What Harper Needs To Do

So far, I don't mind Stephen Harper overmuch.
As someone who voted for him--and to be fair, I was voting against the Liberals and Mr. Dithers as well as voting for the Conservatives--I expected exactly this kind of centrist, firm governance.
It will be interesting to see what the budget has in store. Certainly Harper has made a big deal of his "five key priorities": reducing health care wait times; reducing the GST; giving parents $1200 a year for each child under six and also funding new day care spaces through tax breaks to business; getting tough on crime; and restoring accountability to government. Five priorities? That's Paul Martin's to-do list for a single day. Boy, it sure is nice not to have a scatterbrain in power.
The David Emerson appointment really rocked my picture of Harper to the foundation. I really didn't think he would play old-style politics, at least not so quickly on the heels of winning an election by pledging not to play old-style politics. Should Emerson manage to solve the softwood lumber dispute with the United States (a very iffy proposition), Harper will come out looking like a genius. But I don't think that'll happen.
After that terrible first mis-step, Harper has done a passable job. I don't agree with everything he voiced during the campaign, nor all of his actions since: for instance, his stance on marijuana is just plain goofy. Legalization of pot (not the Liberals' baked 'decriminalization' but full legalization) makes so much sense on so many levels it's astounding we haven't done it.
There are two possible routes to take here. One would see weed sold in controlled-access stores, the way liquor is in Ontario. This has the advantage of a lucrative government monopoly; however, it wouldn't do too much to discourage grow-ops and their attendant evils, the same way liquor control boards don't stop moonshine. The other route, the one I favour, would allow each Canadian to grow, say, four plants for personal use. Larger grow-ops would be dealt with harshly, as would trafficking. (No need to traffic when everybody can grow more than they can use, anyway.)
Instead, Harper vows to get tough on dope--which just means the problems will be driven further underground. Dumb.
Cutting the GST: This promise is one of two that got Harper elected. I've never really understood why people hate the Goods and Services Tax so much. Do they really believe that items weren't taxed before? Mulroney's big mistake was making the tax visible, in precisely the way the old MST wasn't. However politically popular the promise to reduce the GST is, it remains, economically speaking, iffy at best.
I have a better idea, and one I think Harper could make political hay with. Picture this:

My fellow Canadians, I was elected on a promise to cut the GST by one point immediately, and another point during my term. This is a promise I would gladly have kept. But leading economists have told me that this measure won't do much good for ordinary Canadians, and will cost several million dollars to enact.
Here's what I would like to do instead. I'd like to eliminate the GST entirely on the following items: all EnergyStar appliances; all printed media; and feminine hygiene products. I look to you, the electorate, for direction here. Please contact your MP and make your wishes known to him or her. I will hold a free vote in the House of Commons on Thursday, May 11th and will act on the outcome immediately. If it is decided that the GST should be cut across the board, I will do that. If, instead, it is decided that the GST should be eliminated on select items, I will do that.

I thought long and hard about putting "gasoline" in there. But as was reported over at Dodosville today, Harper won't do anything to address high fuel prices, saying it's something we're "going to have to get used to".
Touchy sentiment, that. True, but touchy. The PM's leaving himself wide open to the accusation that he's in Big Oil's pocket, since much of the high price at the pumps seems to make its way into oil execs' bank accounts. What's ironic is that the people most likely to rebel at at that idea are left-wing environmentalists...who can't fault Harper's vision of high gas prices per se.

No doubt, reducing tax on gas would be a political slam dunk. It might even become necessary if our economy shrinks too much because of fuel inflation. But right now the economy seems to be humming along tickety-boo with gas at $1.10 a litre.
(Tangent: I will never understand how it is that gas in Venezuela is less than twenty cents a litre. We have more gas of our own up here in Canada and yet we pay world market prices? Oh, hush up, nasty evil ecoterrorist.)
Anyway, we DO need to learn to conserve, and so a little sticker shock is probably good for us.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Wouldn't it be neat to see the PM looking to Canadians for direction? Willing to keep his promise, but also offering what might be a better idea?

The child care promise was the other one that got Harper elected. Predictably, the Liberals are bleating that Harper must honour the agreement Martin signed with the provinces before the election. Hello? Liberals? Umm, you lost? Get used to it?
Really, the $1200 a year is a pittance...even Harper knows it. What made this pittance pivotal was the idea behind it: that the government feels YOU are more capable of deciding what to do with your children than it is. That idea, coming out of Liberals-know-best Canada, is nothing short of revolutionary. What next? Will Canadians be allowed to watch whatever they want on their televisions, even if what they want is (horrors!) HBO and Nick at Nite?
Harper needs to keep this promise in its entirety, which means encouraging business to create more daycare spaces (the second half of the promise, the one nobody seems to remember).

Government accountability? It seems to have been addressed, by means of the Act of the same name...to which it looks like all parties had input. Imagine that, Parliament working together on something. What the hell? Have they forgotten they're supposed to be at each other's throats?

Health care wait times. There are many ways to address this crucial issue, and some of them, sorry to say, will take an infusion of money from the private sector. Every new poll suggests Canadians are coming around to this formerly heretical concept. Count on it. Because without private sector involvement, eventually your entire paycheque will go to fund healthcare: we'll all be living in hospitals.

I'll throw in a sixth priority that Harper alludes to frequently: the so-called "fiscal imbalance". He means to fix this, basically, by getting out of the provinces' way, reverting Ottawa to what it once was: a federal government in charge of foreign policy, monetary policy, and not much else. I like this vision of Canada. It's one that worked very well for our first half-century, before bloat began to seep into the federal government. Even tentative steps here will win the Conservatives huge support in Quebec...and just might shut the separatists up for a while.

Should Harper make inroads on even half of those promises, he'll get his majority. And if he gets his majority and continues to govern from the centre, the Liberals might be looking at a long, long time in the wilderness.