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

Hours ago, Liberal MPs Wayne Easter and Alexandra Mendes held a news conference where on behalf of the Liberals Party of Canada, they awarded several golden pig trophies to the Tories in critique of recent personnel/patronage appointments (choose one depending on your patisan disposition). Anyone who compares photos of the two events would find striking similarities, but for the absence of Pork the Waste Hater.

Most plagiarism in Ottawa is restricted to parties sharing one another’s platforms at budget time, but it seldom degenerates into such brash copy-cattery (new word ©). Ironically enough, those golden pig statues were largely paid for by taxpayers, as the Liberal Party – as do all parties – receive massive subsidies from the public purse in addition to significant office budgets for their leader and individual MPs.

If there has ever been a case of the pot calling the kettle black, it is Liberal MPs harping at the Tories for patronage appointments, including those to the Senate. To use yet another relevant cliche, Wayne Easter and Alexandra Mendes should refrain from throwing stones in a glass house and come clean on who exactly paid for those rip-off “Golden Sows.”

Cross-Posted at taxpayer.com/blog

The federal long-gun registry has finally begun to stare death in the face as it emerges from the Public Safety Committee. As every opposition member on the committee is staunchly supportive of the program, it is no surprise that it voted to recommend that the House not pass Candice Hoeppner’s Bill C-391. 

The House of Commons is a bigger fish bowl however, and swimming in it are 21 opposition members who voted for the Bill at Second Reading. Of these were 12 New Democrats, 8 Liberals and 1 independent. All Bloquists voted “nay”. Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff has now promised to whip his rebel MPs into shape despite the convention that all private members bills be free-votes and Bloc is expected to vote as it did before. This leaves NDP leader Jack Layton unwillingly holding the proverbial bullets to shoot down the long-gun registry.

Will Jack Layton whip his caucus as well? Can he succeed? Will any whipped Liberals or (potentially whipped) New Democrats simply abstain or catch the “Ottawa flu’?  Regardless of what happens, here is how the vote might go down:

According to these figures, the Bill has a living chance of passing in most scenarios with the obvious exception of all opposition parties voting together. Even if both the NDP and Liberals where whipped, some of their dissenting members would feel tremendous pressure from constituents to break party lines and vote for the Bill regardless, or at the very least not vote in opposition.

In the last noted scenario  – that of all dissenting Liberals falling in line with their leader’s whip and all dissenting New Democrats sitting on their hands – the bill would be defeated by a single vote. Since Second Reading however, pro-registry New Democrat Judy Wasylycia-Leis has resigned to run for the mayor’s chair in Winnipeg, bringing the vote to an exact tie.

Much drama awaits the fish bowl of Ottawa!

“I told you so” would be the likely response from a child towards what appears to be a 180-degree flip-flop on allowing the auditor-general (AG) to examine MP’s expenses. ‘Kicking and screaming’ would also be an apt description of how MPs were brought to their expected – but still pending – decision.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has campaigned hard to have these expenses opened up to the AG and is recognized as a leader in this fight. This has been done through tireless advocacy in the media, an online petition with nearly 10-thousand signatures with a supplementary Facebook group and by alerting the CTF’s 74,000 supporters to contact their MP directly.

Ottawa’s “bipartisan” (or “multi-partisan” to be technical)  consensus about keeping the AG out of their business was only politically convenient so long as all parties stood in union-like solidarity, refusing to cross the picket-line and abandon their comrades to ever-thinner numbers. Ottawa-washed MPs saw calls for openness by the AG, CTF and several media outlets as having no traction, that their constituents were “not interested.”

The thousands of angry callers to talk-radio stations and MP’s office, emails to Parliament Hill and letters to the editor have pushed a few rouge MPs to realize that their political skins are best served by transparency, and not in solidarity with secrecy.

As the trickle of these independent-minded MPs became a small stream and with the Bloc having already tossed its hat into the good-guys corner (who’d of seen that coming?) the federalist parties have now been forced to “reconsider” their decision. It is the height of political theatre that Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff is now inviting the AG to “meet with the Board of Internal Economy,” after she already did so and was soundly rejected by all three federalist parties just weeks ago. Mr. Layton has made similar statements about speaking with the AG again after his party  publicly slammed the door shut on Ms. Fraser’s investigation. Now the Tories have a “secret plan” to provide greater transparency in MP expenses. Read that last line back to yourself again. No. Your not crazy.

