Senior Tories fan out to sell 2012 budget

Dozens of government ministers fanned out across the country to sell the Conservative budget Friday, leaving few senior ministers in the House of Commons to answer opposition questions on a fiscal blueprint that includes a controversial scaling-back of Canada's old age pension program.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and many of his top ministers - including Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Industry Minister Christian Paradis, National Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Transport Minister Denis Lebel - were not in the House of Commons to answer questions about the budget.

Instead, several Tory backbenchers moved up to fill the front benches with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird acting as the lead government spokesman for the day.

Most MPs traditionally leave Ottawa on Thursday nights to handle issues in their ridings on Fridays.

NDP finance critic and national caucus chair Peter Julian filled in for newly elected leader Thomas Mulcair, who was absent, to lead the party's attack on the federal budget in the Commons.

"Conservatives promised to create jobs and, instead, slashed the vital services that Canadian families rely on, services such as old-age security and health care. They promised jobs and growth, but, instead, what they delivered is reckless cuts," Julian said.

Baird countered that the budget is "fair" and "balanced," and "focused on jobs, economic growth and the long-term prosperity of Canada."

Ottawa's fiscal maestros

Under Stephen Harper, Canada can fairly claim to be the best-governed country among advanced democracies in the world. Thursday's federal budget locks up Canada's lead.

Right now, the major economies share a common economic problem: With the world slowly and fitfully emerging from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, they must begin to plan to reduce their debt burdens - but not so fast that they crush demand and abort the recovery. The United Kingdom exemplifies the dangers of moving too fast: your recovery falters.

The United States exemplifies the risks of moving too slow: The inability of its political system to agree on any plan to balance the budget has cost the world's biggest economy its Triple-A credit rating.

Canada has been seeking to move at a pace that's just right - and with the 2012 budget, Canada continues to succeed. Barring an unexpected slump into renewed recession, Thursday's budget moves Canada to budget balance over the next three years. There will be no tax increases. Federal spending growth will be restrained, but outlays will still rise: from $272.9 billion in the year just ended to a projected $296.6 billion in 2015-2016.

This "steady as she goes" course has disappointed some. The Edmonton Sun denounced the budget as "Trudeauesque."

Coast guard may buy ships

MacKay: $5.2b also for choppers

The 2012 budget wasn’t kind to many federal departments but one big winner was the Canadian Coast Guard.

It will receive $5.2 billion over 11 years to upgrade its fleet of ships and helicopters. This money is above and beyond the $35 billion being spent in the national shipbuilding program.

Like most of the budget, few details of the spending were unveiled. The document does not outline what will be bought or when.

In an interview late Thursday night, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the money, which works out to almost $500-million per year, will involve building new ships and buying helicopters. It will also go to refit existing vessels and other capital projects such as buildings.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which oversees the coast guard, said the spending will be developed within the context of the shipbuilding program.

However, this does not mean the $5.2 billion will automatically be added to the workload of the Halifax and Vancouver shipyards. Instead new contracts will go out to tender.

Canada could pay more than $100M for its first few F-35s

Canada could pay more than $100 million for each of the first few F-35 fighter jets it’s scheduled to receive in 2017.

According to documents tabled in the U.S. Congress, Canada will pay around $90 million each for the first few jets that are delivered — should it sign a contract in 2013. However, that number is understood to possibly be closer to $104 million for each plane.

According to the Joint Strike Fighter program’s Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) tabled in  Congress on Thursday, the overall cost of the F-35 rose again in the last year. Aviation Week reported Friday the new SAR shows the cost of the F-35 “is inching higher, rising 4.3 per cent to $395.7 billion in the last year.”

The document tabled Thursday and obtained by iPolitics, outlines the actual and predicted quantity of planes being produced by the program. Should Canada sign a contract next year as has been planned, it would have delivery of its first jets sometime in 2017. The SAR shows the price of an F-35 at that point would be roughly $91 million — a figure that includes the engine.

However, iPolitics understands that the Unit Recurring Flyaway Cost — the cost for the airframe, engines, avionics and other equipment that come standard with every airplane — of the Canadian F-35s delivered in 2017 will actually be around $104 million per unit. That cost would likely drop in the subsequent years toward 2023, as production numbers of the planes rises.

Can James Moore be both arts champion and axe man?

When James Moore became Minister of Canadian Heritage, he says he fielded three main requests from the arts community: Don’t cut funding, make it easier to get funding by cutting red tape and be a champion for the arts. The minister who took an axe to the CBC this week, cutting its funding by 10 per cent, unapologetically clung to the idea of being a champion of the arts on Thursday, touting a budget that slashed his own department’s operations while shielding the Canada Council for the Arts, national museums and others from funding cuts.

“No cuts to the Canada Council for the Arts, no cuts to Arts Presentation Canada [now the Canada Arts Presentation Fund], festival funding – all those things that are critical to quality of life in communities across the country,” Moore told The Globe and Mail Thursday afternoon. “All of it has been protected in the budget.”

This was a big moment for Moore. Since becoming Heritage Minister in 2008, he has positioned himself as a defender of the arts – someone who, at the very least, sees their worth in terms of economic stimulus. More than that, he goes out of his way to portray himself as someone who appreciates the arts for their cultural worth – someone who gets a kick out of his portfolio. He’ll be at the Junos this weekend, rooting for fellow British Columbian Dan Mangan. He tweets about Ron Sexsmith and Deadmau5. Give him a chance, and he’ll tell you about his movie nights at the National Arts Centre – where Canadian films are shown to packed houses that may include the Prime Minister and/or his wife. He seems to have come a long way from the guy who in 2009 couldn’t identify the prominent Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan when quizzed by the Radio-Canada program Tout le monde en parle.

