Published in the Sun Media chain and QMI Agency

Politicians are everywhere right now: on your TV, at your shopping malls, at your doorsteps and in your wallets. Yet, the most expensive part of an election is not the $300 million spent on counting ballots, but the bidding war that politicians engage in to buy your vote.

Like singles at a nightclub, the party leaders each offer to buy voters a drink with the hope that they will pay attention. For those attractive enough to have several politicians interested in them (swing voters), the offers can become overwhelming, forcing one to choose between different, expensive campaign cocktails.

Unfortunately, politicians don’t always pay off their tab with cash. Since returning to deficit, federal politicians have borrowed $101.7 billion. With that borrowing figure set to reach $160 billion by the time it stops, voters can expect a nasty hangover.

Rather than fall for the politician promising to shower them with the most gifts, voters should demand that candidates show them a little respect. When the federal government alone is borrowing $81 million a day, it’s time for a cheaper date.

The Liberals have already laid out their plans, but they include hiking business taxes. While such a move is likely to damage Canada’s reputation as a hot spot to do business and hurt the fragile economic recovery, at least they are open about their intentions to do so. Despite their openness of intentions, most economists point out that an effective 3 per cent increase in business taxes does not translate into a 3 per cent increase in revenues, as firms become less productive.

While the Conservatives increased spending at a breakneck pace during their first four years (40 per cent), thus far, they have commendably shied away from major new spending promises during the campaign. Their promise to find $4 billion in savings and balance the budget a year ahead of schedule is a mild improvement over their now-dead budget. Nonetheless, promises that focus the discussion on tax cuts and the deficit – however timid and far down the road – is a welcome change from the ‘borrow and spend’ voters have seen to date.

As always, the NDP has promised a chicken in every pot and mustache on every smile. While some may consider it pointless for the NDP to have cost-out its platform since it will never form government, that notion needs to be put in the context of a potential coalition government to which it is open.

The Bloc Québécois’ platform is less a document summarizing spending in one ledger and revenue in another, so much as it is a hostage letter with a list of demands. In can best be summarized as, “give Quebec a briefcase of money and an unmarked plane with enough fuel to reach independence, or else Newfoundland gets it.”

So far, this campaign’s options have all proved to be costly with no party promising a return to pre-stimulus levels of spending and all opposition parties promising to raise taxes. Still, with all party platforms released, it is no longer a blind date.

With Canada staring down the hole of a $560 billion debt during this campaign, voters should look past the politicians promising to spend evermore on them. In this election, Canadians need a cheap date and tough love.

Derek Fildebrandt is the National Research Director and Acting Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

This budget did not deserve to get passed, but for entirely different reasons than those given by the opposition.

The Liberals demanded new social programs financed with borrowed money. The NDP demanded even more generous programs financed with even more borrowed money. And the Bloc demanded yet more money for Quebec, financed with everyone else’s money.

For the opposition parties, maintaining bloated stimulus-levels of spending was not enough, and so they declared their non-confidence in the government.

Yet for all the opposition’s bleating about the heartless Tories’ unwillingness to pony up the doe, they failed to point out the real reason this budget does not deserve their confidence: a failure to return spending to pre-stimulus levels and balance the budget.

Program spending under the Conservatives has increased by 40% during their first four years in power; beginning the day they took office and accelerating in 2009 at the behest of opposition parties. While claims that this so-called “stimulus” spending saved the Canadian economy from ruin are easily debunked, taxpayers were promised that such spending would be temporary.

Unfortunately, increased spending in other areas will eat up the room vacated by lapsed stimulus spending. While not growing as fast as earlier years, spending in this budget was projected to grow at a modest 2% over the next 5 years. While an annual 2% increase in spending is not unreasonable, it is from a hugely higher spending base then even two years ago.

To accept current program spending levels of $246 billion as the base from which to measure growth in government, is to accept a permanent increase in the size of government. Unless the Conservatives wish to be remembered in the history books as the party that increased spending at a rate matching some of the worst Trudeau years, a course correction in Budget 2011 was needed.

That budget failed to do so however, and therefore fails to deserve the confidence of Canadians who do not wish to live with a huge and permanent increase in the size of government, in addition to prolonged deficits until 2015-16.

And so taxpayers are left with a government that tabled a budget not deserving of their confidence, and an opposition that declared non-confidence in the budget for reasons that would make it even less deserving.

In the last election, every major party leader vowed that they would not run a deficit. When asked by a reporter in October 2008 if he could “just clearly and unequivocally rule out that [he] will run a deficit at any point during [his] term,” Prime Minister Harper answered, “Yes. Yes. Yes!”

The other party leaders gave similar answers to similar questions, yet all parties – government and opposition – failed to stand by this commitment. It is no surprise that no party wants to talk about where they would cut spending to balance the budget, but instead try to out-bid one another as which can spend more, more, more.

Canadians deserve a real choice at election time. They deserve detailed plans from each party explaining how exactly they intend to return the budget to balance.

It’s time for Canada’s leaders to put forward a real balanced budget plan that deserves the confidence of taxpayers.

Speaking to fellow Liberals in Regina yesterday, the former PM and finance minister attacked the Tories for their lackluster deficit-elimination plan and the reliability of their numbers – numbers that have been wildly off-target in the past and are not corroborated by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Now we all remember then Prime Minister Martin attacking then Leader of the Opposition Stephen Harper for having a “hidden, right-wing agenda” with a plan to gut public spending, but history can be a sonofabitch. While campaigning on a promise to keep spending under control (although not actually reduce it), the federal Tories have increased program spending by 40% during their first four years in power, beginning long before a dollar of so-called “stimulus” spending went out the door.

By contrast, the Liberals campaigned in 1993 on promises of evermore public spending with little attention paid towards the burgeoning deficit, yet in 1995 Paul Martin tabled a deficit-elimination budget that significantly cut net federal spending, including transfers to the provinces. If that same budget were tabled today by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Paul Martin’s own Liberals would denounce it as a heartless, right-wing attack on all that is green and good, forged in the very fires of Mordor. For that matter, if the Liberals were to table that same budget today, all indications are that they Tories would attack them in kind.

So what is different from 1995? A good many things, but among them was  an opposition party (Reform) attacking the government from a position of credibility on the issue, and public opinion. At this time *shameless sales pitch alert*, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) was touring the National Debt Clock across Canada attempting to do the impossible: make the national debt a priority public issue with voters. Along with other organizations, political parties and writers, public opinion was turned and the government was forced into action.

Today, the governing party brags about how much it is spending on dubious “stimulus” projects, while all three parties in opposition demand “more, more, more,” without any serrious plans of their own. Without any party in parliament credibly threatening the government on the issues of spending, debt and deficits, the role of groups outside of parliament are all the more important than they were in 1995.

For our part, the CTF has restored the National Debt Clock and is once again touring it from coast-to-coast. Governments must get the message: cut spending, balance the budget and stop the clock. They vaguely hear this message right now, but are unlikely to act unless public opinion demands that they do.

The National Debt Clock Tour costs $3.65/km. You can do your part by chipping in a few bucks to bring it a little closer to Ottawa and share a link to this page with your friends via email, Facebook and Twitter.

Should the political will exist, Ottawa can eliminate its deficit in two years without raising taxes, or even draconian cuts for that matter. Still reductions will be required, to the tune bringing spending levels to $18 billion below 2010-11 levels by 2012-13. That would return program spending to levels seen between 2008-09 and 2009-10. Not radical, but very different from the current course of perpetual deficits and increasing government that we are charted on.

The CTF’s Zero in Two: Deficit Action Plan details how this can be done while not raising taxes or rescinding scheduled future reductions:

• Eliminate corporate welfare, regional development agencies, bio-fuel subsidies, most arts and language subsidies and other select grants and contributions.

