a perversion of the original intent of the system. Ease the federal government out of the employment insurance field and allow private alternatives to arise.
Does this seem to be a recurring demand? Spend money on our stuff, but let us control it completely. A quick one-word answer: Non.
Or, alternatively, devolve the taxation for those federal programs to the provinces and let the individual provinces allocate the funds as they see fit.
Supporting and defending the agricultural sector? How about eliminating the various federal support schemes and import/export regulations and let the agricultural sector compete in a free market? Too radical for you? I thought so.
The first mention of free trade in the points so far, and one which implies a rather different economic outlook than the rest of the document. Even with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in place, very little of our economy is actually "free" from government meddling both here in Canada and with our major trading partners. NAFTA improved a lot of areas, but it's still far from being what Cobden and Bright would recognize as "free trade".
How about allowing fishermen to have and trade fishing rights, and to enforce those rights both domestically and internationally? Ownership of property is the best way of ensuring that the property is properly taken care of. Fishing remains one of the starkest examples of the "tragedy of the commons".
As a libertarian, I'm conflicted about the Iraq war. I'm delighted to see a sadistic mass-murderer removed from power and his citizens starting to move towards a freer lives, but I'm not comfortable with encouraging governments to militarily intervene in other nations. Anything that improves the ability of individuals to live their lives free of coercion and terror, I'm in favour of.
The recent flight of a private spacecraft has given me hope that we can privatize space. Treaties and agreements between governments which cannot be enforced are a waste of time and energy. I strongly suspect that several governments (not just the Americans) have placed weapons in orbit. Pretending that they will not is just a pointless exercise. I'm more in favour of defensive systems (like the missile defence program), in that they are designed to protect the individual citizens of the nation.
As pointed out in a few earlier postings, the Canadian military has no major strength left for much more than the peace-keeping missions it's already involved in. A massive spending program will be required just to prevent further erosion in their ability to protect Canadians and provide peace-keeping missions.
Canada provides some assistance to poorer nations, and could probably provide more without too much effort. Whether it's right to force all Canadians to pay, through their taxes, for this aid is a question that rarely gets asked. Charity is a minor concern for most Canadians (few actually claim more than a few hundred dollars on their tax returns every year), because the government does the charitable giving on their behalf. This, again is an area that the federal government has no business being in. Reduce the size of the federal government and therefore reduce the taxes that Canadians pay, and the private donations to charities working in poor nations will massively increase.
Or, and this would be simpler, just institute free trade unilaterally and ignore the NAFTA provisions which actually work to restrict free trade.
This is another common fallacy: that tax shelters and loopholes are illegitimate. The tax system is carefully crafted to encourage certain kinds of behaviour by taxpayers. The government puts those provisions in place to make sure that taxpayers are encouraged to jump through the hoops and fall in line with the desired behaviour. There is no way that the government is going to willingly deprive themselves of such a great tool for social engineering!
Echoing the NDP platform again. Corporations are in one business only: making more money. Anything that improves their bottom line will get done, or the corporation will fail in it's primary task. Corporations that fail to make money will be taken over or sent into bankruptcy (except for soi-disant "national champions", who are propped up by taxpayer money and sweetheart deals. Any attempt to force corporations to act in a way that worsens their bottom line will encourage them to relocate to jurisdictions that allow them more ability to pursue their primary goal. That is why this kind of party plank will almost always be introduced at the same time as the earlier plank in the Sustainable Development section: because it can't work without the full force of government coercion.
And that's it for now . . . I've run out of time. Next up, the Conservative Party platform.
Posted by Nicholas at June 26, 2004 01:57 PM
Visitors since 17 August, 2004