If you don't build it, John McCallum will come.

Beware, Conservatives! If you don't build it, John McCallum will come.

Prior to meeting with the Burlington Chamber of Commerce, Liberal Finance Critic John McCallum stopped by one of the city's announced federal Infrastructure Stimulus Fund projects only to find no shovels in the ground.

"Canada is in a jobs crisis, yet Stephen Harper has missed his opportunity to create the new jobs we need," said Mr. McCallum. "Jim Flaherty said that these projects had to be going within 120 days after the budget in order to stimulate the economy. 211 days later, at the end of summer construction season, the budget has been an abject failure."

McCallum stopped by the park at Dundas Street and Kerns Road to view the progress that had been made with the $2.3 million promised by the Conservatives to develop it. There was no evidence of any construction.

"Stephen Harper is obviously stuck. He said back in early June that 80% of the Economic Action Plan was already implemented," said Mr. McCallum. "But millions of Canadians are scratching their heads wondering why they can't see any of it actually happening."
(more)

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Hells no McCallum

My jaw dropped when I came across this story (h/t Jason), which says Liberal finance critic John McCallum says the party is considering the idea of raising the GST back to seven per cent. I mean, seriously John? WTF?

The Liberal party is debating whether it should pledge to reverse the $6-billion cut to the GST made by the Conservatives, as a means of funding broad-based income tax cuts.

John McCallum, the party's finance critic, is understood to have pushed the idea of increasing the federal goods and services tax back to 7%.

Allow me to save the party the money it might otherwise spend on focus-testing this stinkbomb: it’s a dumb idea. Stupid with a capital S. Paging anyone with any political antanne? It’s not often I agree with the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, but they’re bang-on here:

…an increase in the GST would be "electoral suicide."

"The Conservatives would have a field day. The Liberal caucus has got to give its head a shake if it is contemplating increasing the most hated tax in Canada," he said.

A field day indeed, I bet Harper and Flanagan are as giddy as little girls at the prospect.

Now, I agree the GST is a more effective tax than income tax, and cutting income tax is a better, fairer course than cutting GST. I agree with Dion’s pledge to cancel the scheduled GST cut from 6 to 5, and putting that money to fighting child poverty instead. That’s a good policy. And I was against the cut from 7 to 6, and posted often on the shortcomings of the Conservative move during the campaign.

But what’s done is done. You can’t roll back the clock. Yes, it was a dumb cut, particularly since the Cons combined it with an income tax increase. But if we couldn’t successfully make that case during the campaign, how in the hell do they think we can make the case for raising the freakin’ thing now? Not a chance. Leave the GST alone. Focus on broad-based tax relief.

This one needs to be nipped in the bud now. McCallum either needs to make clear it was his idea and he’s thought better of it, or Dion needs to distance himself from it, and make clear it’s off the table and was never seriously considered. John is a smart guy, he's done a good job exposing Flaherty's incompetence and developing a good alternate policy on income trusts. But this seems to be a case of the economist needing to come down from the tower.

Things are starting to go better for the LPC these days, or at least go worse for the Cons. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot, nay, the head, shall we please?

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