Remembering Myron Baloney -to David Frum re: "Repairing PET's Mistakes"
Dear Mr Frum,
Your piece in the Post (Aug 5/07, A19, Issues & Ideas) Repairing Trudeau's mistakes is a mildly partisan and immensely provocative apologia and therefore must been deemed a masterful journalistic success. Congrats!
May I address two points: BM's success - the American Free Trade Agreement and "his greatest failure - his inability to balance Canada's finances"
Free trade was a rush job done in (overheated) fear of American protectionism. It obliterated the old Ontario/Canadian 'economic compact' that all our other internal revenue-sharing and income re-distribution programs were premised upon.
Free trade eliminated the branch-plants of southern Ontario, killing many a job here and thereby knee-capping many a municipality. Further, it disrupted the income stream flowing through many Ontarians' bank accounts to the province's consolidated revenue fund from where it traditionally tributary'd back to municipalities, schools, hospitals and individuals.
This stream of taxation from wages in plants that were supported by pan-Canadian consumers' purchases of made-in-Canada-for-Canada goods was the 'funding formula' that permitted Ontario to be THE have province and the biggest source of Income Tax for the Dominion gov't to spray around to the rest of Canada (ie back to those who'd paid too much for the protected Ontario-made goods in the first place).
If Mr Mulroney is to be praised for foresight internationally, he must be damned for not seeing the consequences in southern Ontario and not preparing a re-jigging of the old compact to suit the new times.
Ok, he didn't have enough revenue to pay for programs (ie nevermind debt-service) to do much revenue-reducing re-jigging - which brings me to #2.
The Fisc was so fried by 1984 (burdened by perpetually-expanding, baby-boom based programs that prior Mandarins had dared not raise taxes to sufficiently fund, so they borrowed year after year to bridge that gap) and Canadians were so oblivious to that fact (among many, BM called it "benign neglect") that the first thing the Rt Hon Brian had to do was raise public consciousness and obtain general acknowledgement that the fiscal trend established by his Great Canadian Champion predecessor was non-sustainable.
After years of Trudeau deficit financing, Canadians had been frog-in-a-gradually-heated-pot deceived into thinking that this was normal, government-budget ,operating procedure - "surely the wealth of Canada's resources (or something) will bail us out of this mess ... won't it?"
Brian's unmentioned fiscal triumph was in successfully effecting the massive, brain-set turnaround in Carol and Jean Canuck. This 9 year, drip campaign was so effective that Mr Dithers' second budget's cuts and reorganizations of money flows were accepted as necessary evils (his first attempt was the same old do-nothing to upset the voters in this or that region pap).
NB to Dithers credit, he introduced the October pre-Budget consultation process and his Grey & Purple Books were outstandingly informative.
The article doesn't touch on the Meech/Charlottetown adventures in Trudeau-bettering, but I'd enjoy comparing opinions on why and whether Mr Mulroney repaired/sidestepped any Trudeau mistakes on the 'patriation of sovereignty' file.
Your piece in the Post (Aug 5/07, A19, Issues & Ideas) Repairing Trudeau's mistakes is a mildly partisan and immensely provocative apologia and therefore must been deemed a masterful journalistic success. Congrats!
May I address two points: BM's success - the American Free Trade Agreement and "his greatest failure - his inability to balance Canada's finances"
Free trade was a rush job done in (overheated) fear of American protectionism. It obliterated the old Ontario/Canadian 'economic compact' that all our other internal revenue-sharing and income re-distribution programs were premised upon.
Free trade eliminated the branch-plants of southern Ontario, killing many a job here and thereby knee-capping many a municipality. Further, it disrupted the income stream flowing through many Ontarians' bank accounts to the province's consolidated revenue fund from where it traditionally tributary'd back to municipalities, schools, hospitals and individuals.
This stream of taxation from wages in plants that were supported by pan-Canadian consumers' purchases of made-in-Canada-for-Canada goods was the 'funding formula' that permitted Ontario to be THE have province and the biggest source of Income Tax for the Dominion gov't to spray around to the rest of Canada (ie back to those who'd paid too much for the protected Ontario-made goods in the first place).
If Mr Mulroney is to be praised for foresight internationally, he must be damned for not seeing the consequences in southern Ontario and not preparing a re-jigging of the old compact to suit the new times.
Ok, he didn't have enough revenue to pay for programs (ie nevermind debt-service) to do much revenue-reducing re-jigging - which brings me to #2.
The Fisc was so fried by 1984 (burdened by perpetually-expanding, baby-boom based programs that prior Mandarins had dared not raise taxes to sufficiently fund, so they borrowed year after year to bridge that gap) and Canadians were so oblivious to that fact (among many, BM called it "benign neglect") that the first thing the Rt Hon Brian had to do was raise public consciousness and obtain general acknowledgement that the fiscal trend established by his Great Canadian Champion predecessor was non-sustainable.
After years of Trudeau deficit financing, Canadians had been frog-in-a-gradually-heated-pot deceived into thinking that this was normal, government-budget ,operating procedure - "surely the wealth of Canada's resources (or something) will bail us out of this mess ... won't it?"
Brian's unmentioned fiscal triumph was in successfully effecting the massive, brain-set turnaround in Carol and Jean Canuck. This 9 year, drip campaign was so effective that Mr Dithers' second budget's cuts and reorganizations of money flows were accepted as necessary evils (his first attempt was the same old do-nothing to upset the voters in this or that region pap).
NB to Dithers credit, he introduced the October pre-Budget consultation process and his Grey & Purple Books were outstandingly informative.
The article doesn't touch on the Meech/Charlottetown adventures in Trudeau-bettering, but I'd enjoy comparing opinions on why and whether Mr Mulroney repaired/sidestepped any Trudeau mistakes on the 'patriation of sovereignty' file.
posted by Walk a Kb or Two in my cassins | 5:55 pm
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