It is time for the conservatives in parliament to return to what they do best: criticize. They are so good at it that they have more people lined up to criticize the liberal cabinet members than there are liberal cabinet members to criticize.
It would be easy to just give you a list but it is important to note that only five of the positions seem important. Obviously, the leader of the opposition gets to criticize the prime minister most of the time. And then you get that nasty Pierre Poilievre taking on the finance minister and deputy prime minister.
The surprise pick was our old nemesis, former conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, who will criticize the liberal infrastructure plan that the liberals promised Canadians.
Because of the importance of health in this time of a pandemic, Alberta MP Michelle Rempel Garner will cover that portfolio.
Another choice that caught us off guard, was Ontario MP Michael Chong as foreign affairs critic. Chong has often been a critic of his own party for its failure to develop policies more in tune with how Canadians are thinking. It will be interesting to see how Chong handles the job.
If there was one standard complaint about Canadian conservatives over the years, is that you always know where they stand. They tend to be knee-jerk reactionaries, with little thinking of benefit to the average Canadian in mind.
What will be uppermost on the conservative mind will be the supposed deficit that Canadians will be faced with for years to come because of the supposedly wanton spending of the liberals. This is basic conservative cant and at to-day’s interest rates, inflation will save us more than we are likely to have to repay.
If the conservatives were really sincere about paying off some of this debt, maybe they would agree to replacing the two-per cent cut that Stephen Harper took from the HST. That would be a good place to find some money in a recovering economy.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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