Posted on 12/04/2005 6:56:23 AM PST by fanfan
OTTAWA -- If I had to rewrite history, the one chapter of my time in politics I would like to erase is the sorry story of the GST.
As one who was elected to Parliament in the landslide Grit victory in 1993 after promising to abolish the hated tax, I shuddered along with most of the caucus when we flip-flopped three years later.
Like others, I expected we would deliver. But unlike others, I was actually foolish enough during the campaign to state, on national television, that if we didn't, I would resign my seat.
In the heat of battle, we sometimes make statements we later regret. That statement became my scarlet letter. So closely linked was I, personally, to the GST that in the finance minister's office, they referred to it as the "Get Sheila Tax."
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's campaign promise last week to slash the GST is Paul Martin's worst nightmare on two counts: First, the PM's billion-dollar-a-day spending spree on the eve of the election has undercut his own capacity to beat down the Harper promise. He has even sheepishly admitted that the 2% staged cut is affordable, although not his choice for returning taxpayers' dollars to their own pockets.
Second, it reinforced an old fissure in the Liberal Party. As Martin repeatedly stated last week, "we've been down this road before" -- i.e., the 12-year-old unkept GST promise.
One of Martin's favourite campaign mantras is "promises made, promises kept." But the GST is like a bad toothache that just won't go away. It is the ultimate broken Liberal promise, reinforcing the public's view that the team with the "hidden agenda" is headed not by Harper, but by Martin.
Harper's timing could have been better. But for a couple of clumsy mistakes of his own, he could have announced it as a post-Christmas goodie, permitting Canadians to mull over eggnog and newfound money at the same time.
Something positive
However, as he lurched from same-sex marriage on campaign day one to to a misfire with his deputy on the a new independent prosecutor on day two, he desperately needed something positive to message.
A GST cut is just the thing. Expect the Liberal spin doctors to BlackBerry the whole country with tales of woe about the financial dangers in a GST cut. But it is pretty hard for them to trot out gloom-and-doom scenarios on the GST when they have just undercut their own surplus projections by about eight billion dollars. Methinks they doth protest too much.
Martin will trot out the same arguments he used 12 years ago in a failed attempt to keep the GST promise out of the Liberal election agenda. (It was a caucus revolt that finally forced it back in.) To be fair, then-leader Jean Chretien warned us it would be a promise we would come to regret. He never knew how prescient he was.
Martin was given three years by cabinet to introduce a replacement for the GST. Instead, he used his considerable clout in finance to prove it was impossible. When he finally announced, in 1996, that he was oh-so-sorry but the hated tax could not be abolished, he left Chretien flat-footed and me seatless -- a double whammy that had Martinites reeling with delight. (Of course, I won the subsequent byelection.)
In subsequent elections, the Liberal platform committee toyed with proposing the same thing Harper has now announced. In the end, they feared any mention of the hated tax would merely reinforce a broken Liberal promise.
Now, in one clever move, Harper has managed to hammer home the image of Liberals as promise-breakers and dangle a tax break in front of Canadians that even Finance Minister Ralph Goodale characterizes as sexy. Even Harper knows that sex sells.
Martin's worst nightmare speaks again!
Canada Ping!
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(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Gosh, it might even get them hating spending!
I know; that's probably expecting too much.
Could somebody tell this non-Canadian if Sheila Copps is a reformed Liberal? Also, have there been many examples in Canada of prominent politically active people moving from the Liberal to the Conservative camp? Obviously there can't be that many, given the condition of your poltics, but I'm always looking for signs of light from up North.
LOL.
She will never be a Conservative, and our side wouldn't accept her even if she wanted in.
She was loyal to Jean Chretien, and was bumped out of her Hamilton riding by Martin when he took the reins of the
Liberal party.
Okay, thanks for explaining. I had no idea who she was.
Notice that she is sorry that they made a promise to cut it instead of being sorry that they didn't keep the promise. Out in front of the cameras she was just as supportive of their not cutting it as anyone else, and she was FORCED by an outraged public to step down as she promised. She had no intention of keeping her promise either.
Her unwillingness to keep her own promise makes it hard for me to see her as an innocent victim here.
OK. I just find Sheila's portrayal of events very self-serving.
Absolutely!
What else would she do? She's always been self-serving.
She is a die-in-the-wool Liberal, after all.
*snicker*
I have to admit I am enjoying the melt down of the Canadian left.
It's been a long time coming.
The Liberals core constituencies have not left them. Groups such as middle aged women, Mediterranean Catholics, etc. are sticking with the Liberals.
Some others just agree with her on this subject.
The fact is, the Liberals lied about the GST, and it's coming back to bite them.
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