Poor Stephen

I find it funny that Stephen Harper has been in government for 14 months, spent billions of dollars, and pandered to voters, essentially selling out his base in the process, only to remain at the same level of support he had in the last election.

I too am a fan of the SES polls, not because they have the Liberals and tories essentially tied, but because I believe them to be some of the least tainted by politics compared to some of the other polls. On that note, a couple of comments about the polls of late, to lump the West into one polling category is absurd, BC has over 4 million people, Alberta about 3 million, and Manitoba and Saskatchewan another million or so each (forgive me if I'm wrong on these numbers). To say that metro Vancouver voters and rural Manitoba voters share the same position on every issue is absurd. On top of that, I wonder how the issues vary between the three northern territories.

I would be greatly interested to see a province, or even regional breakdown, since I would suspect that Liberal support is higher in Metro Vancouver, Winnipeg and other areas than it is depicted by generally lumping the west as one unit of measurement.

Furthermore, I feel the need to point out that the sheer strength of Conservative Support in Alberta is likely bloating the level of support across the board. Lets say that they enjoy 60% support in Alberta, and 20% in Quebec. If we take an average of that support accross the country, the national numbers will not reflect the regional disparities, something that also makes national polls spurious.

On another note

I was reading the article in the Toronto Star where Gerry Nicholls doles out some advice to Liberals on fiscal policy. I find it rather funny that this advice comes so soon after Mr Nicholls was ousted as the leader of the National Citizens Coalition. It does seem odd to me that he would suggest that Liberals should try to outflank the Tories on fiscal issues for one reason...we already do.

The liberal party is the party of fiscal responsibility, something that the PC's talked about, but could never implement. For people to suggest that we should try and become the new PC party...I ask them what on earth for? Todays Liberals already have a stronger record on fiscal policy than any other party, including the Harper Conservatives.

Its true his goverment introduced balanced budgets (Im sure the PMO had to double check Mr. Flaherty's numbers considering his record of "commonsense"), however deficit spending is only one area of importance. It is equally important that fiscal programmes by government be targetted to promote economic growth and health in the country, such as providing broad based tax cuts at the personal level, something Harper has not done. When a country is facing problems relating to economic productivity and competitiveness, its derelict of a government to ignore it. A truly good fiscal position would be one that recognizes the needs of the economy in areas like productivity and competitiveness. Personal income tax cuts and investments in R and D would be much more effective than giving parents a couple dollars a year to " pay" for childcare services.

So whats the point of this rant? While I will certainly thank Mr. Nicholls for his advice, I argue that Liberals are already the party with the best fiscal position. We are the party that brought in the largest tax cuts in Canadian history, combined with massive spending on R and D, not to mention the ever lauded budget balancing thing.

(wow, that was a longer rant than Ive had for a while)