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I was waiting for this. Granted, it came much sooner then I planned, but it came. Iggy has once again given his ultimatum to the Conservatives, saying that they will vote against their budget if it contains another corporate tax cut. You’d think that Iggy would have learned from the fall of 2009, when he did the same thing (remember, “Harper, your time is up”). Clearly, his time wasn’t up, as Iggy fell in the polls and had to admit it was the wrong move and that Canadians didn’t want an election. Canadians still don’t, if the recent Nanos’s poll is any indication.
So why has Iggy gone and stuffed his foot in his mouth again? My only guess is that Iggy, wrongly, has figured he can take on the NDP and usurp their supporters. Not likly. In the last by-election The NDP lost out by a relatively small margin (1100 votes, roughly 5%). Also, the by-election (at 30%) had far less people vote then in a federal election (generally around 47- 50%, where the entire province had a turn out roughly the federal average at 56%). Jumping on Harper because of marginal confidence based on a by-election seems to me unrealistic.
So what then? Does he think that Canadians have changed much in a year. They are still more worried about their jobs, their pensions and their savings then they are worried about who will represent them in parliament. So the NDP, jumping all over this new ultimatum, have done what they did last time; they have put themselves back into the game by providing Harper with budgetary cover in exchange for some progressive initiatives i.e. seniors pension support, the Eco-Retrofit program among others.
We will wait for the polls to show us how this has fared with our fickle public, but my prediction in that we will see Iggy’s vote share go down, again, because he has underestimated that Harper has won out the PR battle against him. The NDP don’t have much ground to gain against Harper, as they likely don’t want an election either. We will see how things go, but I don’t see this working out well for Iggy, regardless of how he goes about saying he is more progressive then the NDP.
You are probably right in that it is a mistake by the Liberals. My concern remains the same though, long term it serves the NDP little to get a couple of concessions while Harper rolls on.
Actually, this is different from fall of 2009. There were two polls done; one by Ipsos and another by Angus. The Angus showed that about half were not that bothered by an election. Anyhow, this time, most were kind of expecting this election to come in 2011 before Iggy said that he would probably not vote for this budget anyway.
Here in Quebec, polls were done and it showed that Quebecers want both Federal and provincial elections to come sooner rather than later.
I don’t see as violent a reaction to Iggy’s end of year statements as there was in FAll of 2009.
I’m curious though. We chastise him when he votes with conservatives and when he says he probably won’t, we still chastise him. Damned if he does; Damned if he doesn’t?
I mean, if Iggy hadn’t have made that statement and he voted with the budget come the spring, wouldn’t we have chastised him just the same?
What I also read in that Bill Curry article is that Mulcair doesn’t seem all that bothered by corporate tax cuts, trying to get job creation out of it? Not likely something Harper would honor. For starters, Harper supports deregulation where corporations are concerned. I don’t see Harper going to his corporate friends and saying, “Ok, you’ll get your tax cuts if you create x amount of jobs…” And how would they react if he even tried?
The NDP didn’t get much the last time they supported the Harpercon budget motion. At least, not nearly as much as in the old days when they were negotiating Paul Martin budgets. They never will.
I stand by what I have always believed. Tax cuts are nice and in some instances, not always, help families tangibly. They are not the economic boosts that some claim though.
If corporations are honest they would be for tools that provide the most to their potential customers, jobs. Job creation is more effective but does not necessarily happen just because the corporations (and the rich) got tax cuts.
Polls will be polls. I know though that Iggy has lagged and lagged and not been able to pick up steam on much of anything. He needs something big to pull the attention of disaffected Liberals/voters. So far, he has been unable to do this and I think this is largly the fault of Iggy not wanting to come off like he wants an election. Yes, he is an opposition leader and life in the opposition is not easy. But, he needs to present an alternative. I have constantly slammed him for not opposing Harper and is there any wonder why he doesn’t? By and large he wants the same things Harper does. Economically they are not that far apart. Iggy has only now jumped on the corporate tax bandwagon because he thinks that the publicity it has gotten from the US might turn Canadian votes to his favor. Before this, he railed against the NDP for wanting to kill jobs and productivity. I do not believe that Iggy has seen the light about corporate tax cuts. He’s pulling a Mackenzie King: stealing CCF/NDP policies in an attempt to appeal to the social Liberals across te country. The problem is, social Liberals don’t exist anymore outside of the VTM corridor (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal).