While the Outlook recently featured some letters to the editor complaining about MP Blake Richard’s newsletters, we’d like to add a complaint of our own about some of the Conservative’s terminology and spending habits.
We’re getting a little tired of receiving press releases and hearing reports in regard to great things being done by the Harper Government.
The Harper Government? Here at the Outlook, we prefer to think of it as the federal government, or the Canadian government.
Rather than the Harper Government, we prefer to think of our federal government as the government the majority of Canadians voted them to be custodians of.
In recent weeks, the Harper Government (Canadian government) recently announced millions in funding for our national parks (which is nice), announced Christmas in July for families across this great nation through its universal child care benefit plan and this week, the same government announced still more funding for young immigrant workers in Edmonton, among others.
That’s all well and good, but it goes on and on and clearly there is a federal election in the offing. Are our tax dollars ever distributed by our governments with more glee than when an election is approaching?
The thing is, as always, Canadians pay for all this pre-election largesse with our hard-earned tax dollars. Until Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government start paying for everything out of their own pockets, we’d prefer they just say we’re all paying for it as per federal government direction.
Possibly more galling than the blatant pre-election spending is the fact that government budget watchdog Jean-Denis Frechette is now predicting a billion dollar deficit for this fiscal year – with more deficits in the offing. The federal government, on the other hand, in April promised a balanced budget and a surplus and Finance Minister Joe Oliver still says we’ll have positive growth by the end of the year.
Much like the many contrary reports of Canada’s current economic status (Recession? No recession?), we’ll assume the real financial picture lies somewhere between the two extremes.
Pre-election spending is a long-standing political strategy, of course, both federally and provincially – we suppose because in the past it’s been shown that an outpouring of our money in the months just before an election cleanses voters’ memories of government doings in years prior.
At any rate, it really seems now is not the time to be cutting cheques across the country, creating another Christmas season for families and seeking more and greater projects to spend our money on.
Much like we’d prefer polling results not be reported in the weeks prior to an election, and possibly swaying voters, we’d like to see spending curtailed in the months leading up to an election – for the same reason.
Voters’ opinion of how their government has been doing, and whether they should support it again, should be based on what has been accomplished over the years it has been in power, rather than on freeflowing dollars spent in the short term as an election nears.
