Political Imbalance

"This isn't a meeting about how much more money the government of Canada is going to transfer to the provinces," Flaherty declared before he sat down for a working dinner in this picturesque tourist town. "It's not just about money."Provinces squabble with Ottawa, each other before fiscal imbalance meeting

"In practice, the Conservative approach would mean paring back Ottawa's role to concentrate mainly on defence, security and foreign affairs while leaving social programs and health care to provincial governments. The implications for Canadians are far-reaching, says University of Ottawa historian Michael Behiels. "Underlying Harper's moves here is a fundamental restructuring of the way the federation has operated for the last 50 years."Ottawa's fiscal finger of fate

The Fiscal Imbalance is just a clever cover for the Conservatives to launch their restructuring of Canada. So lets call a spade a shovel, for the Harpocrites its not a fiscal anything its a political imbalance. They oppose a centralized federalist state. Period. And using the fiscal imbalance is their excuse to bring forward their agenda of devolving power and responsibility to the provinces.

Now some folks might think that is a good idea. But they would be deluded.

As we have seen in practice for the past decade, when the State devolves power and responsibility to lesser forms of government it has always meant they are not doing any such thing. They are simply downloading the costs of maintaining the public sector down the line. Every right wing provincial government in Canada has done this, Klein, Harris, Campbell, Charest, etc.

The core of right-wing liberal 'reinventing government' schemes is decentralization. But before you say that is classic anarchism (that other varient of liberalism), understand this when the Capitalist State speaks of decentralization, it means no such thing. It simply means a way of getting taxpayers to foot the bill through another means of governance and tax collecting.

Whether the scheme is to download service delivery to provinces or municipalities or school and hospitals matters not. Nor does how that service delivery is done, privatization or inhouse unionized workers, it does not reduce the need for the public services, simply moves around who pays. In this case that still comes to you and me, however the differnce is that in the case of privatization the State can claim an arms length relationship with the inevitable cost over-runs.

To allow the provinces to fully fund healthcare, education, etc. will simply shift
the burden to a more localized tax base, while NOT reducing federal taxes one iota.

It will however allow the Conservatives to shift those taxes where they always do, law and order and more military spending.

A clear contradiction for those on the right who claim that they are both Conservative and libertarian.

The Haprocrite Conservatives are neither, nor are they Godwinians , so called minarchists, despite their claims to believe in smaller government.

They are statists whose State is not reduced in size, but militarized, a police state by any other name. This has been the agenda of the right since Reagan and Thatcher. Actually there is nothing new about this right wing agenda, and it ain't the New Right of Murray Rothbard either,it is the same as it has always been historically.

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