Let The Pork Barrel Soar

Looks like our resident tyrant, Mr. Harper, has consistently ignored adhering to one of the very stances he once campaigned on. What a surprise.

Here’s a sampling of just one day’s work by the Harper cabinet last week:

• Transport Minister Denis Lebel hands $225,000 to the Gatineau, Que., hot-air balloon festival as part of an effort to “raise the visibility of Canada’s attractions on the international stage.”
• Treasury Board President Tony Clement drops into the Thornloe Cheese Factory near New Liskeard, Ont., to hand out $1.2-million to a smattering of local small businesses.
• Revenue Minister Gail Shea attends the opening of a new tourist attraction in Cap-Egmont, PEI, called the Bottle Houses – a clutch of small structures built entirely of empties – to check in on last year’s $49,000 federal grant. A sum of $49,000 apparently buys a lot of empties.

Earlier this month, Ottawa gave a total of $2-million to a New Brunswick doughnut maker and a Quebec coffee roaster – in both cases, so the businesses could buy new equipment.

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What’s different is that Stephen Harper once vowed to end the practice. He even ran an election on it, promising to get out of the business of business subsidies.

Campaigning in Toronto in 2004, Mr. Harper challenged the business community to stop receiving government subsidies, making it a condition of lowering business taxes.

“I won’t lower one without lowering the other,” Mr. Harper assured members of the Toronto Board of Trade. “That is what I mean by low-tax solutions rather than high-spending solutions.”

It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Once in government, the Conservatives cut the corporate tax rate from 22.5 per cent to 16.5 per cent, with a further reduction to 15 per cent slated for next year.

Business subsidies weren’t cut. Instead, they soared, partly as a result of the government’s Economic Action Plan, designed to offset the impact of the recession.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/a-broken-vow-and-wasteful-excess-on-business-subsidies/article2115668/