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Paralyzed by fear of electoral defeat, and
out-maneuvered by the Conservatives, the Liberal Party displayed
cowardice, and ‘principles’ made of play dough.
To avoid defeating Stephen Harper’s
minority federal government, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion
acceded to a fake compromise that will extend the Afghanistan
occupation, just as the Tories and pro-war Liberals wanted.
Likewise, Dion decided to give the Harper budget a free pass by
abstention in the parliamentary vote.
To get around anti-war majority public opinion and a
seemingly witless Dion, a fox-like Harper appointed former Liberal deputy
Prime Minister John Manley and others to produce a Report on Afghanistan.
To no one’s surprise, it recommended extending the Canadian military intervention
beyond the previous deadline of February 2009, through the Fall of 2011 –
provided that other NATO countries send 1,000 more troops to the front
lines in Kandahar, plus a few more large troop-carrier helicopters (to
avoid the roadside bombs responsible for most of the 79 Canadian soldier
fatalities so far).
While the reinforcements are not yet forthcoming, rest
assured that NATO will find a way to fudge the numbers,
or Washington will fill the gap by
re-deploying forces from Iraq in order to keep its faltering
alliance intact. And looking farther down the road, there’s plenty
of time to extend the occupation yet again, on the basis of ‘special
circumstances’ – to be determined.
The fiscal side to this imperialist adventure is feeding
the Canadian military more billions of dollars. Harper pledges to
add to his already huge military spending increases by raising the
automatic annual hike from 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent, starting in
2011. Apparently, the Tories envision more wars after Afghanistan.
In terms of so-called ‘aid’ to Afghanistan,
a $100 million boost will bring to $280 million the total package for
2008-2009; $1.3 billion projected over 10 years. But Ottawa
admits that most of it will go to security and military/police
training. Few new hospitals, schools, electricity generation or
water purification plants will result from it.
The federal government’s domestic spending plan,
tabled in Parliament on February 26, is a fitting complement to this
approach. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty budgeted
$208 billion in expenditures, a 3.4 per cent increase on an annual basis,
but there’s no new funding for affordable housing, child-care spaces or
anti-poverty programmes. A mere pittance is provided for aboriginal
communities, transit initiatives and clean energy research.
Most of the federal budget consists of corporate tax
giveaways. The price tag on Conservative tax cuts is about $27
billion for the fiscal year starting April 1. Revenues from
personal income taxes will grow by 12%, while income from corporate
profits will decline by 14% due to the massive corporate tax cuts.
“For every one dollar the 2008 Harper budget allocates
in new spending, it spends six dollars in corporate tax giveaways,” said
Jack Layton, leader of the labour-based New Democratic Party. “Yet this
budget fails to train a single doctor, make a single prescription drug
more affordable or build a single unit of affordable housing.”
“At a time when our health care system is in crisis,
this government has now officially abandoned its promise to reduce wait
times by allocating no money to the initiative whatsoever,” said Layton.
So, where did the money go?
Some of it is allocated to a new tax-free savings
account, which mostly will benefit affluent Canadians (those who can
afford to set aside up to $5000 a year), while ultimately depriving Ottawa
of billions of dollars in tax revenue.
More funds go to subsidize resource corporations, a
variety of businesses and of course the military.
But with a revenue surplus of almost $13 billion for
this fiscal year, Flaherty has devoted a whopping $10.2 billion toward
debt deduction. The Toronto Star dubbed it “A $10.2 billion lost
opportunity”.
But it’s much more insidious than that. It is
both a bank bonanza and the continuation of a longstanding neo-liberal
fiscal strategy. The immediate windfall goes to the giant banks
which charged usurious interest rates on Ottawa’s
borrowing to facilitate deficit financing from the mid-1970s to the
mid-1990s.
After World War 2, corporations and the rich
used to pay about half the tax bill in Canada.
But as labour militancy subsided, capitalist governments slashed taxes on
wealth and profits. They couldn’t get away with dismantling the
welfare state all at once, so the rulers developed the notion of a
‘terrible debt burden on future generations’, which their policies
created, and used it as a guilt trip to justify cutting benefits and social
programmes.
Liberal and Conservative governments alike employed
this shift in taxation and spending policies to ‘discipline’ the work
force, and to deliver lucrative privatization opportunities to big
business along the way. Sadly, NDP leaders also bought into the
sanctity of the debt to the big banks and the taboo against deficit
spending.
Thus, the Harper/Tory budget, contrary to Stephane Dion
and the liberal business media, is far from a “do nothing”
document. It is a continuation of the ruling class assault on
progressive taxation, social benefits, equity and the common interests of
working people.
It’s as good a reason as any to defeat the government
and go to the polls. But thanks to the cowardly Liberals, the
Harper regime may last until the Fall of 2009.
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