A N A L Y S I S

Canada: New Political Equations Emerging
Canada's $223.6-billion Budget Passed in the House of Commons

DESPITE their leaders’ earlier bluster, none of Canada’s opposition parties seriously wanted to defeat the Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative $223.6-billion budget, which was tabled last week and was passed in the House this week, Bernard Nunan, Ottawa Correspondent finds new political equations taking shape that may help the minority Conservative government survive for sometime at least.

The Liberals and the NDP said that they would vote against the government yet the budget was passed without any hitch.

"We do not believe we can honestly support this budget," said Mr. Graham a few days ago. "It's far too ideological and not practical enough for the needs of Canadians." New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Jack Layton also expressed many of the same concerns about the Tory budget. "If Mr. Harper is intransigent, then we'll have no choice but to vote against it because it doesn't invest in working people," Mr. Layton told.

But Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe made it clear early on that his caucus would vote with the government.  For that reason, there was no real possibility that the Tory government would be toppled as both of the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois have a combined total of 176 seats in the House.

Last week, Prime Minister Harper dared the Liberals to defeat the government on the budget vote. "There is a lot of good news here, a lot of tax breaks to a lot of ordinary people, and I don't think Canadians are going to tolerate the Liberal Party voting any of these things down," said Prime Minister Harper.

The Liberals claimed they would vote against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government on the budget, but no one really believed that the Liberals were serious about trying to defeat the government before next December's Liberal leadership convention.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe says he's willing to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper's budget and prop up his minority Conservative government. "This is a transition budget. The real budget will be next year," said Duceppe, whose party's 51 seats can combine with the Tories' 125 seats to deliver enough votes to pass the budget.

Liberal Leader Bill Graham and NDP Leader Jack Layton denounced the budget, saying the government has failed to address aboriginal, child-care and environmental concerns. Duceppe said Harper's "firm commitment to settle the fiscal imbalance" within a year is the main reason his party will support the budget.

Harper campaigned on a promise to address the fiscal imbalance, or the difference between what the provinces send to Ottawa and the amount they receive back in federal transfer payments and other spending.

Duceppe said he also liked the government's promise of $1.5 billion in aid for farmers, $800 million for low-income housing and $1.3 billion for public transit infrastructure.

And so it was left to the Liberals and NDP to pan the budget. Liberals criticized the budget for abandoning a "commitment to fiscal prudence." "I believe, unfortunately, the government has chosen to basically raise taxes, in spite of what's being said today," said Graham. "Frankly our party cannot support a budget as unbalanced as this is in the interests of Canada and our economy." Liberal finance critic John McCallum said, “the budget puts ideology before economics and policy, and fails to provide a sound economic vision for the future."

The NDP criticized the Conservatives for omitting any mention in the budget of long-term investments in childcare, the environment, aboriginal development and post-secondary education.

"We need investments in this country for working families to make sure that there's child-care spaces in the long term," said Layton. "We need to make sure there's funding for post-secondary education because young people can't afford a post-secondary education. Concerning the environment, we're facing environmental crises on many fronts and we need investments to address these."

Meanwhile, under the current circumstances, it's unlikely that the Liberals will win the next election because of their low popularity in Quebec. According to a CROP poll released last week, federal Conservatives have overtaken the Bloc. According to the poll, Conservatives were leading with 34 per cent of support from Quebecers, followed by the Bloc with 31 per cent of Quebecers’ support and the Liberals, who were supported by only 15 per cent of Quebecers.

BACK