heureusement, ici, c'est james

In defense of his budget, Flaherty invoked the spirit of Sir John A. himself, who used to say ‘look a little ahead my friends.'

"If we look a little bit ahead," Flaherty says, "we see how morally deficient it is for us to live high on the hog now and pass our debt on to the next generation.”

Paying down the debt surely counts for a lot in my books, and there were a few other tolerable things in this budget. But like most things, looking ahead and sensing moral deficiencies is relative.

Paying down the debt does dick all to abate a climate emergency, it doesn't pad our seats enough for a hard economic tumble. And most morally deficient of all, this budget may even have set the stage for raising income barriers to the lower and middle income brackets.

Economy: Flaherty says $250M will be earmarked for "greening" our auto sector over 5 years. It's plainly laughable to think that 50M a year shared among a handful of American manufacturers will do anything to actually reduce greenhouse gasses, especially given that we could be facing runaway climate change by the time this measure is implemented.

Infrastructure: It's about bloody time the gas tax fund was made permanent for infrastructure, though it's not nearly enough. This is what the Liberals were calling for ages ago, and the Liberals are still ahead of the curve calling for even greater infrastructure funding to help deal with climate change.

Education: I will laud the proposed new student grant program and the contribution extensions. I also laud the graduate student scholarship, with big caveat: giving a measly 500 students a whopping $50,000 per year kinda leaves the rest of us with a big fat nothing.

Security: More defense spending. More intelligence spending. More police officers. More money for Border Services. It's debatable whether this will do much to make us safer - we'll wait and see - but surely those of us quivering in fear will feel better. The 10-year renewals for passports is nice, though.

Employment Insurance: Is it really necessary to create another Crown corporation to manage our EI fund? I'm a blogger, not an accountant, so let's assume this is a good thing.

Environment: They get around to investing in Chalk River and call it an environmental initiative. They throw $240-million at one small "clean coal” plant and call it an environmental initiative. It's cute, but again, does nothing for the big environmental picture.

Best of all was watching Cons cave into Liberal pressure for a carbon-trading scheme. Wasn't it only a few months ago that the Conservatives said carbon-trading amounts to nothing more than selling "hot air"?

Carbon trading has proven widely ineffective in Europe, so I'm anxious to see how Conservatives plan to one-up the Europeans after only recently catching up with reality.

Tax-free Savings: We can put 5G of investments in our new account without being taxed. Sounds great, right? Maybe...

In effect, the Harper Conservatives are creating a new and important vehicle for those with the wherewithal to save to avoid income tax – leaving those who live month to month to make up the difference.

It is a small but important step toward implementing one of the political right's great dreams: neutralizing the progressive income tax system so that the rich pay less while the poor and middle classes pay more.

True, the new scheme starts small. Individuals will be able to put only $5,000 a year into accounts to earn tax-free interest and/or capital gains. In their first full year of operation, these tax-free savings accounts will cost the federal treasury only $50 million in lost tax revenue.

But the contribution limits are to be both cumulative and indexed to inflation. Within 20 years, the budget estimates that this program will cost the treasury a whopping $3 billion annually, in inflation-adjusted dollars, making it one of the government's biggest programs going.

And last but not least, "in the wake of this week's budget projections of razor thin surpluses that if the economy continues to weaken more than forecast the federal government could slip back into a deficit."

Labels: budget, cons, debt, economy, environment, global warming