Justin Trudeau is talking about adding another $100 billion to the deficit. Don Lenihan and Andrew Balfour wonder if he's bluffing:
In politics, expectations are everything and Justin Trudeau’s team has been working overtime to ratchet them up – way up. So, what if Budget Day comes and this much-discussed figure of $100 billion is, say, ‘only’ $50 billion?
We think a lot of people – many of them Liberals – will breathe a sigh of relief. Conservatives, on the other hand, could be in a panic. Erin O’Toole appears to have hitched his wagon to the big number. In an interview with the Globe and Mail last week, O’Toole announced that, while he would balance the budget, he would take the next decade to do it.
O'Toole has planned to run against Liberal overspending. But he's in a bit of a box:
He is on record supporting the idea of a recovery plan but insisting that his approach will be different from Trudeau’s. For example, he singles out the impact of the pandemic on immigrants, many of whom own small businesses that have been damaged or destroyed by the shut-down.
Whatever the differences, it’s a safe bet that a Conservative plan will include a lot of the same things as the Liberal plan, such as funds for the provinces to improve long-term care for seniors. And, of course, O’Toole agrees on the need for a credible climate change plan.
The real difference seems to be in the scale. A hundred billion dollars will buy the Liberals a lot of stuff. But it also gives the Conservatives the fiscal space to design a plan that is substantive but far less costly.
They could spend $30 or even $40 billion and still be $60 or $70 billion lower than the Liberals. That’s a lot of money – more than enough to drive their narrative of Trudeau as a reckless spender.
However, as that $100 billion deficit shrinks, so does O’Toole’s fiscal space. If on Budget Day the deficit number is “only” $50 billion, this puts him in the same ballpark as the Liberals. Any clear contrast will be gone, and O’Toole will need to tell a different story.
Now he must convince people that his plan is better, and that will take lots of explaining. But as they say in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
It's a reminder that, with everything else going on, our political leaders -- behind the scenes -- are playing chess.
Image: Vancouver Sun
4 comments:
Playing chess implies engaging in an intellectual pursuit for the purpose of entertainment. These folks are playing politics for their own personal gain, often with little regard for the well-being of their constituents. Broken people, broken system.
The pandemic has exposed all the things that are wrong with our system, Danneau. Whether or not we have the brains or the courage to fix them is an open question.
.. I really feel we need drastic changes to 'politics' in Canada.. First get all the political donation money ended. Secondly start peeling back the mechanism & machinations of Political Parties. We already know the Conservative Party is falling into some bizarre rabbit hole of the social religious factions meets Proud Boys, meets Stephen Harper meets gun advocates. I fail to see any useful 'Governance' coming from such an unholy interbreeding experiment. The Liberals need their sails trimmed as well. The NDP wander in some spacial lost planet dimension. The Greens seem totally inconsequential. 'Captured Government' simply has to end, no matter the who, the how or the why. Big Business does not deserve any involvement in governance.. nor does any 'lobbying'.. or PR firms owned and operated by sold out Mainstream Media.. that's as distasteful to me as letting organized religion having a toehold or say (clout)
The problem -- as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said -- is that politics has become a "civil religion," sal.
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