Technicolour Dreaming

There's Stephane Dion touting the Liberals' richer, fairer, greener Canada, promising only they are capable of delivering Canada into this Utopia with its cornucopia of plenty for all.

Mr. Dion has given a pass on the foundation of his election promises, his Green Shift, and shifted over to promising economic gain for the pain of overlooking practicalities and voting Liberal. Despite, somehow, the polls demonstrating a Liberal lag in voters' opinion in consideration of whom voters consider to be the most promising manager of the country's economy; and it wasn't him.

The Liberals' four-year, $55-billion financial overhaul of Canada, bringing us neatly through the 21st Century as a prime example of what a country can accomplish to furnish its people with unparalleled opportunities for personal growth and trade expansion to benefit all, has been unveiled with their "Richer, Fairer, Greener: An Action Plan for the 21st Century". Sounds appealing and rife with promise.

Everyone is set to benefit from the largess of the Liberal plans. From the country's poor, to its middle-class families, farmers, auto workers with yet another tax-paid infusion - and immigrants as well. No one will be left behind on the tide that will inevitably raise Canada into a perpetual state of plenty, thanks to the grand, some might say grandiose economic planning of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The Liberals are set to adapt to a new policy guaranteeing "respectful federalism" with the provinces. They will bolster the failing manufacturing sector, bring poverty to its unwilling knees, and promote the country's arts and culture sectors. We will all flourish under the beneficent gaze of a Liberal government.

Permitting ourselves in our new state of bliss to forget previous Liberal governments that yanked social network programs out from under Canadians' expectations of universality of access and program-fairness inviolability.

Elderly and spent civic infrastructures, from bridges to roads, public buildings and allied structures will be renewed, retrofitted, made spanking new again by a massive infusion of public dollars. Doubtless British Columbia's problem-prone rail system will be overhauled as well as bringing on new rail systems to benefit a country whose Liberal administrators are hell-bent on transforming as eco-friendly.

All to the good, no doubt about that. Sounds like a fanciful translation of someone's dream cycle of perfection in public administration. "A Liberal government will never put Canada into deficit. Period," vowed Stephane Dion earnestly, and who would not believe his owlish professorial integrity?

New revenue will just roll effortlessly into government coffers, some $40-billion of it, from the Green Shift carbon tax alone.

Increased spending for badly needed social housing; to honour Canada's pledge to increase foreign aid; the production of a more reliable medical care system are all in the books. And then there's the lapsed Kelowna Accord still awaiting the original promise made by a previous Liberal prime minister who dithered away his opportunity to take Canada into international respect and prosperity.

It was, Mr. Dion reminds us, a previous Liberal government that eliminated the deficit inherited by its predecessor-Conservative reigns. Alas, in the process also butchering Canada's pride in its social programs, more's the pity. But here they are again, promising to make right what they disrupted in the first instance.

Not only that, but the Liberals would root out waste and (sshh! corruption...!) improving government bureaucracy, to find savings in programs that can be improved upon by abolishing waste.

Revenues from the Green Shift carbon tax would enable the Liberal government to do all of that. Puzzling in and of itself, since the carbon tax touted by the Liberals is expected to be revenue-neutral, finding its way back into the tax-payer pocket by way of reduced taxes.

We won't even think about manufacturers and producers and distributors increasing their prices to consumers to make up for the additional burden placed on them by those same carbon taxes.

Something for everyone in this ambitiously plan; even tax cuts aimed at large corporations. What's that annoying buzz? Oh yes, the Liberal accusations that the Conservative government was cutting tax revenues too deeply in decreasing the Goods and Services Tax.

Isn't it just like the party pooper he is for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to scoff at the feasibility of the Liberals' detailed, well-thought-out plan for economic success for all Canadians?