Juno News - Conservatives need to govern like Conservatives

We seem to be entering something of a conservative moment in Canadian politics right now, where a number of provinces have gone from having centrist or left-wing parties governing them to being governed now by conservative premiers, and the polls show there s a pretty decent chance that Andrew Scheer could unseat Justin Trudeau and become the next conservative prime minister of Canada. It s a great moment, a great opportunity for people who want a number of conservative policies, including fiscal conservatism.

00:00:00.000 We seem to be entering something of a conservative moment in Canadian politics right now,

00:00:13.600 where a number of provinces have gone from having centrist or left-wing parties governing them to

00:00:18.680 being governed now by conservative premiers. And the polls show that there's a pretty decent chance

00:00:23.800 that Andrew Scheer could unseat Justin Trudeau, and he becomes the next conservative prime minister

00:00:29.120 of Canada. A great moment, a great opportunity for people who want a number of conservative policies,

00:00:35.200 including fiscal conservatism, right? Well, sure, but you have to get it right, and you have to make

00:00:41.660 good use of the opportunity. And I'm seeing a number of signals and signs recently that

00:00:46.920 perhaps that's not necessarily going to happen. I was having a conversation with a former Mike Harris

00:00:52.260 cabinet minister not too long ago, talking about this very phenomenon, Doug Ford being in power in

00:00:57.460 Ontario and so forth, and asking how he looked back on the phenomenon that they underwent in Ontario

00:01:04.440 with the Mike Harris common sense revolution. And what he said, and apparently what a number of other

00:01:09.480 former Harris ministers are saying, is their one big regret is that they had done more, and that they

00:01:14.820 had done it sooner. And that a lot of people, conservative politicians, who wanted to bring about

00:01:20.080 fiscally conservative change, always look back and go, I should have done it this way, that way I should

00:01:25.820 have been more aggressive. We all know that there are leftists who are very good at spending other

00:01:30.300 people's money, and they can pull a random deficit number out of the hat, and bam, sit the people with

00:01:36.160 it, and put it on the books, and then we're left grappling with it. Well, we've seen some pledges

00:01:41.020 recently from conservative politicians that sound like they're darn right liberal, and you want to ask,

00:01:47.160 are they aggressive enough? Andrew Scheer just the other week announced when he would balance the books,

00:01:53.540 and he said that the conservatives would do it in five years. He says that's the magnitude of the

00:02:00.420 problem that Justin Trudeau has presented them with, that he's left the government with, with his

00:02:05.480 massive deficits. Of course, he promised only 10 billion, and then in the first year it was almost

00:02:10.280 30 billion. He's really racking it all up. But what does it tell us that in four years, you can run

00:02:17.320 four years of deficits, and it's so problematic that a conservative government comes in and says they can do it

00:02:23.420 in five years? That five years is the time it takes to turn all of this around? Well, of course, there's

00:02:29.140 no such thing as a five-year term. The best Andrew Scheer would get is a four-year majority, and maybe be

00:02:34.860 re-elected and then go on to that fifth year. But basically what Andrew Scheer was saying was even if

00:02:39.680 he gets a majority, he won't balance the budget. That's a problem. And we've got similar things

00:02:46.740 happening in Alberta and in Ontario. Doug Ford announcing recently in his actual budget that

00:02:52.260 they will not balance the books left over from Kathleen Wynne until year five. There is no year

00:02:57.640 five. Doug Ford has a four-year majority term. So he's saying only if he gets re-elected will he

00:03:03.040 balance the books. Now, you can say that Kathleen Wynne left the government in a bad situation, 0.93

00:03:08.200 the Ontario coffers, and she absolutely did. But are they doing enough? Are they focused enough? Are they

00:03:14.560 being aggressive enough such that you can have four years of Doug Ford, a politician who, if you read

00:03:20.020 all the headlines, they say he's making cuts left, right, and center? Well, the truth is Doug Ford

00:03:25.280 actually is not making any cuts. They're shuffling the money around to different departments and

00:03:30.480 different priorities, but government is growing in Ontario. He has increased the size of the budget,

00:03:37.320 the debt is going up, and he has decreased the deficit. So he's not doing it as poorly as Kathleen

00:03:42.980 Wynne was doing it, but he is still racking up a lot of debt. Jason Kenney, he's saying that they're

00:03:49.060 going to balance the books in year four. And credit to him, he has a majority and has a four-year term.

00:03:54.460 So he's saying his last budget, he will balance the books. This all coming after just four years of

00:03:59.640 Rachel Notley running deficits. It's very dismaying. And we need to have a conversation about fiscal

00:04:05.320 conservatism in Canada. Are we getting what we asked for? And if not, why not? Is it just that,

00:04:12.000 oh, cuts are hard and, you know, it's harder than we first thought? Well, okay, that may be the case.

00:04:17.540 But why is it then in just a few years, someone like Trudeau can bring in all these deficits and

00:04:23.320 you suddenly say, we don't know how to deal with this. We don't know how to grapple with it.

00:04:27.100 Are you conceding that Justin Trudeau was right throwing all that money into the system? Or are you

00:04:32.160 saying you don't want to make the tough decisions and deal with the blowback from rolling all of that out?

00:04:36.800 And what about a lot of big ticket issues that a lot of fiscal conservatives have been advocating for

00:04:42.200 for years now? Changing the pension system that public servants receive. Private sector people

00:04:48.460 generally don't receive defined benefit pensions anymore, where you get a massive lump sum,

00:04:53.900 basically a mini salary from retirement until your death. The private sector is reforming that.

00:04:59.740 The public sector should reform that. Also, back in the day, it used to be that public sector employees

00:05:04.840 made a little bit less than their private sector counterparts, but the deal was that they knew

00:05:08.960 they had job security, so they took less. Now reports say that public sector workers are making

00:05:14.340 about 11-12% more than private sector workers. Well, there's your premium. New hires should be brought

00:05:20.680 in at about 10% less than the people previously in that position, so we can equalize all of that for

00:05:26.660 fairness. These are the big ticket conversations we have to have right now, because we are in a

00:05:31.820 conservative moment in Canada, where conservatives are on the upswing. But if they all get into office,

00:05:38.140 you want to make sure they make good use of their time.

Juno News - May 29, 2019

Conservatives need to govern like Conservatives

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