However it comes out this is turning out to be a great election to analyze. As a thinking person it is becoming more impossible by the day to support the conservatives. Yesterday while listening to CBC Radio I heard from the Liberals and the Conservatives. It was on one of those breaks where they allow the parties a little air time. For the Liberals Stephen Dion talked for the full time alloted about his environmental record and the liberals Carbon tax plan. It was interesting, informative and well thought out.
Then the Conservatives came on and it became clear that they don't even care about smart people. They want dumb people and/or scared people. They used their time to play 30 second ads, one of them they played twice (just for repetition value). Each of the Ads featured comments from 'voters'. The comments all basically said the same thing 'Dion bad', 'more taxes', 'doesn't seem like a leader to me' and all of them ended with the same conclusion 'not worth the risk'. The ads were so repetitive that they almost turned into a chant "not a leader, not worth the risk". There was no substance, no real arguments (just insults), no analysis, nothing to counter Dion's plan.
As an aside, the reality of Dion's plan is that it will probably not raise your taxes. The idea behind the carbon tax is to shift from income tax to consumption tax. There is a nice quick outline of what such a plan might look like on the Green Party's website http://www.greenparty.ca/en/background/06.06.2007b. So your income tax would go down and then carbon tax would be added to various products depending on the pollution required to produce them. So if you live even a semi-green lifestyle your overall taxes go down. How much you pay in taxes depends on the decisions you make - if you buy recyclable or recycled products your taxes go down, if you take public transit or carpool your taxes go down, if you walk or ride a bike sometimes you taxes go down, if you buy a more fuel efficient car or energy efficient appliances for your home your taxes go down etc., The basic idea here is that it would encourage people to use products that pollute less, and use less of products that pollute. So according to the calculator on the LIberal website my family's taxes would go down by about $1500 a year. All I can say is, check out the actual plan and find out what it means for you before you start chanting with the Harperites.
Now, back to the topic at hand, Harper's mantra for this election is 'not a leader, not worth the risk'. But both of these things can easily be said about Harper. Shortly after Mr. Dion became the leader of the Liberals the Conservatives ran an ad with Dion saying 'It's not easy to set priorities' or something like that, but Mr. Dion has, in fact, made his priorities clear so far they include, first and foremost the environment, but also aid for farmers, assitance in gaining and maintaining manufacturing jobs, repairing crumbling infrastructure across Canada, help for those in poverty and higher education, improved child care assistance and helping Canadian cities. Pretty good priorities I think.
On the other hand, what are Mr. Harper's priorities? He hasn't really said. Sure he's pledged small sums of money here and there, but not enough to really solve anything. His plan seems to be primarily to bash Dion without committing to anything himself. He has essentially offered no plan on the environment, no plan for cities, no plan for farmers or manufacturing jobs. He has not said whether or not, if McCain is elected in the U.S., if he will follow McCain into Iran. Perhaps this is because he has been too busy apologizing for things his team has done and playing down new scandals.
But Harper's past record certainly does not recommend him for the job for which he is reapplying. His record on the environment is intolerable, he has not run an honest, transparent government but a secretive, dishonest and corrupt one, he has openly attacked Canadian arts and culture and his record on the economy is, by any reasonable standard, weak outside Alberta. The corporate tax cuts he's so proud of have not created any jobs, and the 2 cent reduction in the GST has helped the average family very little.
The truth is we live in sad times. We have one Candidate who doesn't come across well on television but has good policy positions on things Canadians care about and we have one candidate who looks good on TV but doesn't really care about the average Canadian or Canada's future (unless we're talking about oil futures) and the guy who looks good on TV is winning.
So, here are a few alternate takes on Dion and Harper
Stephen Harper
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