THE IMAGE seemed appropriate, both seasonal and political.
As the House of Commons adjourned for Christmas last week, Liberal MP Stan Dromisky stood in full Santa Claus regalia to wish everyone peace.
Or was that ‘piece’, as in … “after three years of damaging government cuts, it’s time Canadians were promised a piece of what are supposed to be the benefits of all this belt-tightening.”
As Canada’s political class begins to ease toward an election, this is the message emanating from political rooms.
It is time Canadians saw a glimpse of reward after years of growing poverty, deteriorating safety nets and enormous unemployment.
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What better time to do that than during a campaign to elect the first government of the 21st Century?
Of course, this will not be like the extravagant give-away campaigns of the Trudeau Keynesian years or the tax-and-spend Mulroney Tory years.
In the harsh, dog-eat-dog market mentality of the 1990s, billion dollar taxpayer bribes are out of vogue.
Still, the rhetoric out of Ottawa these days is remarkably softer than the Hellfire and Damnation anti-spending lectures of the first ChrŽtien years. In 1994 and 1995, the political debate went something like this:
Liberals: “Canadians have been living too high on the hog. We’re going to cut.”
Reform: “Hey, that’s our theology. Okay, we’ll cut even more.”
Conservatives: “Hey, us too. We’ll cut more than ‘even more’.”
New Democrats: “What was the question again?”
These days? Well, MPs last week were debating a report from the Liberal-dominated finance committee that proposes some selective spending increases.
No one is suggesting the deficit fight be abandoned.
But after touring the country and hearing the tales of Canadians hurt by program cuts, Liberals MPs staring down the barrel of voter unrest have rediscovered the potential for creative government.
It should spend more on literacy, children and child care, aid to students, infrastructure and tax incentives for charitable donations.
Remarkably, the Reform party also has turned its attention from condemning sin (over-spending) to promising salvation (tax relief).
Leader Preston Manning, still imagining the Liberals as big spenders, promises to balance the budget by 1999.
The payoff then, he says, would be $4 billion more for health and a $15 billion tax cut.
Manning insists this can be done while paying down the debt, encouraging job creation and running a fiscally responsible government.
The chore for voters next year is not to decide which contender is most committed to getting the country out of hock. The political line-up for that forms on the right and stretches to the horizon.
The real chore will be judging the credibility of the various rewards schemes being offered.
For the first time in three years, the political options will be more optimistic than death by torture, hanging or firing squad.
