Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer leads members of his party out of the House of Commons during the delivery of the federal budget in the House of Commons on Tuesday March 19, 2019.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
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Budget-busting behaviour
With their shiny new Buy-Your-Votes budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau are clearly hoping to distract the Canadian public from the Liberals’ ethics scandals and moral lassitude, long enough to get re-elected in the fall (Deficit To Rise As Liberals Court Key Constituencies In Pre-Election Budget; Liberals Shut Down Hearings, Prompting Uproar By Opposition MPs – March 20).
Let’s hope enough of us have better memories and attention spans than your average toddler.
Deborah Kestenbaum, Toronto
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Listening to the live budget coverage, and reading your front page on Wednesday, one could be forgiven for concluding that the Official Opposition wants to avoid its responsibility to review, understand and critique the federal budget. Banging desks and stomping out of the House do not qualify as reasoned criticism.
Andrew Scheer should cease his tiresome impersonation of an enraged chipmunk and get to work. If he continues to signal that the most important use of his MPs’ time is to examine the entrails of the SNC affair – wherein no laws were broken, according to the former attorney-general – he has no ability to set priorities for effective governance. He should focus his time on putting together some persuasive Conservative policies to showcase for voters before the election.
P. Diane Bond, Kelowna, B.C.
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When the Finance Minister could not be heard above the din created by the Opposition, I was left to listen to criticisms of the budget from leaders of opposition parties, political pundits, and journalists. I imagine other Canadian citizens also felt left out of this process, and wonder why the Speaker of the House did not exercise his ability (duty?) to maintain order so that everyone’s voice could be heard, including that of Bill Morneau.
Anne O’Riordan, Kingston
Where SNC, budget meet
Re Liberals Shut Down SNC Hearings, Prompting Uproar By Opposition MPs (March 20): So much for the Liberals’ 2015 election campaign promise of “openness, transparency and fairness.”
Liberal MPs on the justice committee failed on all three counts in cynically ending hearings into the SNC-Lavalin affair, preventing former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould from returning to testify. Such blatant partisanship may well have handed the opposition parties the sword that will imperil the government’s hopes of re-election.
Gord McNulty, Hamilton
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Wednesday’s headlines, whereby the SNC-Lavalin scandal shares the limelight with the Liberal budget, made me wonder: At what point will the SNC “affair” be demoted from front-page coverage? There is no denying that The Globe and Mail had a gem of a scoop, and it has been running, running, running with this story ever since.
I can visualize a distant future, with the sighting of a huge killer asteroid, where The Globe’s headline would read: Killer Asteroid Approaching The Earth, As Liberals Still Refuse to Let Jody Wilson-Raybould Testify.
The lyrics of an old song frequently pass through my mind: “Sugar in the mornin’, sugar in the evenin’, sugar at supper time …” Except in my mind, because of The Globe, the lyrics change to: “Jody in the mornin’, Jody in the evenin’, Jody at supper time …”
It is apparent that Justin Trudeau, in a fit of idealism, made a “mistake” when he recruited two highly principled women to the party. Not the type of dross that often enters politics. Conservative supporters, hair on fire, might say that this would never happen under a Conservative government. Really? Looking at the current crop of Conservatives, do you think that even one of them would have resigned on principle, had they been in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s shoes?
Paul Gudjurgis, Brampton, Ont.
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The Party of Proroguery accuses the Liberals of attacking Parliament. Chutzpah.
Elaine Bander, Montreal
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We have a Prime Minister and senior government officials who see no problem with attempting to exert pressure in the criminal prosecution of a favoured company. Canada should be a shining example to the world of how a democratic society conducts itself. Instead, we have the current situation with SNC-Lavalin, where China and the OECD are questioning whether we actually do behave as a rule-of-law country. It is a sad episode in the history of this great nation.
Reyn Richardson, Mono, Ont.
Ballots, budgets and bottom lines
Re An Election Budget With Few Surprises (editorial, March 20): The politics of Justin Trudeau’s pre-election deficit budget promise to turn Canada’s social safety net into a veritable “hammock.”
Without a change to Canadians’ mindset of bottomless entitlement, there surely will be no change to the bloated size of the Liberal “nanny” state, tolerated by an electorate with an insatiable appetite for government services and a seemingly unending tolerance/indifference for government mismanagement and even outright scandal, such as the SNC-Lavalin affair.
In a land where people have come to view the government as a benevolent force to redistribute wealth to all those who want equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity, turning taxpayers’ hard-earned “gold” into free-spending government “lead” has become the essence of modern-day, welfare-state alchemy.
With prevailing standards of political morality, lowered so publicly and so contemptuously by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is there a leader who will do what it takes to control spending, pay down debt, keep taxes low, increase productivity, and steer and grow Canada’s economy through these difficult and unstable times? If there is such a leader, will the people of Canada let him lead?
E.W. Bopp, Tsawwassen, B.C.
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Re Ottawa To Give Home Buyers A Boost With Subsidies (March 20): Fundamental economics tell us that Canadian housing is expensive because too many dollars are pursuing too few homes. Tuesday’s budget added to the funds-in-pursuit by adding more RRSP dollars and facilitating the CMHC to become co-equity owners. Since when has adding gasoline ever helped put out the fire?
John Budreski, Vancouver
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The Liberals’ pre-election budget brings to mind a quote, often (wrongly) attributed to Churchill, which has him asking a woman if she would sleep with him for five million pounds.
When she agrees, but insists on strict terms, he asks if she would sleep with him for five pounds. She indignantly replies, “What kind of woman do you think I am?!” at which point he replies, “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”
Politicians of all stripes long ago figured out the electorate can be bought. The only question is: For how much? The Liberals seem to figure an extra $23-billion should do it.
Ellen N. Laskey, Calgary