Spending elsewhere<\/strong><\/p>\nSo what will they do with all that money saved by shortchanging health care and childcare? Certainly not deficit reduction – that\u2019s so pre-pandemic. They plan to spend it on an array of items holding one pleasant surprise, and a whole list of predictable stuff. The surprise is the promise to spend about $6 billion a year to double the Canada Workers Benefit to a maximum of $2,800 a year for a single low-wage worker and $5,000 a year for families. The benefit should pull some workers above the poverty line and many more closer to crossing it. But as O\u2019Toole himself mentioned, a $1 per hour increase in the minimum wage would have the same impact.<\/p>\n
The increased Workers Benefit is an indirect subsidy to business, joining the direct primary beneficiaries of Conservative platform promises – corporations, small businesses and the government of Alberta.\u00a0A proposed post-pandemic Canada Jobs Surge Plan would offer a wage subsidy to companies taking on new workers. That would cost $7.6-billion over two years. Tax credits to encourage capital investments would cost $13.8-billion over three years. There is also $2.2 billion this year to help small business recover from the pandemic and about $2.4 over two years in rebates and tax credits for people who go out to dine or take a Canadian vacation next year.<\/p>\n
As for Alberta, the province is in line for a good chunk of the $9.7 million earmarked for \u201cFiscal Stabilization and Provincial Agreements.\u201d The Liberals recently enriched the Fiscal Stabilization Program, set up decades ago to provide federal assistance when a province is hit by a sudden drop in revenue. Jason Kenny called the federal offer a \u201cslap in the face\u201d and demanded another $4.6-billion. Although Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador would also benefit from the promise, Conservative officials have indicated that about 80 percent of the cash would go to Alberta.<\/p>\n
That should make Kenny and the premiers of the other two provinces happy, but the platform details may not sit quite so well with other provincial premiers, such as Nova Scotia\u2019s Tim Houston and the Tory premiers of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island who could use a dollop of the promised Liberal cash-$300-million this year alone – \u00a0to tackle some of the problems in their health care systems.<\/p>\n
But those premiers are of little significance in the grand scheme of O\u2019Toole\u2019s Conservatives. Quebec\u2019s Francois Legault is another matter. The outspoken nationalist panned the Liberals, NDP and Greens after Wednesday\u2019s French-language leaders\u2019 debate, saying the three parties are \u201cdangerous\u201d because they \u201cwant to give us less autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Toole\u2019s willingness to pander to Quebec nationalism has attracted Legault to the Conservative bijouterie<\/em>, despite the fact that the Conservatives rejection of national childcare jeopardizes a promised $6 billion transfer from the Trudeau government. Now with platform details revealing that Conservative health promises belong in the same bargain bin as childcare, Legault may decide to go shopping elsewhere. He has been the leader in provincial demands for an immediate $28-billion increase in health transfers. Will he be comfortable tacitly supporting a federal party promising zero immediately and just $3.6 over four years? The plot, involving all of those famously volatile Quebec seats, thickens.<\/p>\nMeanwhile further east, older voters in Atlantic Canada who\u2019ve rejected the Conservative Party of Harper and Scheer and may be thinking O\u2019Toole represents a return to the Red Tory tradition of Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark should heed the old adage \u2013 buyer beware.<\/p>\n
-30-<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bait-and-switch is when a merchant advertises a product at a low-low price with the aim of tricking customers into buying something more expensive. The O\u2019Toole Conservatives\u2019 platform, revealed in its entirety this week, reverses the process. The big expensive promises they put in the window to lure voters turned out to be facade \u2013 Tiffany\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[198,119],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-federal-politics","tag-conservative-party","tag-federal-campaign","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2736,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions\/2736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}