John Baird: In defence of 'what is right'

Canada's leaders on the global arena are no longer ready to let others take the lead. Instead, Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper is liberating itself from the firm grip of "moral relativism" - in the words of John Baird, the Canadian foreign minister.

After the last election, the country is now in the process of what has been described as the most dramatic shift in post-war Canadian foreign policy history.

Baird, the man leading the foreign policy charge, is taking a strong public stand for what he calls Canadian principles of "what is right and what is wrong":

"Canada does not go along in order to get along. We will go along only if we go in a direction that advances Canada's values. We take our position based on Canadian values, based on Canadian interests and what we believe is right. We have seen people in the past administrations who would define Canadian foreign policy as whatever the international consensus was, and that is not good enough, we should take policy decisions based on what is right."

The steps Baird is taking with conservative PM Harper raises eyebrows both at home and abroad. While his policy of moral clarity encompasses staunch support of Israel and hardened rhetoric against Iran, it does not extend to a clear condemnation of Israeli settlement and occupation. And this is leading critics to ask to what extent Canada's foreign policy is under the influence of a conservative Jewish and Christian agenda.

Harper should lead by example on pension austerity, Rae says

If the prime minister is going to raise the age for Old Age Security from 65 to 67, then he should lead by example and dump a $100,000 prime ministerial pension top-up, Liberal interim leader Bob Rae gibed on Friday afternoon.

As provided for in paragraph 48 of the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, when the prime minister turns 65 he’ll begin to receive an annual “special allowance” equal to two thirds of his annual salary — that’s in addition to his pension.

The Liberals plan to table a sub-amendment to yesterday’s budget to get rid of it, Rae said.

“Not many Canadians are aware of it, quite apart from MPs’ pensions there’s a separate allowance for the prime minister, for a retiring prime minister that was brought in in 1992 for some particular reason,” Rae told a scrum of reporters.

“I don’t know why that would be.”

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: ipolitics

Federal budget poses threat to CBC, Stursberg argues

Last Thursday’s federal budget cut the CBC by $115-million. To put this in context, here are three things about the corporation that most people do not know. First, it is more successful now than it has ever been. Second, the federal budget cut is only the beginning of its woes. Third, there is a way forward, but nobody is talking about it. The CBC is at the most challenging point in its history.

Nearly every year since the 1970s, CBC’s television audiences declined. By 2004, its ratings were the lowest in its history. Almost nobody was watching. The mighty news department commanded only 12 per cent of the audience for Canadian news. The entertainment department took only 30 per cent of the audience for Canadian comedy and drama. Polls showed that Canadians found CBC television essentially irrelevant to their lives.

Starting in 2006, the CBC began to re-invent itself and re-connect with Canadians. It overhauled all its shows – entertainment, news, talk, music, everything. The results were startling. By 2010, it was clear that the CBC had been re-born. This year it is possible to say with certainty that the CBC has never been stronger.

Radio is enjoying the highest ratings in its 75-year history. The great shows – Quirks and Quarks, The Sunday Edition, As It Happens, The Current and the local shows – have never been more popular. The 10 a.m. national morning slot, once hosted by Peter Gzowski, is now home to Gian Gomeshi and Q. The audiences are larger than they were for Gzowski.

Budget 2012: The battle lines have been drawn for Canada's Indigenous peoples

The Conservative budget was released today with most mainstream political commentators wiping their brows, saying "Phewf, we thought it would be much worse!" People like Kevin O'Leary were asking why the Conservative government didn't go further to open up Canada for international investment. Others were relieved that only 19,200 federal public service jobs would be lost as opposed to the 60,000 that were predicted. Still others were wondering what the streamlined environmental review processes might mean.

The area with which I am most concerned relates to what was and was not in the budget for Indigenous Peoples. I am not surprised by this budget, in fact, it is just about exactly what I predicted it would be. What I am surprised about is how the Assembly of First Nations' National Chief Shawn Atleo could possibly think this was a good budget.

Atleo says: "The investments in education in today's budget indicate that the voices of our youth are perhaps beginning to be heard...". Well, let's look what was and was not provided for First Nation education:

For elementary and secondary education (K-12), approximately $1.5 billion in extra funding is needed this year to have an education system almost on par with the provinces. This budget only provided $100M for this year, most of which will go to early literacy (and not in our languages).

Conservatives' small-minded budget kills jobs and fails Canadians

Despite its size and the hundreds of measures it details, Harper's 2012 budget demonstrates just how small-minded their vision is. Canada faces major challenges, with 1.4 million unemployed, stagnant productivity growth, a crisis in retirement security and growing inequality.

Instead of addressing these challenges, what this budget provides is more of their failed economic policies, deep job-killing budget cuts, cuts to public pensions and a highlight: getting rid of the penny.

Not only is Harper using his new majority power to reduce the size and scope of the federal government and shrink public pensions, he is also using it to eliminate a number of iconic programs and reduce dissent from some of their potential adversaries, no matter how small. While headlines might focus on the ending of production of the one-cent coin, the budget also eliminates funding for the Katimavik program and the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. The National Council of Welfare will have $1.1 million cut, which eliminates this valuable agency standing up for social assistance recipients.

These are just a few of the programs eliminated, many more will become apparent as more details emerge. The budget also announced plans to further restrict charities from engaging in political activities and to disclose their funding from foreign sources.