Posted on 10/07/2002 3:14:49 PM PDT by knighthawk
Do you remember Aesop's fable of the log and the stork? It goes like this: There was once a pond ruled by a log who never did or said anything. The frogs in the pond became disgusted with their old king's inactivity and so prayed to Zeus to send them a more energetic ruler. Zeus laughed at them and sent them a new king -- a stork, who promptly ate all the frogs up.
Paul Martin's reaction to Jean Chrétien's farewell Throne Speech gives all us frogs fair warning: Canada's would-be new King Stork will be no improvement over old King Log.
The program Chrétien unveiled last week was more of the same stuff that has slowly poisoned Canada over the previous nine years: more spending, more give-aways, more indifference to the country's economic problems. Under Chrétien's leadership, Canadian incomes before taxes have collapsed from 87.2% of U.S. incomes in 1989 to 78.1% in 1999, the sharpest and most prolonged relative decline in Canadian history.
In absolute terms too, Canada has stagnated under Chrétien. Even at the top of the 1990s boom, average personal disposable income (after tax and adjusted for inflation) barely managed to catch up to the level set 10 years before.
Canada's poor economic performance under Chrétien is the direct cause of Canada's worst social problems.
Had the Canadian economy grown more strongly, Canadians could more easily afford their health-care system.
Had personal income grown faster, more Canadians could afford quality housing.
Had corporate taxes been reduced, the Canadian unemployment rate would not hover two points above the rate in the United States.
Had Canadian families been allowed to keep more of what they earn, they could afford to have more children. Instead, under Chrétien, the Canadian birth rate has tumbled far below replacement, to a level about three-quarters that of the United States (about 1.5 children per woman in Canada versus 2.08 in the United States). Low birth rates oblige Canadians either to accept higher levels of immigration than most Canadians would wish -- or else face the bankruptcy of their pension system within the next two decades.
It's a disastrous record -- and since quitting the Cabinet, Paul Martin has made clear that the only complaint he has against it is that it is not quite disastrous enough.
Finance Minister John Manley is dropping obvious hints that Chrétien's plans for health care will require substantial tax increases -- this at a time when the Americans will be reducing taxes. And what did the previous finance minister -- the great hope of the Canadian financial community -- have to say in response?
"In terms of the whole question of fiscal responsibility," Martin told reporters in a post-Throne Speech scrum, "it laid out very clearly the intent to continue with balanced budgets and declining debt-to-GDP ratio and I think that also is what Canadians want to see." Not a word about taxes; not a word about economic growth. To him, "fiscal responsibility" does not mean reducing government spending to the level taxpayers can afford to pay; it means squeezing taxpayers to finance as much spending as the government can imagine getting away with.
As finance minister, Martin cunningly wooed his business constituency: "Just wait until the old scalawag picks up his bag of swag, retires to Florida, and leaves me in charge. Things will be different then!" It was the same trick that John Turner used back in the 1970s -- before he reinvented himself as an admirer of the Albanian economic model in the free trade election of 1988.
But Turner seems genuinely to have believed in his samizdat free-market views at the time he was whispering them: As finance minister, for example, he indexed tax rates to inflation and tried to curb Pierre Trudeau's spending too. Martin, on the other hand, has always been a fusser and a bosser, a dirigiste and interventionist. I interviewed him in 1994 for Saturday Night magazine and was startled at the time by his placid government-knows-best certainty.
Let's remember that Martin's differences with Chrétien were never differences of principle. Martin did not resign over tax increases -- he imposed them. He did not resign over the collapse of the dollar -- he favoured it. He did not resign to protest the scandals engulfing the Prime Minister's office -- he kept silent about them. He did not resign to demand a stiffer foreign policy -- indeed this very week he scolded U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci for requesting that Canada contribute more to the defence of North America.
In fact, as far as the public record shows, Martin's only complaint against Chrétien is that he is not spending enough on the cities where large numbers of Liberal voters live -- and the public record barely even shows that, since Martin's own Web site contains not a single speech or policy paper: It is, like the man's leadership campaign, 100% content free.
But though Martin has been unwilling to say much, he has certainly been busy signalling -- and every signal he has sent has indicated his intention to govern either exactly as Chrétien has done or else even further to the left. If his "post-modern Canada" speech meant anything, it meant that; ditto his "new deal for the cities" speech. His endorsement of Chrétien's Throne Speech signalled it once more.
Between two men who advocate destructive policies, one of them indolent and timid, the other bold and energetic, give me old King Log every time. And when Canada's true champions of economic growth and personal liberty fight Martin, they'll find their best case in Aesop's Fables.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.