During election campaigns, the news media love to post the party leaders’ promises of the day. There are also books of promises made that can become fodder for arguments about whether they are affordable or not. And sometimes, there are arguments about whether Canadians really want what is promised. The only problem with all of this during an election campaign is that these promises are not necessarily intended to be kept.
If anything, campaign promises should be perceived as directions that party might be interested in going towards, sometime. They might even be something that is perceived as being important to the voter that will make a good sound bite for the six pm news and will never surface again. It is all in the perception.
Look how long it took the Liberals to bring in Medicare across the country. That had been a promise from the party since the early years of Prime Minister Mackenzie King. The party was still fighting internally about it as late as 1966.
The most unlikely set of promises to be offered is in the Conservative’s blue book of promises for the May 2 election. While there is some rehashing of the recent failed budget in the book, it is the little goodies in it that might happen if the budget gets balanced in the next four years that cause the most chuckles. When planning $6 billion in big business tax cuts, billions on new prisons and quickly escalating billions for some unneeded stealth fighter aircraft, the dribs and drabs for families will probably be promises we can read about again in the Tory book for the next election.
One of the advantages of the Internet is that these things can now be published electronically and people can actually read them. Few do.
To say the Tories favour the rich is to put it mildly. One promise is that in four years you will be able to put away up to $10,000 a year in a tax-free savings account. There would not likely be a large number of Canadians with that much money they want to have in low interest liquidity.
One of the more dishonest promises of the Tories is their recycled promise to kill the funding for federal political parties. This is the money based on votes won in the previous election. It is a vicious attempt by the Tories to use the wealth of their Tory supporters to bludgeon their opponents. They want to keep the tax credits that we all pay for. And all taxpayers would have to pay the higher costs for the tax credits. It just gives more tax credits to the already wealthy. It is a Conservative shell game we all lose.
It is believed by many Liberals that Jean Chrétien initiated those party payments to try to take away the advantage that wealthy Paul Martin had to be his successor.
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