Western Producer staff
Governing is always easier from Opposition benches. Life looks simpler when you don’t have to bear the responsibility for implementing your clear-cut answers to all those complex problems that seem to bedevil the slow thinkers mistakenly in power.
For Reform MPs elected last year, life has been like that in Ottawa. In the face of almost any problem, their answer has been clear and to the point – cut government spending, reduce regulations, get government out of Canadian’s lives.
Simply put, government is the problem. Reducing government is the answer.
Read Also
Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
Anything less is not enough. From the large to the trivial, Reformers draw their political oxygen from living in the shadow of the Mountain of Debt.
Now, the Liberals are going to begin to respond to those deficit pressures with announcements of spending cuts, program reductions and re-organization.
Everything will be on the table, Marcel MassŽ, the minister responsible for overseeing “public service renewal” said last week. Hang onto your hats!
Results of the review will begin to surface next February in the federal budget. Cuts will be implemented over years.
Departments, their employees and clients will learn the fate of some well-established sacred cows that are about to get gored. The Liberals presumably will be doing some of the things Reformers have been demanding.
So how will Reformers react to what should be, in their terms, good news?
Predictably, like every Opposition party, they will complain that the Liberals are not going far enough, fast enough. On this, they will be preaching from the Reform bible.
But on another front – honestly representing their voters’ views – this may prove to be a dilemma for Reformers.
If the Liberals turn out to have as much resolve on this issue as they are promising, their actions will be controversial and their popularity will fall among voters.
Many average Canadians are not as gung-ho about cutting government programs as are the bureaucratic planners, tenured academics, business bigshots and populist politicians who have adopted it as their pet project.
From around the countryside, Reform MPs will be hearing the cries of Canadians who object to the cuts, who are hurt by the reduction in service or who see their standard of living falling because of government retrenchment.
How will they choose to represent those views?
Some, the faction that might be called the missionaries, probably will ignore them, believing the people are wrong or misled, confusing their short-term needs with their long-term welfare. They probably will claim to not hear the voices of protest, attributing the protests to self-serving “special interests”.
For others, who truly do see their role as being “tribunes” of their voters, the dilemma will be greater. Will they speak for their party’s theologians or for their angry voters?
For Reform, as well as the Liberals, the approaching winter of cuts and retrenchment is “show, tell and perform” time.
Both have a lot at stake.
