CBC and CTV are both predicting a Conservative minority with ranges from 119 seats to 152 seats.

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?

Breaking stories are for news junkies. Solid strategic action based on a event or situation is the wonk’s natural habitat.

Now that the Krista Erickson writes off-topic questions delivered by Liberal MP to former Conservative Prime Minister situation has tapered off, we here at the wonk thought it would be of community service value to offer the fallen CBC reporter some career rejuvenating strategies.

1. Political Career – Find a party friendly constituency (preferably NDP) and put forth your name as a candidate in the next federal election. Use the CBC situation as a opportunity to reflect on the status of women in the journalistic field and champion the more global women’s rights to equality to all fields of employment. Campaign yourself to a $150,000 a year job on Parliament Hill and take every opportunity to join committees that Pablo Rodriguez is also a member of, just to make him uncomfortable.
2. Pundit Career - Apply to the Green party as a writer/strategist before the next election. Appear in as many photo opportunities with Elizabeth May and have as many realistic challenges put forth by the party leader (with you as the public source) as possible. Take the credit for any of the party gains (those are implied) in the next election as the brains behind the strategy and spoken words. Distill any job offers after that (stay clear of the NDP in this case), take the new job or raise, put one to two more years in and write a book on the realism of Canadian politics. Again, distill all national newspaper columnist jobs and go forth, eventually ending up on the CBC’s At Issue panel taking Chantal Hebert’s seat.
3. Lobbyist Career – Take the short term knowledge you have of the players on parliament hill (while they are still in place) and solicit to any number of lobbying firms. Negotiate a $300-400K a year job, leave the public eye forever and work the shadows in the halls of the house. Note that this option can also be coupled as an after-step with options one or two.
4. Internal CBC Conquerer Career – Take the transfer to Toronto as an opportunity as opposed to a punishment. Have coffee with Wendy Mensley as much as possible and ask as many questions as you can. Come up with a fringe television show idea (fitted to the CBC) and then move your allince away from Wendy towards Peter Mansbridge (if you can stomach this). Talk about the television show idea as much as possible (or until he can’t take it any longer) to him. Launch the show with a level of success not seen since Strombo boarded the ship and begin negotiations with NBC as permanent host of Deal or No Deal: Canadian Edition. Wait for the show to fail terrifically and come back to the CBC with an (increased) implied amount of due respect. Start another fringe television show and wait for the call to become the next Governor General of Canada.
5. CTV Chief Middle-East Correspondent Career – Lay low for about six-months. Digest all you can about the middle east from a very high level perspective. Fly over to Dubai (make this your base for safety reasons) and begin doing hired-correspondent gigs for any network that will have you. Get yourself in the most dangerous of situations at every available chance while filing reports. Make certain that Peter MacKay’s girlfriend (at the time of this writing), Jana Juginovic (the Director of News Programming) get a copy of each report filed. Allow some time for the offer and make sure to do the emotional side of the story once in a while. We should note that this is the most risk in any of the career options we’ve outlined and that should be taken into consideration when discussion salary expectations.

In the end we know Pablo Rodriguez should confess his role in the delivery of the questions that Krista Erickson has taken the wrap for, but we aren’t holding our breath. We hope to see Krista in one of the careers mentioned above or a new selection of her own soon and off the pages of Frank even sooner.

Good luck Krista.