Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormer
They are all guilty, but Liberals are really bad. They love to pick winners and losers in the economy. The Sask Party at least had a policy against this but they have been pretty good at paying lip service to it and finding ways to get around their own policy in "special cases"..
|
I think most people will find (if they take off their partisan glasses) that all governments pick winners and losers. For the Sask Party, they chose the film industry as losers (which I still haven't seen justified), as an example, and private liquor stores as winners (which is more justifiable, though there are good arguments for and against it).
Sometimes governments make good choices on which industries to buff, and often they don't. The Liberals are no different than others. Based on the fact that they have governed Canada for something approaching 2/3 of our history, and that we are doing pretty well, I'd say they aren't any worse than conservative parties.
Often governments make decisions which benefit one region over another (National Energy program in the 80s, for example). It's tough to understand these decisions when your region is on the losing end (such as in that case), but easier to understand when your region benefits (Ontario/Quebec, in that case). Conversely, Trudeau Jr. is making a decision currently which benefits the prairies (the approval and push for the pipeline to the BC coast), and harms BC.
It is often tough to acknowledge when your political adversaries make decisions that benefit your region, and even more difficult to acknowledge that some decisions that hurt your region are for an even greater good. Much like some people pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits in order to help others, some regions end up paying more to benefit others which need the assistance, whether through fund transfers or policy changes. Canada is a federation of regions with often-opposing interests, and these things often happen. But if we didn't lose decisions, sometimes, then we wouldn't win them at other times. It's important to remember (both in the personal tax case, and also regional policy case) that a large part of the reason that people (or regions) do well enough to be taxed more than others is due to being lifted up by the policies that benefit the whole. Most rich people are rich because of history and circumstance, not skill. The same is true for regions of the country. You can certainly do things to change you or your area's outcome, but being born to a rich family in a good area sets you off to a much stronger start than being born poor as an Indigenous person, for example. The same is true for regions. Having oil wealth (or anything else) means you support other, poorer areas more because you are better off to begin with. This is why I personally have no sympathy for people making $100,000+ a year and complaining about their taxes, or for people in Alberta complaining about tough fiscal choices (in the latter's case, the government was fiscally irresponsible for decades when it was flush with cash). The reason they are rich is because we have policing, roads, medical care, and good government paid for by all. The same is true for regions.
These things need to be looked at in a pragmatic way. And fiscal decisions aside, I'd hate to live in Canada if it had been perpetually governed by the PCs/Conservatives, simply because we'd be decades behind in social freedoms and policies (as well as a likely lack of government programs such as universal healthcare, etc).
Prev
Linear Mode
