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GST

Wednesday March 29, 2006

March 29, 2006 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð Wednesday March 29, 2006 PM given ultimatum Opposition party leaders warned recently that they are willing to bring down Stephen Harper's minority government if it does not change its course -- particularly on the Tory promise to provide a child-care subsidy to parents -- in the next two weeks. In separate meetings with the Prime Minister, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham and the Bloc Quebecois' Gilles Duceppe reminded the Conservative leader his party is outnumbered in the House of Commons and urged him to compromise on the government agenda as he drafts his Throne Speech. The speech, which will be delivered by Governor-General Michaelle Jean on April 4, sets out the agenda for the coming parliamentary session and will be passed or defeated in a confidence vote that could spark another election. Mr. Graham insisted the Liberals are willing to face the consequences of a confidence vote even though they won't have a new leader until December and are still struggling with the fallout of the party's defeat in January. He laid out his party's well-known concerns about the Tory agenda, including the fate of a $5-billion deal -- signed by the Liberals last year -- to improve living conditions for aboriginals, opposition to a cut to the Goods and Services Tax and Mr. Harper's promise to pull out of child-care agreements that were also signed by the previous Liberal government (Source: National Post) http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=dd0f2d4c-60ec-404c-8451-05c353046371 Canada, Parliament, Bill Graham, interim, Ralph Goodale, GST, Child Care, Liberal, Light, Brigade, charge

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 29, 2006

PM given ultimatum

Opposition party leaders warned recently that they are willing to bring down Stephen Harper’s minority government if it does not change its course — particularly on the Tory promise to provide a child-care subsidy to parents — in the next two weeks.

In separate meetings with the Prime Minister, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham and the Bloc Quebecois’ Gilles Duceppe reminded the Conservative leader his party is outnumbered in the House of Commons and urged him to compromise on the government agenda as he drafts his Throne Speech.

The speech, which will be delivered by Governor-General Michaelle Jean on April 4, sets out the agenda for the coming parliamentary session and will be passed or defeated in a confidence vote that could spark another election.

Mr. Graham insisted the Liberals are willing to face the consequences of a confidence vote even though they won’t have a new leader until December and are still struggling with the fallout of the party’s defeat in January.

He laid out his party’s well-known concerns about the Tory agenda, including the fate of a $5-billion deal — signed by the Liberals last year — to improve living conditions for aboriginals, opposition to a cut to the Goods and Services Tax and Mr. Harper’s promise to pull out of child-care agreements that were also signed by the previous Liberal government (Source: National Post)

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: Bill Graham, Brigade, Canada, charge, Child care, GST, interim, Liberal, Light, Parliament, Ralph Goodale

Wednesday May 7, 1997

May 7, 1997 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 7, 1997

NDP’s ideas may be old, but they’re not stale

The last time I recall my morning paper giving heartfelt advice to Alexa McDonough, the NDP leader, was on the occasion of the federal by-election in Hamilton East. The vacancy in Hamilton East was what is nowadays called a “virtual” vacancy in that it was created by the virtual resignation of the sitting member, Sheila Copps, who is the ritual deputy prime minister, mock minister of t he environment, and the government’s let’s-pretend-friend of the CBC. She was resigning her seat in order to seek official atonement for being unable to persuade, as promised earlier, to eliminate the GST by increasing mothers’ allowances and ridding the Great Lakes of conger eels.

Attired in the most fashionable of sackcloth haut couture, the first female deputy prime minister in Canadian history fell weeping upon the shoulders of the good voters of Hamilton East, beseeching their forgiveness for nothing, after all, more than an excess of zeal. And it was midst this thick mist of Liberal lachrymation that my morning paper proposed that the NDP leader test her voter appeal; kamikaze pilots have had better advice from their chaplains. McDonough chose not to run, but filed instead for the seat in her hometown and native province on the occasion of the next grand assize.

All this came to mind when, after the NDP met in Regina to produce its election manifesto, my morning paper filed an editorial complaint under the heading of “New Democrats, old ideas.” This suggested to me that relations between the NDP leader and the editorial board had further deteriorated since her abandonment of Hamilton East. Once into the text, this indeed proved true.

To begin with, the NDP leader has expressed the opinion her party was unlikely to form the next government. It would, however, like to win enough seats in the coming election to be a presence in the next Parliament – anything from a dozen to 40 would be nice, any more than that unlikely but welcome. Unaccustomed to the lack of puffery, critics of McDonough have come unnerved, my morning paper amon g them: “The problem is as long as the New Democrats aspire to Opposition, the longer they will remain there. . . Opposition demands a different calculation and generates a different expectation than government. It allows a less ambitious, less rigorous view of the world, unchallenged by the discipline of power.”

None of this is so, even in the most rudimentary sense. It is like saying the Liberals, in 1993, promised to eliminate the GST, revise the free trade pact with the Great Neighbor, stabilize the funding for the CBC, and do an incredibly better job of creating jobs for Canadians of all ages, and all this implausible promising which all turned out to be impossible of delivery was made because the Liberals had “a less rigorous view of the world” and secretly hoped to remain in Opposition. The NDP might not be able to do half what they say they would do, if elected to govern, but they would likely try harder than the Liberals to keep their word.

Indeed, the rap on the NDP platform is that it promises to make good on some broken Liberal promises. Old stuff, according to my morning paper, and its boardroom constituents. What’s new – as compared to what’s old – in the world of ideas is “reduced unemployment benefits, however imperfect” and reduced “abuses.” This latter is a reference to reform of benefits for the poor, which has been a new idea for the privileged since the Poor Law Amendments of 1834.

Back then – 163 years ago – public assistance to the poor was made conditional on their being put to work. Strong argument was made, by the intellectual forbears of today’s neo-conservatives, against the provision of meals for hungry school children. In the words of one of the neo-cons of that day, “To feed a child is to give relief to its parents – to undermine their independence and self-reliance.”

The difference between the Bleak House of Charles Dickens and the Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris is that the latter has the endorsement of my morning paper, and three of the four principal political parties running candidates in the federal election to come. The Liberals, from fiscal 1996 to 1999, will cut almost $28 billion from the Canada Assistance Plan. As a result, the poor will be poorer still and their children at greater risk.

The NDP begins its campaign by admitting it is not likely to win it. This must be compared to the predictions of Preston Manning who has promised to win a majority of the seats, including a good handful in Quebec. Manning is my morning paper’s kind of politician, the familiar windbag. But he is as likely to become the next prime minister of Canada as, well, the Reverend Al Sharpton.

It seems to me the NDP’s value to the debate is that the party represents ideas about politics and government that have been absent since the electoral aberrations of 1993 and have been sorely missed. Some of the ideas are old, but as the Conservatives once believed, such was a good part of their virtue. Even so, for those who like their ideas old – as in cheese – some of those being retailed by other parties in today’s contest predate the Industrial Revolution and the invention of income tax. (F3, 4/20/1997, Toronto Star by Dalton Camp, political commentator and broadcaster.)

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: campaign, Canada, election, federal, GST, Hamilton East, mouth, promise, Sheila Copps, zipper

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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