Kill the Private Members Bill
Don’t for a moment imagine Stephen Harper in a yellow leather jumpsuit, but imagine the same result as the double feature films. The PM wants to kill the private member’s bill.
Props to Dan McTeague, who wrote a private members bill that put the Government’s budget out of their spending league. McTeague had his private member’s bill read for the third time this week and it received a whomping round of support from all three opposition parties. One might ask, how did the the Conservatives let this one slip through the voting cracks? Math, simple math. The Tories did not have the man power in the house the day of the last reading is really what it boils down to.
The real kicker from a policy and historical view is that this was a private members bill. Private member bills don’t usually see the much light of day and are about as in-depth as “The recognition that all kittens are cute” result. This bill was just the opposite, allowing families saving for their children’s educational futures to place up to $5,000.00 into a savings plan that closely resembles an RRSP. The cost to the government is estimated at $900 million dollars.
From a wonk’s point of view there are a number of routes that could see the government bury those noses in procedures and squash it because of oppositions not being able to play with taxes and the like. But why would you want to kill it? There is 900 million reasons the current government can think of we’re sure.
This government has made friends with a large portion of the Canadian taxpaying public buy slicing the GST twice, and personal income tax cuts. Killing this bill is not consistent with their public policy and would end up killing their own trust with Canadians. The focus here should be on where $900 million could be offset from to see the RESP bill through. If the government really gets hip-deep in the strategy for the situation they will find a pot of Liberal initiated programs ripe for the offsetting. Social programs beware, should the Tories wake up and smell the opportunity your fiscal days may be numbered (pun intended).
Social program spending versus good old tax cuts, sounds like an old Tory idea that may be given new legs for this situation specifically. The Wonk has done some preliminary number crunching and has found one direct match for the budget to remain in balance with cutting in mind. Need we say more?
