To the Editor:
At a time when Canadians need some competent economic leadership, federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver is mostly absent from the House of Commons these days. And when he does show up, he seems both puzzled and muzzled - allowing junior Ministers to answer finance questions with meaningless “talking points” written in the Prime Minister’s Office.
That’s a serious problem for Canada. A sign of weakness. The Finance department has been rendered totally subservient to the partisan requirements of the PMO. There’s no sense of confidence in the Minister. His job is just to be the mouthpiece for whatever Mr. Harper wants said. It’s quite a pathetic spectacle.
On one occasion when he was allowed to speak for himself last week, Mr. Oliver went on a strange tirade against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The CIBC had just contradicted the Harper government on Canada’s job market, pointing out serious problems of poor growth and declining quality. Mr. Oliver depicted the CIBC as some rogue outlier, practising “sham” economics.
The trouble for Mr. Oliver is that many other experts agree with the CIBC - including the TD Bank, the Bank of Canada, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Morgan Stanley, York University, the Parliamentary Budget Officer and others. They can’t all be a sham! Mr. Oliver embarrassed himself.
At the same time, his excuse for punting the federal budget into April or May or later - forcing Canadians to go through more than an entire fiscal year without a budget plan - began to blow up in his face. He said the delay was all because of the uncertainty about oil prices.
But the provincial governments of both Saskatchewan and Alberta are more fiscally dependent on oil revenues than is the federal government. Yet Saskatchewan will be able to table its 2015 budget this Wednesday (March 18th) and Alberta will do so on March 26th. If they can get their acts together, why can’t Canada?
This point was also underscored last week by all the major private sector economists who advise the federal Minister. They say the global market price for oil is now as stable and predictable as it’s going to get, so there is no credible reason for any further stalling.
The real problem is that economic realities just don’t fit well with the political argument Mr. Harper wants to present in this election year.
He wants to say that everything is rosy, that he’s done a great job, and now is the time for big tax cuts for the wealthiest of Canadians. But none of that is true.
His own projections were forecasting a declining economic growth rate for Canada, even before the drop in oil markets. As the CIBC and others pointed out, the job market is not generating either the quantity or the quality of new employment that Canadians need.
A big majority of middle-class Canadians, and all those working hard just to get to the middle-class, are feeling more and more insecure. They’re worried about the daily cost-of-living, their household debts, the high costs of higher learning for their kids, the inadequacy of their own retirement savings.
And Mr. Harper is trying to tell them that they’ll just have to accept all that - because now is the time for a big tax cut that will benefit only 14% of Canadian households (86% can never qualify). It will cost more than $12-billion over the coming budgetary planning cycle, with the biggest gains going to those with income over $233,000.
But no tax fairness for the middle-class. Nothing to drive greater economic growth or more and better jobs. Nothing to bolster community infrastructure, or greater access to post-secondary education, or science and innovation. Nothing to correct Mr. Harper’s chronic trade deficit. Nothing to ensure we have the environmental credibility necessary to secure access to global markets for our valuable resources.
Considering all of that - maybe it’s understandable why the Finance Minister has nothing much to say.
Ralph Goodale
Member of Parliament Wascana