• Privatize Atomic Energy of Canada, Canada Post’s Purolator Courier and VIA Rail. Also, end taxpayer support for the CMHC. Also, end any financial support for Canada Post.
• Reduce most departmental budgets from 10-25% and freeze remaining budgets for two years.
• Reduce the Equalization Program by 10% annually over two years and assist recipient provinces in paying down respective debts in lieu of cash-transfers.
• Continue growth in Health and Social Transfers and National Defense spending at a reduced rate.
• Pass a Taxpayer Protection Act to ban future deficits and tax increases without an explicit mandate to do so given in an election or referendum.
• Pass a Debt Retirement Act with a schedule for making Canada a debt-free jurisdiction.
• Prevent a further EI payroll-tax hike by eliminating non-insurance based EI programs.
• Eliminate the Vote Tax – per vote subsidy.

cross-posted at taxpayer.com/blog

One of the world’s leading magazines, The Economist has launched a “Global Debt Clock.” This excellent initiative is similar to the US Federal Debt Clock in Time Square and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s DebtClock.ca.

Beyond the overall numbers updating every few seconds, The Economist’s Global Debt Clock includes a map of the world where by simply holding the curser over a country, you can find out a it’s: total public debt, public debt per capita, debt as a percentage of GDP (the economy) and the annual change in public debt. These important statistics are the basic measurements by which one can compare their government’s performance on debt with other countries.

Canada’s federal and provincial governments have long bragged about how Canada stacks up with other OECD countries on federal debt, but it is mostly hogwash. To compare Canada’s federal debt with the United States’ is to compare apples and oranges, while comparing it to France’s total state debt is comparing apples and steaks.

Measuring debt between countries is best done by comparing total public indebtedness per capita and total public indebtedness as a percentage of GDP. By the first measure, Canada – with $36,900 – is worse than the United States at $27,500 and only marginally ahead of bankrupt Greece with $34,100.  Using total public indebtedness as a percentage of GDP, Canada (82%) is much worse than the United States (58%) but trailing Greece (128%).

To put a point on it, the next time Canadian politicians tell you that everything is fine, especially compared to our trading partners, tell them to set their alarm clock to October 6, 2010 at 1:30 PM. They’ll wake up at $1.25-trillion (US) in the afternoon.

Cross-Posted at taxpayer.com/blog

To highlight the crushing size of the national debt, the TaxPayers’ Alliance is launching a 1,300 mile tour of Britain – featuring a 7 metre long, lorry-mounted digital Debt clock, ticking up as the Government borrows more and more money. The campaign has a simple but direct message for the nation’s politicians: “Wake up to the National Debt!”

Britain is a quasi-unitary state and it’s national debt is therefore easier to understand when contrasted with a federation like Canada, with multiple levels of roughly equally (over)sized government. None-the-less, Canada and Britain face staggeringly massive deficits that wander the same territory as they did during the Second World War.

Good luck to our chaps across the (cliché) pond with their physical version of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s DebtClock.ca.

This is clear evidence that the Conservative government’s  fear of death over the outrage that would accompany any restraint in spending is unfounded.  Of courses there will be the usual yelping from clients of the welfare state about why they should be excluded from any such pruning, but far more Canadians support spending cuts than even support the Conservatives.

Of those 65% (or 46% if you include undecideds) there will be those who support cutting spending, so long as you cut in areas that do not directly affect them.  For example, seniors may support cuts to corporate welfare, but not to health-care.  An Executive at Bombardier or GM may have the opposite view while still supporting overall spending cuts.

The fact is that every one of us has our hands in the taxpayer grab-bag and we think that we are making off at someone else’s expenses. Its time for the Tories to show some real leadership and come forward with some of that same tough-love that helped to get the Liberals re-elected in the 1990s.  Being coy about slapping a few hands in the grab-bag didn’t help Mulroney in any case.