Tory 2012 – Haves & Have-Nots

Canadians are divided by haves and have-nots. The conventional wisdom applies this logic to provincial boundaries, but there's nothing special about invisible lines on a map. Canadians are divided as individuals based on the amount of Crown privileges one receives. Most Canadians are have-nots; a few political, corporate and financial elites are haves. This budget was designed to maintain the status quo of the haves. Simply, more oil for the power-elite.



Like in all Canadian federal budgets, Stephen Harper and the Conservative Government are centrally planning prosperity via resource-extraction. This “staples theory” of Canadian economic development employs the Crown to place all of Canada's eggs in one basket, as it were. Canada should get rich on Albertan oil; allow the wealth to trickle down. Thus equalization as a response to so called inequality of “free market forces.”

Nonsense, says Harper. The rest of Canada, and he's talking to you Ontario, has to find a way to create new wealth when this energy wealth trickles down. It's called economic growth, do it or suffer. But in this budget, there was no effort to create a climate where struggling regions of Canada could create private sector work. Frankly, this budget sucks.

There was no move to cease funding to the Bank of Canada, The CRTC or MP's pensions, identifying an approach to phase them out. No radical reduction or elimination of the income tax, the goods and services tax, capital gains tax, corporate tax, inheritance tax or any of the other taxes. There was no effort to repel all economic regulations and lay the framework for a truly free market economy in Canada.

The budgets language about growth through private capital is skewed. How is dangling federal subsidies in front of R&D departments a factor for economic growth? It is an obscured form of socialism, whereas the Crown encourages certain industry through its approved channels. The tax-and-spend mentality is alive and well in the Tory budget, there is no attempt to allow individual savings and investment to fuel job creation.

The scope of the 2012 Tory budget is that resource-extraction for the benefit of a few is still alive in Canada. Unlike the left-wing socialism of the Liberals or NDP, the Tories plan to promote prosperity among the have-nots is through working opportunities. Considering the work is under the umbrella of a fiat money-market controlled by a ruling merchant class, one can see the appeal in accepting welfare checks.