It is too soon to jump to conclusions as to if the proposals now being discussed behind closed doors are sufficient enough to hold MPs accountable for past spending, or if appropriate measures will be put in place to ensure that future spending is transparent and open (as in posted in detail, online), but it’s not too soon to speculate as to what the political ramifications are and/or will be:

1. A squandered political opportunity: Like previous audits in the UK, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, it is possible that there will be inappropriate expenses found from members in all parties. Because only the Bloc Quebecois can claim with a straight face to have supported an audit from an early stage, no other party will be able to wash itself from whatever might spray its way. Had for instance the NDP sided in favor of an audit when it had a chance to just the other week, it would rightfully be able to claim that despite any muck found, it was a willing partner in the push for openness. Because all federalist parties are only now (and still highly tentatively) coming around in favor of an audit, voters will see their revisited decision as being done so while kicking and screaming.
2. Open space for parties currently without seats: Any party not weighed down by refusing to allow an audit has the potential to tap into a deep vein of discontent, regardless of its ideological bend. Cue the Green Party. Whatever its far-out (or is that groovy?) policy suggestions, it – like the Bloc – can claim to be fresh and untouched. Western MPs should be particularly sensitive to perceptions of MPs representing Ottawa to the people, as opposed to MPs representing the people to Ottawa. Reference the UK Independence Party in 2009’s EU “parliamentary” elections.
3. Lower voter turnout: Yes, I’ll play that card as well. Everybody with a bone to pick with public policy makes the claim that [INSERT GRIEVANCE HERE] will further reduce turnout on e-day, but widespread perception (or reality) that there exists little or no difference between parties will do just that. Reference Ontario conservative voters in the 2003 and 2007 provincial elections.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The details of the “secret plan” to make MP expenses more transparent are not yet known and so we should not be too eager to declare victory, but we can take three lessons from the whole ordeal:

1. With only the rarest of exceptions, any politician or party will become disconnected from the people that they represent when they are in Ottawa for too long;
2. When all or most parties agree on something, be very suspicious; and that
3. Organized citizens can make a difference and wake politicians from their stupor if they rise up loudly and smartly enough. And yes, that was a shameless sales pitch for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

In the end, it is inevitable that MPs expenses be made public. The only question is how much fight it would take to make them so. Despite the adolescence of it, taxpayers are justified in saying, “I told you so.”

News in today that Iggy Pop will be whipping his caucus with more discipline than the hair of a washed up 80’s perm-job. It’s an attempt to appease pro long-gun registry militants in his caucus who criticised his leadership for allowing party dissidents to vote their conscience on Candice Hoeppner’s private members ill, C-391.

Iggy isn’t the only leader guilty of breaking the convention that all private members business be free-votes, but he is the latest. Time will tell if Mr. Layton attempts the same with his caucus – which was proportionally even more divided – in order to appease it’s respective militant wing.

“It’s dead!” you cry, but do not dispare. Ottawa is known for flash-flues that prevent certain groups of MPs from showing up to vote. Heck, even a few MPs vote like independent minded representatives. Once in a while. Sort of.

“It’s passed!” you now shout in reply, but do not take my sunny perspective as gospel. Any vote is bound to still be close on either side, and that is assuming that the government allows the bill to actually come to a final vote for 3rd reading.

“Its…a work in progress?”. Agreed.

Devo – Whip It
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A Liberal motion to end the practice of taxpayer-funded MP junk-mail – oft known as 10%ers – passed with the support of the Bloc Québécois and NDP, with every single Conservative in the House voting against it.  This no-brainer move to end a wasteful entitlement for MPs was supported by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) and anyone who not only hates getting junk-mail, but having to pay for it with their own taxes to boot.  MP junk-mail even won the CTF’s federal Teddy Waste Award this year.

Some Conservatives have excused themselves from this predicament, pointing to the opposition parties’ motives. Find me a party without one. Ending MP junk-mail is good policy – regardless of partisan motives – as was the doomed Conservative attempt to end the per-vote subsidy, regardless of what partisan motives they had at the time.

The Conservatives passed up an excellent opportunity to slice a stip of bacon off the taxpayer slaughterhouse better known as Parliament.

You can find out how your MP voted HERE.

Today, Philip Resnick and Reg Whitaker in The Tyee wrote an open letter calling on the Liberal, New Democratic and Green leaders to make such a deal.  While infinitely shorter than the Harper and Flanagan essay, the letter’s tone and suggestions are remarkably similar, especially in its call for electoral cooperation and a coalition government.

Some may cry foul over any coalition government overthrowing a party with a plurality of seats, such as last winter’s ill-fated attempt.  While that coalition arrangement was illegitimate in the eyes of most voters, a coalition that is announced before voters cast their ballots – knowing that such an arrangement will follow should no party win a majority of seats – would be legitimate. The quality of such a government is an entirely separate debate.

One cannot help but see “Our Benign Dictatorship” leap off the page of this open letter in both the diagnose of the “problem” (in their respective times) as well as the prescription for what should be done.