Democracy 911

Elizabeth May

The current financial crisis requires an immediate stimulus package for the economy. We need measures in place to protect savings and to protect jobs.

President-elect Barack Obama has a clear eyed realism about what lies ahead. Not waiting for his inauguration, he has announced the direction of a major package, estimated to be on the order of $700 billion. His top items, investing in renewable energy and public infrastructure. These measures will fight against climate change, employ workers and stimulate the economy. It looks like there is a New Deal emerging in the new White House.

So if the US has now elected a modern FDR, how is it we have an old style Herbert Hoover?

The Harper government has utterly failed to respond to the economic crisis. During the election, Harper-Hoover assured us there would be no recession saying, if Canada was going to be in a recession, we would be in it already. (As we suspected, we were, but they were hiding it.) When pressed about deficits in the debate, I was the only leader to suggest deficit financing might be necessary in a recession. Harper-Hoover kept saying he would absolutely not run a deficit. In the campaign he called them "dangerous." Now he admits they are "essential."

Meanwhile the independent parliamentary budget office has confirmed what we said in the campaign: Harper's bad economic policies had already put us in a deficit position, even before the economic meltdown in financial markets. Cuts to GST did not stimulate the economy -- no economist thought they would - but they did rob the government of resources for government programmes. In anticipation of less revenue, Harper-Hoover did not trim spending. He increased it.

So Canadians know as a matter of fact that the government was in a deficit situation after Harper wiped out the surpluses of the last fifteen years. And we now have Harper-Hoover's admission that we are in a recession. After the election, he pledged at the APEC meetings in Peru to put together a major stimulus package.

Instead, the measures proposed by Mr. Flaherty are not a stimulus package. Harper-Hoover is relying on the ineffectual tax cuts of the last two and a half years and now re-labels them a "stimulus package."

We need real cuts to income tax and payroll tax. But that's not in his plan. We need a major package to transition the auto industry to green vehicles, but that's not in his package. We need real measures to spur the economy, such as massive investments in renewable energy, modern rail service, more freight, and municipal infrastructure. No sign of that either.

Instead what we get is the most cynical ploy in the annals of modern politics - and that's saying something.

It has been observed by many political pundits that Stephen Harper runs a non-stop electioneering machine. The priority is always gaining power. The fact that the country is in a recession and needs a responsible government to put national interest ahead of partisan interest is not on his radar. For years, Stephen Harper and his friend Tom Flanagan have had the goal of bankrupting the Liberal Party. That's why they wasted $300 million on a snap election no one wanted last month. The goal of complete annihilation of the Liberals is all consuming. If ignoring the economy and trashing a fair electoral voting system are collateral damage, so be it.

That explains why Mr. Flaherty is pretending that eliminating public financing for political parties somehow belongs in an economic stimulus package. Symbolic belt-tightening is fine for operations on the Hill. While such cuts to perks do not help the economy, at least they do no harm. Cutting the system of public financing to political parties is in another category altogether. It is an assault on fair elections, untarnished by big money.

Why does public financing of political parties matter? Recall why these reforms were brought in. The fairness in receiving $1.95 per vote allows parties to be free of obligations from taking donations for special interests. In fact, in order to get the NDP to agree to not accepting donations from trade unions, and to get the Liberals not to take money from corporations, a public financing scheme was created that levelled out support and allocated it based on the numbers of votes received. For the Green Party, this funding system has somewhat compensated for the unfairness of the first past the post system, where nearly one million Canadians voted for us (18% of the number who voted Conservative) an we still did not win a seat. The federal financing system allowed us to build -- but only to the extent that Canadian voters support us.

The whole programme costs about $30 million a year. Cutting it will have a negligible impact on the federal budget. In fact, I challenge Mr. Flaherty to demonstrate any impact at all. The subsidies to the Tar Sands are still $1.3 billion. Let's cut that. Unlikely coming from Harper-Hoover.

So the assault here is on fairness in elections disguised as a response to the economic crisis.

All Canadians and all Opposition parties need to pull together. Mr. Harper is hoping Canadians will fall for this slick ploy. After all, who wants to defend political parties, much less send them money? The point is not to defend political parties. The point is to defend a fair funding system in the public interest. It is to defend democracy.

We need real measures to confront the economic crisis. We need real measures to confront the climate crisis. Fortunately, as Obama is showing, these can be the same measures. But an attack on democracy is not acceptable.

I call on Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe to work with Greens to do whatever it takes to get this country back on track. We cannot allow a cynical, power-obsessed government to further damage our economy while trashing democracy.