Politics: Reading Party websites

[danaeris]

For my American friends who haven't been following, we have been discovering that the previous prime minister, former leader of the Liberal party here in Canada, embezzled billions of dollars for the benefit of his family members and such. It's a huge scandal.

Liberals claim that they are appalled that anyone would do such a reprehensible thing and that current party leaders are not connected to the scandal. Everyone else would have us believe that the Liberals are rotten to the core. The truth likely lies somewhere in between.

Anyhow, I'm reading through the websites of various political parties and finding the experience interesting.

Liberals

The first issue sheet I read was on Health Care. They started by stating how important this is to Canadians (duh) and how long wait times are right now for some forms of care (also, widely known). They go on to say "Look how much money we're putting into healthcare stuff!" without saying where the money is going. All I could get out of it (although I may have missed something) was that they've identified five areas which have unacceptable wait times, and they have commissioned inquiries into how these situations can be rectified in the next five years. That's very nice, but it doesn't give me any way to determine whether they are likely to bring me results.

The second issue sheet I read was about Cities. Maybe I'm clueless about Canadian politics, but this strikes me as a non-issue. It strikes me as the new PM trying to take something non-controversial and focus on it in order to distract from controversial issues and show that he is solid, reliable, and not over there with those guys. It's him saying, "yay me, I was the first to identify this as something to look at" when it is something that few will care about other than to say, "Yeah, I guess that would be nice."

The one on children is addressing some important issues... child pornography, early education, etc. No buts here; it seems that they are actually doing something about these things, and those things are reasonable. And the more we learn about early development, the more important ECE begins to look. So no arguments here.

The last sheet is on the environment. It mentions reduction of greenhouse gases and finding clean, renewable energy sources to that end. It mentions cleaning up existing polluted sites. It mentions regional and provincial priorities, which is promising. It is very short and not particularly illuminating. It reads as though they are sayign, "We put this here because we know people care about it, but we don't have much else to say here."

Through the first three sheets I got the feeling that they were trying to say that because they spend lots of money, and have occasionally put programs into effect, that they are good and we should vote for them. That's retarded, and I found these issue sheets VERY unimpressive.

NDP

Good: They seem to have fact sheets on almost every issue you could think of.
Bad: They're all PDFs. OK, I know, that's not a political issue, but I'm a geek, ok? I find it annoying.

Health:
I admit that in spite of being a hippie-type by American standards that I AM in favour of a two-tier system if carefully implemented. The NDP seems to be flat out against that, which makes me unhappy, although from what I'm reading, they plan to work within that while making certain that the two systems are fully separate (ie. federal funds should not go to private hospitals or clinics).
What makes me happy is that they seem to have moved past our proximity to the United States, and appear to be looking at what other health care systems around the world do that might be useful for us. They are making more detailed noises than the Liberals about changing the way we do our public health care in innovative ways to save money. They are talking about increasing federal spending on health care, but they are also looking at other ways of being more frugal with the money we do spend. Still, more detail would be nice.

Clean Government:
I'm a little frustrated with the fact that virtually every single fact sheet on this site takes the opportunity to pound on the liberals, and even on the conservatives. This is the one fact sheet where it is more than called for. However, I feel a need to remind myself that it is very easy to point at other parties and say how corrupt they were when they were in office when your party has never been in a national office and so has never had the opportunity to prove its lack of corruption.
What I like about this fact sheet is that they are talking about actual changes to the process by which we do government in order to make it harder for similar scandals to happen again. While I don't know enough to be able to say if the specific changes suggested would make a difference or the right difference, I agree with the spirit, at least. In spite of the Liberal government's claims of disgust with the events coming to light, they don't seem to be making any noises so far about government reform.


Post-secondary education:
I do believe that there is need for reform here. I couldn't have afforded to go to anywhere other than UofT or MIT; even though I got into Waterloo and Queens, OSAP and other government loans were not available for my family's income level, and I didn't get any scholarships.
The NDP seems to recognize this problem, but I don't agree with the way they are trying to do it. There's no reason to bar private colleges/universities from existing. Well, that's not true. But in today's society, I don't see the value in doing that. Maybe.
Also, I don't see the sense in making student loans entirely interest free. If nothing else, they should account for inflation. There should be some kind of incentive to pay them off.
Although I'm definitely happy to see scholarships abolished in favour of need-based financial aid. About time.

Taxes:
The agenda here is a mixed bag. I have trouble believing that they won't raise taxes. On the other hand, there are a few things they're doing that are good. First, getting rid of the GST on life essentials. Second, abolishing tax treaties with tax havens. Third, US style inheritance tax (which means less tax for the inheritor). Fourth, assuring that tax brackets are arranged to avoid hidden taxes (I'm not sure what they mean about this, although on its face it looks good).
What I don't like is that they claim they will arrange it so that anyone making less than 15K pays no tax. If you're living in Toronto or another big city, that sounds like it makes perfect sense. But if you're living out in the middle of nowhere, 15K is a lot of money. If you really want taxes to be fair, you have to rearrange them in terms of the cost of living of wherever the taxee is located (which would be incredibly complicated, but if there is a way to implement it simply, would be vastly more fair).

I'll probably write more later... I'm not done looking at the NDP and haven't looked at the Conservatives at all, but I'd certainly be interested in any comments. :) Now, though, I have to get back to work.

Comments

The "Cities" thing

[neeuqdrazil.livejournal.com]

Basically, what has happened is that the large cities (mostly Toronto, but also Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton) are all screaming very loudly because when the feds downloaded stuff to the provinces, the provinces then downloaded stuff to the cities (particularly welfare, in Ontario) and didn't provide the money to pay for it. So the cities are screaming for more money. (But isn't everyone?)

There is also the public transit thing, which the feds have been promising and promising and promising to send money for, but haven't done.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It is true that Paul Martin and Chretein disliked each other for a number of reasons, and that Martin was pushed out of the inner circle fairly early on. It is just conceivable that he was unware of any wrong doing. It's more likely he suspected something was going on, but had no direct evidence.

When considering the Liberals, it is important to remember that, financial wrong-doing aside, they have reduced the debt and posted an annual surplus for a number of years - something no other party has done for a long time. That can be attributed almost entirely to Martin himself, as he was the finance minister for much of Chretein's term.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

the previous prime minister, former leader of the Liberal party here in Canada, embezzled billions of dollars for the benefit of his family members and such. It's a huge scandal.

While part of it certainly went to family and friends, the larger part of the sponsorship scandal (and there are signs that it was not just contained to that one programme) were monies that were then funneled back in to Liberal Party coffers. ie The Liberals gave certain firms money for nothing (from the taxpayers), and those firms then donated huge sums of money to the Liberal Party.

It should also be noted that at the time the scandal was going on, Paul Martin was the Finance Minister. It is highly unlikely that he didn't know what was going on, and if he actually didn't, well that says a lot about his abilities as a finance minister.



WRT cities: A lot of this s a carryover from the previous election. Martin claimed he would start a 'New Deal for Cities'. Essentially, Toronto (primarially, but also the other 9 large cities) puts out a lot more money into the federal coffers than they get out. Most big cities (because they don't have taxing powers, and because of federal and provincial downloading) are rapidly going broke.

However, after winning the election, that rapidly changed to a 'New Deal for Communities' both large and small (villages, etc...) which really completely defeats the point.

WRT budget slaying: The Liberals only balanced the deficit on the backs of the Provinces. Essentially, instead of fighting the deficit, they just decided to make it the responsibility of the provinces by downloading costs onto them, and by cutting payments for programmes that the provinces relied upon. Health care and post-secondary education suffered HUGE cuts because of this - and as a result, most provinces (even those, like Ontario which solve their deficits) are now back in the REd.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The cities thing is not something he thought up on his own - it was put to him directly by the mayors of the big cities, at a discussion to which Hamilton was not invited. (?????) Big cities seriously need to improve crumbling, ignored infrastructure, and on current city budgets that will be impossible.

And angel_thane hit upon my single biggest issue with the Liberals: they didn't clean house. They downloaded services and then cut transfer payments to the provinces dramatically, putting the various provincial governments in the position of drastically cutting back on big-ticket social spending, while staying beautifully above the whole mess they caused. Politically brilliant, because many people didn't realize where the real blame lay. However, it was morally bankrupt. Meanwhile, of course, the size of government in Ottawa has continued to grow.

As for Martin's role in the scandal - I think he probably knew something but wasn't directly involved, and since he wouldn't be personally implicated, he decided to sit tight and hope it wouldn't break until after they had lost an election. I don't buy the "didn't know a thing" argument, but i'm willing to give him that much benefit of the doubt.