So far this week Hugh McFadyen has promised:
- to run a deficit until 2018;
- hire 1,500 nurses and 250 doctors;
- not privatize Manitoba Hydro;
- pave the back-alleys in the city of Winnipeg;
- take Manitoba off of $2 Billion worth of Equalization;
- cut income taxes;
- not raise taxes;
- cut “red tape”;
- give $375 Million to municipalites;
- give professionals a break on the PST; and,
- review agricultural taxes, services and funding programs.
No doubt next week we will hear how Hugh will end crime, fully fund education at twice the rate of inflation from General Revenue, increase welfare rates, end all poverty, build a floodway around the entire province, and build BiPole III down the East-Side of Lake Winnipeg for less than the cost of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.
Given the amount of spending that Hugh has promised so far, and Hugh’s plan to run deficits until 2018, I am left to wonder how long the Canadian Taxpayers Federation will remain silent about Hugh’s extranvegance.
When will the Frontier Centre for Public Policy call Hugh’s hand on plans to hire yet more public servants?
At what point does his base start asking themselves, WTF?
When does Tom Brodbeck stop and ask himself who that last government was that raised taxes? (hint: Hugh McFadyen was Senior Policy Advisor and Chief of Staff)
It wasn’t more than a couple of months ago that Team McFadyen was ranting on about the government sending too much. About how the government was spending too much on Health Care. Too much on education. Too much on policing. The urgent need to haul in spending, retrench, hunker down and balance the budget immediately.
Yet here we are, the writ hasn’t even dropped and Hugh is promising amounts that would make Warren Buffet blush.
So how does one reconcile this?
Afterall, McFadyen has built his career on “fiscal responsibility”.
True Conservatives have “fiscal responsibility” tattoed onto the foreheads of their first-born.
OK, we all know that the largest debts and deficits are accumulated by alleged “Conservative” governments and that Hugh’s early announcments are intended to mitigate his time spent as Gary Filmon’s Senior Policy Advisor, and Gary Filmon’s Chief of Staff. But at some point, if Hugh thinks he’s going to win, he must surely know that he will be held to account and this would temper his promises.
One could assume that Hugh knows that he will not win, and I am in this camp; but Hugh also has an ace in the hole when it comes to upholding election promises. We just have to look at Hugh’s reaction to the recent Federal election.
During the last Federal campaign there was nary a mention of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and one of the first actions of the Harper government was to effectively kill the CWB. Matters not that more than 60% of Prairie farmers want to keep the CWB, the logic of the Harper government was that we got a Majority and that gives us the right to do as we please.
OK, that’s the Feds you say. Fair enough. Except for Hugh’s reaction.
Here, from Team McFadyen’s June 13, 2011 News Release we have their reaction to Selinger’s protests over the termination of the CWB:
In the mind of Hugh, when one is given a majority government, one may do as one pleases.
What was promised in the campaign, what was discussed during the campaign, what was top-of-mind in the campaign – Meh!? “I got my majority, I’ll do as I please. It was decided during the campaign.”
Kind of like where Hugh’s head is at right now.
All that talk about the government spending too much on Health Care, too much on education and too much on policing. Hugh’s rhetoric about the need for “fiscal repsonsibility”…….poof! Out the window because it is inconvenient.
Pay no attention to what I’ve said in the past, I’ll say what I need to say to get there. Afterwards, we can simply brush it off because, “it was decided on election day.”
As for Manitoba Hydro, well, Hugh will just sign a “Management Agreement”, form a public-private partnership and ***poof*** away goes our utility company. He won’t call it privatization, he’ll call it something else, but the effect will be the same.
Afterall, it was decided on election day.
Hugh claims that he won’t introduce the HST like his friends over at the Canadian alleged Taxpayers Federation want him to…well, that was decided on election day.
In short, Hugh equates a majority government with a blank-cheque giving him the right to read anyting into the results that he wishes.
I mean seriously, just how do you reconcile his history with the early promises of running deficits till 2018 and hiring thousands of more public servants?
Hugh knows that we’re not going to give him the chequebook.
