Coin Toss

Well, the Conservatives' long-awaited budget has been tabled and, as my Star colleague Chantal Hebert pointed out on CBC Newsworld just now, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority players have thrown darts all over the board wit their $35 billion plan to give even more tax cuts to the rich.

Sure the middle class got a bone but there's no guarantee it will use the extra couple of hun or so anything that would benefit the Canadian economy. After all, how much is there for Canadians when you go to a U.S.-owned big box store to buy a made-in-China TV?

This budget has a jobs! jobs! jobs! patina too it but what good is it to get a 15 per cent tax credit for home renovations when you don't have the cash to do them in the first place or, worse, you're losing your home?

As for the environment, fuhgeddaboutit because they sure did.

More to the point, the budget doesn't redress the wrongs set out in Finance Minister's James Flaherty's ill-fated statement of last November, the one that triggered all the talk of a coalition government between the Liberals and NDP, with the Bloc's support.

Pay equity and employment insurance problems are still there -- and we all know that those directly impact women. As for childcare, you're dreaming.

Which is why both the NDP and the BQ are already talking about voting the budget down. Here's part of the NDP statement just put out:

OTTAWA – Today’s Conservative budget will not protect Canada’s most vulnerable or adequately save and create jobs, said New Democrat Leader Jack Layton.

“This budget fails to restore confidence in Mr. Harper’s ability to protect the vulnerable in Canada,” said Layton.

“In today’s budget, he prioritized $60 billion in corporate tax cuts and only $1.15 billion for the unemployed,” said Layton. He also noted Harper’s failure to reform Employment Insurance by freezing payments, maintaining the two-week waiting period and not improving eligibility requirements.

The budget also contains no mention of childcare spaces and maintains the attack on women’s ability to pursue pay equity complaints.

Here's some indie analysis from the folks at Progressive Economics Forum:

Unfortunately, the budget doesn’t include any measures to increase access to Employment Insurance (which only 40% of the unemployed now receive) or EI benefit levels, nothing to strengthen public pensions, no funding for a national anti-poverty plan, and no significant increased investments in social needs such as early learning and childcare, social services or health care.

At the same time, ignoring the advice of virtually every economist in the country, the Harper government is charging ahead with broad-based personal income tax cuts that will cost about $2 billion a year and provide the greatest benefit to those with the highest incomes.

Hidden, but still included in this budget are the cuts to transfers, controls on program spending, weakening pay equity for federal employees and the privatization plans announced in Harper’s disastrous November Economic and Fiscal Update. 

So now the question, will Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff buy this?

The only reason that the Liberals can use to dismiss the budget is that it contains permanent tax reductions for the middle and upper classes that will ensure that the nation’s recovery will be a long and rocky road.

Tax reduction is Stephen Harper’s, the Fraser Institute’s, and the Calgary School of Neo-Conservative Economic’s mantra. The neo-cons believe in this so fervently that it is second to only the Rapture in their hearts.

<SNIP>

It is for this reason, because of the covert meanness underlying the inclusion of yet another permanent tax reduction, that the aristocratic Michael Ignatieff should oppose the budget of January 2009, and replace Stephen Harper’s Conservatives with a coalition government that will help all Canadians equally through this difficult time.

The likelihood, though, is that he won’t.

Should be an interesting few days.

UPPITY WOMEN DATE: This just in from the YWCA:

YWCA Canada recognizes the confidence placed in us by the government targeting $15 million in youth internship spending to YWCA and YMCA. 

 “The government has set up some very inclusive spending with this budget for First Nations, seniors and people with disabilities, but we don’t see an awareness that Canadian women are very vulnerable in hard times,” says YWCA Canada CEO Paulette Senior. “Two-thirds of Canadians working for minimum wage are women, many taking any work they can find to hold family and community together.  Government stimulus spending must take this into account.”

<SNIP>

 "The hole in this budget is child care services. For Canadian women and their families, child care is missing, and it is vital,” says Senior. “Everything we know about building strong families says child care services are essential. And that goes double for women needing to leave violent situations. They need affordable, quality care for their children so they can go out and work. Childcare not only creates jobs but it supports women and their families. Now is the time.”   The budget announced $200 million for social housing in the north, a much needed investment.

 Unlike the November economic update there was no mention of pay equity in the budget.  “We are very sorry to hear a resounding silence from the government on this issue,” says Paulette Senior. “Especially as job stimulus spending is concentrated in employment sectors heavily dominated by men. The government needs to rethink its position on this equality issue and take the advice of its own task force.”

“Today’s budget announcement recognizes the urgent need for spending across sectors,” says Senior.  “With this promise now on the horizon, we look forward to working with the government to help implement a gender focus in the rolling out of new programs and services that will truly support Canada’s most vulnerable women and their families”. 

UP YOURS DATE: More from the Progressive Economics Forum:

The more I read Budget 2009, the less stimulus I see.

Starting to look like an EPIC FAIL ...

