Boessenkool: Relax Cons, we're not doing THAT much to help the economy

The National Post ran an excerpt today of Ken Boessenkool's presentation to that Manning Centre shindig a few weeks back. The former senior Harper adviser, now lobbying for taser manufacturers and other clients for GCI Canada, waged an interesting defence of Conservative economic policy to the crowd of conservative partisans:

If you look at the non-bankrupt G7 states -- in other words, not Italy because they've got a huge debt problem, and not Japan because they are running massive deficits already --of the states that can do a stimulus package, only France has a smaller stimulus package than Canada. The United States is looking at a total stimulus package of 3.5% of GDP, Germany is looking at a total stimulus package of 3.2% GDP, the United Kingdom is looking at a total stimulus package of 3.4% GDP. And our Prime Minister has a stimulus package of 2.9% of GDP.

Or, in a nutshell: we're not doing THAT much to help the economy and protect jobs. In fact, we're doing the least of any country in the G7. So, yeah for Canada! I'm sure that's comforting to the 61,300 Canadians that lost their jobs in March, Ken.

This other bit from Ken was also amusing:

In the fall of 2007, he cut the GST an extra point in anticipation of the economic downturn -- a very significant conservative tax cut to prepare the economy for the coming hard times.

Ah, so now they're telling me the second cut to the GST had nothing to do with a coming election. Instead, it was all about a coming economic downturn that Harper totally foresaw? That's ridiculous in the extreme.

I need to go off to lunch, so I don't have a time to compile a list of every Harper comment that totally contradicts that statement and include links, so forgive me. But I seem to recall a quote from Harper during the 08 campaign to the effect in the downturn was going to come, if it was going to hurt Canada, it would have happened already. I seem to recall an economic update from Harper last fall that did absolutely nothing to address the economic situation.

Harper didn't see this downturn coming, and he kept his head in the sand until the downturn was already kicking Canadians in the nads. I know your audience here was conservative ideologues, Ken, and not Canadians at large, but even conservatives know better than that.

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Don't tase the lobbyists bro

Remember that whole ending the lobbying revolving door thing? Well, more developments from the it's a small world after all front, with the CBC's Political Bytes blog pointing-out highly-placed Conservative Ken Boessenkool has registered to lobby the government behalf of Taser International, supplier of the stun guns used by the RCMP and other forces.

Ken Boessenkool worked as a senior adviser to Stockwell Day when he was treasurer of Alberta. Day, of course, is now the minister of public safety, responsible for the RCMP.

In his lobbyist registration, Boessenkool lists among his duties promoting an awareness campaign to educate decision-makers on the facts of Taser International's products.

Among the government institutions to be contacted? The department of public safety, headed by his former boss.

At least Ken shouldn't have much trouble getting Stock on the phone to talk tasers.

Ken's Conservative connections don't stop with Stock, however. As Politics Watch pointed out, Ken was a senior policy advisor to then opposition leader Stephen Harper from 2002 to 2005. After that he went into lobbying with Hill and Knowlton, where his clients interestingly included the Canadian Association of Income Trusts. (Hmm, maybe his influence isn't too great after all.)

Boessenkool was also a key player in the last Conservative war room. And he co-authored the infamous Alberta firewall letter with Harper, Tom Flanagan, Ted Morton and others, and is a long-time Harper confidant.

Anyway, just glad to see that Conservative anti-lobbyist rhetoric isn't stopping well-placed Conservatives from trading on their connections to lobby on behalf of their clients. Everyone knows the Conservatives only had a problem with Liberal lobbyists, after all.

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