Canada: A Work in Progress

"The political party in Canada with the best record for consistent balanced budgets is the NDP. We're prudent public administrators. You know why? Because we always have to prove that we are ... The only real exception to that has been Bob Rae (in Ontario in the early 1990s). And we all know who he was with at the end of his political career."
It's always been implicit that we would not touch personal taxes. I've made it explicit. We're saying that personal taxes will not be touched. That's a firm undertaking. That's a contract with the Canadian voting public on our behalf."
"We say, OK, we know that this is the biggest challenge we have [Canadians leery of voting NDP]. And in part it has to do with the Bob Rae legacy in Ontario. So we know that there's always been that shadow out there. But when we get to talk to people about what we've done in the provinces where we have been in power ... they have governed well."
"On a bunch of issues we're going to send out stuff [proposed legislation] forward, and frankly as it's brought over and if they're thinking of defeating something that has been duly enacted by the elected members of the House of Commons, my answer is going to be: Go ahead and make my day. We're going to talk with the provinces. I'm going to keep going across Canada to try to build support for getting rid of this antiquity [Senate of Canada], to replace it with, frankly, a unicameral system." 
Thomas Mulcair, Leader of the Opposition NDP

Tom Mulcair (Photo by Andrew Tolson)

Yes, there have been NDP governments in the provinces and sometimes they have worked well; the last one in British Columbia ended on a scandal, but then such scandals are not unknown anywhere in Canada at any level of government. On occasion the voting public feels comfortable voting in the majority of a provincial NDP government. Never has the broader electorate felt comfortable enough to bring in a federal NDP government, and that situation well predates the Ontario NDP government under Bob Rae.

Mr. Mulcair is anxious to make headway in the period coming up to the 2015 election. His party rode high in the last election, granting it official opposition status when the Liberal Party kept shooting itself in the head and Quebec voters looked for an alternative to the Bloc Quebecois. Scandalous, that. The trouble seems to be primarily, that the NDP has always had very expansive and hugely expensive visions of broadly applied social programs. Canada is invested with an array of social programs that benefit the population. An expansion of what we can now barely afford doesn't appear feasible.

Most people who vote NDP are prepared to accept larger taxes. Basically they're of the opinion that Canada should have more social programs on a larger scale, and know it's a costly ambition, and are prepared to pay for that ambition to be realized. But their thinking on the issue doesn't reflect the more generalized population who feel they are more than sufficiently taxed. NDP-envisioned social programs are exuberantly generous, and someone will have to pay for them. The NDP claims big business and the wealthy class will, under NDP direction.

Of course there's problems with that vision, since business is interested first and foremost in profit, and paying a larger share of taxes will certainly impact on profit, and they will have something to say about what they will see as extortion and the wealthy will do as big corporations do; exit Canada with their investments, and how that will be profitable to the larger picture hasn't been verbally explored, not yet adequately explained. Moderation is not the NDP's forte; they tend to forge ahead, drunk on their vision of being 'progressives'.

And then there's the not-inconsiderable issue of Mr. Mulcair's ambition to change Canada's parliamentary system, to abolish the Senate of Canada and put all its unelected but accountable-on-occasion members out of work. transforming Canada into a parliamentary democracy with only elected members of Parliament making laws with no perceived need to filter them through the sober-second-thought lens of elder-statesmen-presumed Senate.

The man is fazed by not much.