UP WITH THE PEOPLE DATE: Here's the budget from the point-of-view of the two low-income ladies at Challenging the Commonplace.

The new federal budget has nothing for the working poor of this country. Yet we are precisely the people who would be most likely to spend, rather than save, any money given us to bolster our starved budgets.

Go read their whole post.

I've written to Michael Ignatieff and told him how this budget blows off the environment and working women, 2/3rds of whom make minimum wage. Here's his email address, and if you write, please copy Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

To: 'Ignatieff.M@parl.gc.ca'
Cc: 'layton.j@parl.gc.ca'; 'duceppe.g@parl.gc.ca'

Ignatieff is said to be making his decision on this tonight.

Comments

[Toe]

Women already distrust these ideological nuts, I won't be surprised if voter participation drops AGAIN. I simply cannot believe they still want women at home, they have learned nothing! Nearly half of all women thought the economy was getting worse and leaving them out way back in 1996! The Conservatives must become Irrelevant in the face of this unregulated economic crisis. They can never be trusted to do the right thing.

Mr. Flaherty et al, please take your 'new' steel-pointed work boots and kick yourself in the keister with them, 38 times!

Coalition HELP!!

[Chrystal Ocean]

I agree. Am doing up a post now on how the budget completely fails those whose earnings are too low to pay income tax.

[hysperia]

Harper prorogued Parliament for this? I think he's daring Ignatieff. Maybe we're going to the polls.

[sooey]

Well, with more and more people out of work, one parent - or maybe even both parents - can stay at home and look after their children, thereby eliminating the need for a national childcare program.

[Barb Pearce]

Did anyone watch TVO's The Agenda tonight?

They were reviewing the budget and I swear I heard Tom Flanagan, while pointing out the time needed to start infrastructure jobs, say something in the line of "it's not like they have hundreds of "coolies" just waiting to go...."

Then he said something about in the age of Madonna, it's hard to find a virgin anywhere.

Did I hear this right?

I can't find anyone who heard this.

[Antonia Zerbisias]

Maybe you can check the podcast?
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=741
I would love to know if what you heard is correct.

[Barb Pearce]

Yep. He said it.

Found it here: http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=41

Titled “ Budget Implications”

Not a perfect transcript, but I tried...

6:10 into the program
Stephen Paiken:

“Tom Flanagan ........You know the man, you know what’s at stake here, what say you on the economics on this?”

7:00 into the program:
Tom Flanagan.:
“ .........I see very little real stimulus effect, the infrastructure spending may well be necessary, a lot of our roads and bridges and things are in bad shape, so that may be beneficial, but I can’t believe it would be done in time to have any stimulating effect in the next 12 months.”

Steve Paiken:
“Well the finance minister said yes, he said these are shovel ready projects are good to go...”

Tom Flanagan:
“Well shovel out the bulls**t, what sense does this make? You know you are talking about a road, a bridge, people drive on these things, lives are at stake, you can’t just start bringing in an army of coolies and telling them to start them digging. These things have to be planned.........”

8:16 into the program
Tom Flanagan:
“I have to say my wife had already decreed that we were gonna remodel the upstairs this year, I’ll take the $1350, but we would’ve done it anyway. So it’s like in primitive times when it didn’t rain, you had to sacrifice a virgin, but you know, now we live in the age of Madonna, you can’t find a virgin so instead we’ll throw 20 billion dollars out the window.”

Steve Paiken:
“Umm now you know why we want Tom Flanagan on this program...He is just amazingly politically incorrect, but he does call it like he sees it.......”

[Barb Pearce]

I guess I should apologize to everyone. Had I stayed a virgin, we would have saved 20 billion dollars. Buy hey, it was the 80s!

Oh.....In the end... it's always our fault.

[Kim]

Er... So apparently we're supposed to stay virgins until we're married and men are loudly complaining that they never want to get married because divorce courts are unfair... Well that works out to be quite awkward indeed...

Wouldn't it be funny if all women took that to heart and the next generation remained virgins forever because men won't marry them? :)

[Paul]

Here, here on the child-care services. The Tory plan to give financial incentives to businesses to create in-house child care has yet to create a single space. Not one!

There is an interesting wrinkle in this for the Toronto folks, where child care waiting lists are so long (and not just for government subsidized ones), that parents like myself are getting on the wait lists many months before the kids are even born!

The problem occurred when my wife lost her job, which put me on the hook for the full cost of daycare for two. Common sense, of course, would be to use the opportunity to pull out of daycare, right? The problem, at least in Toronto, is that once you lose your spot in the daycare, you have to go back on a wait list again to get back in. Parents are waiting YEARS. So parents facing unemployment have to make the choice of eating the cost of daycare, or take them out, with the knowledge that finding replacement care upon a return to work, is going to be a daunting task with an uncertain outcome.

BTW, is it possible to stop referring to daycare as a women's issue? It is a parenting issue, affecting both parents. Similarly, there are more homeless men than women, but it isn't regarded as a "men's issue", nor should it.