What’s left? Michael Ignatieff’s Secret Plan to Raise Your Taxes Forever is what. Just kidding, although I suspect I’ve just foreshadowed the Conservative campaign to come. Ignatieff’s speech included a lengthy defence of the very idea of taxation, rebutting a remark Harper made to the effect that no taxes are good taxes. “It’s an astonishing statement for a prime minister to make,” Ignatieff said. “We pay taxes, Mr. Harper, so that premature infants get nursing care when they’re born. So that policemen will be there to keep our streets safe.” So if taxes are legitimate, are more taxes better? No sir or madam: a Liberal government will “keep our tax rates competitive.”
No, what’s missing, after “spending control” that won’t feel like cuts, and taxes that are good but won’t rise, is magic beans. I mean growth. Special growth. “Growth beyond recovery.” A plan to “hit the ground running—fast—once we climb out.” Special growth comes from “standing up for Canadian entrepreneurs,” “investing in the Canadian people” and “going where the growth is.” India and China? “India and China.”
There followed a bunch of shaky statistics. The Conservatives “have actually cut funding to our research councils.” No: the research councils’ budgets are larger today than when the Conservatives were elected. “Under Stephen Harper, where do you think we rank, out of 30 leading economies, in terms of labour productivity growth?” I don’t know, 26th? “Twenty-sixth. Twenty-sixth out of 30.” Sure, but the dozen or so Canadians who know what labour productivity growth is will know Ignatieff got his factoid from the Council of Canadian Academies—which points out that productivity has lagged for decades, regardless of the party in power.
Ignatieff promised “strong policies on climate change” without waiting for the Americans. “We will create a national carbon cap-and-trade system with absolute targets. In that manner, we will enter the United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen with our head held high.” This establishes a timeline. If the election campaign began next week, voting day would be at the beginning of November, which would give the new Ignatieff government six weeks to design its cap-and-trade system before Copenhagen. That’s ambitious. Probably opening the Conservatives’ fudge-encrusted books and concocting an economic plan would have to come after that.
With that, the Liberal leader let the lunch crowd get down to dinner. His Bartlett campaign—engaged, qualified and heavyweight—lay ahead.
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