Western Producer staff
These days, to watch any new government perform is to witness a widening chasm between what they said they would do when in opposition and what they now seem able to do in power.
So it is with the Liberals in Ottawa.
There is nothing so expansive as a politician who is not required to make good on his or her promises. In opposition, the power to make the world a better place is apparently unlimited.
In power, options narrow.
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For example, during nine years of opposition the Liberals made a habit of:
- demanding that the Tories fix the economy and create jobs, including ordering the Bank of Canada to lower interest rates without being so obsessed with propping up the value of the Canadian dollar. In office, the Liberals keep the same distance from the central bank as did the Tories and interest rates are set as they always have been – by the money markets and according to fluctuating dollar values.
- opposing Conservative free trade policies. In office, the Liberals have essentially accepted all those trade deals and talk enthusiastically about their benefits.
- complaining about declining Conservative support for farmer support programs. In government, the Liberals have endorsed all the cuts and in the name of deficit control and trade deal implementation, appear poised to add a few wrinkles of their own.
Other examples proliferate.
While the new government has introduced a new style of operating, accompanied by some policy and priority shifts, on many fronts the Liberals seem remarkably similar to the Tories they replaced.
Why is this? Have the Liberal leopards changed their spots in five months? Were they being less than honest in their pre-election promises?
Politics and Liberals being what they are, these suggestions cannot be dismissed out of hand.
But there is another reality facing governments of all stripes – the increasing restrictions on their power to make real change.
Out of power, politicians like to argue that there are relatively simple solutions to complex problems. Canadians sometimes like to believe them.
From the vantage point of office, however, the power to make radical change in public policy direction seems much more constrained.
Solutions to trade problems, unemployment, crime or declining living standards are more complex than a simple policy shift by the cash-strapped, hemmed-in government now running Parliament Hill.
Only Opposition parties have the luxury of offering decisive answers for what ails us – cut spending sharply and reduce the scope of government (Reform) or break up the country to free Quebec from the Canadian shackles (Bloc QuŽbecois).
Liberals insist they have to operate within much smaller margins of realistic options, moving more slowly than the instant-answer crowd would like. Perhaps the Liberals’ greatest millstones right now are the expectations for change created mere months ago, when they were part of the instant-answer crowd.
