http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/harp-j20.shtmlWho is Stephen Harper, the Conservative poised to be Canada’s next prime minister?The circumstances of the 2006 Canadian elections—12 years of uninterrupted Liberal rule, a growing sense of economic anxiety, a spate of corruption scandals—have been seized upon by Canada’s corporate elite as the long-sought opportunity to push politics far to the right. The media’s saturation coverage of the corruption issue, its unwillingness to scrutinize Conservative claims that they have adopted moderate policies, its lampooning of Prime Minster Paul Martin as a ditherer and a has-been—all are elements in a campaign aimed at bringing to power a Conservative government under Stephen Harper that will pursue closer cooperation with and, on many fronts, emulate the Bush administration.
The man who according to all opinion polls will be Canada’s prime minister after next Monday’s election is a right-wing economist and neo-conservative ideologue. Over the past 15 years—whether as a Reform Party leader and MP, president of the far-right National Citizens Coalition, or head of the Canadian Alliance and, since 2004, the new Conservative Party—Harper had made no secret of his abhorrence of universal social programs such as Medicare or his support for privatization and deregulation. A rabid opponent of the Liberals’ failure in 2003 to take Canada to war alongside the Bush administration in the US-led invasion of Iraq, Harper recently proclaimed his desire to “rebuild the Canadian military” in order to “make foreign policy decisions that are not only independent but are actually noticed by other powers around the world.”
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On fiscal policy, both parties propose massive tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the rich while reducing the government’s social spending ability. Yet, alongside a populist-style promise of a minor reduction in the regressive GST consumer tax, the Conservatives are proposing the virtual elimination of the tax on capital gains—the income component that is the most highly concentrated among the wealthiest households. Back in 2000, the Liberals “merely” cut the portion of capital gains subject to income tax from 75 to 50 per cent. Under the Conservative “roll-over” plan, the tax can be indefinitely deferred as long as the proceeds from the sale of assets or family estates are reinvested within six months.
On child care, the Liberals have made much of their C$5 billion deal over five years with the provinces to create more subsidized day-care spaces. Fundamentally opposed to anything with any resemblance to a universal social program, the Conservatives denounce in their platform the Liberals and the NDP for believing “that the only answer to expanding childcare in Canada is their one-size-fits-all plan to build a massive childcare bureaucracy.” The Conservatives propose instead a new C$1,200-per-year child care allowance for children under the age of six that will benefit high-income, single-wage-earner families over lower-income families in which both parents work.
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