You probably already know this: today should be the last day of the government gift-giving season.
Now, the calendar should turn to the more ethereal world of the 60 days of policies and promises. Until Friday, government politicians can outright give you a chicken: after that, provincial politicos of all stripes are stuck with just promising you 20 fantastically superlative pullets at some unspecified time in the future.
Aug. 4, tomorrow, marks 60 days until the provincial election and, this close to the election, campaigning Progressive Conservatives aren’t supposed to use the government mantle to lock whoever the next government is into spending commitments.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Premier Heather Stefanson
Candidates can obviously make promises and release platforms, but as only campaigning wannabes.
The idea is also that, until the provincial election, the sitting government doesn’t get to influence your vote by magically dispensing gobs of government cash.
And gobs of cash there have been, especially in the past few weeks: estimates by the NDP opposition have put new commitments by the Stefanson government at $2.5 billion, and have argued that, if all the unbudgeted new promises are kept, there will have to be significant cuts in other areas. (But you know what? The NDP are campaigning, too, so the $2.5-billion figure probably has everything including the kitchen sink thrown in to make the biggest number possible.)
The Stefanson government has laid out its plans over the last six to eight months, a careful effort to rebrand as something other than the conservatives they plainly have been. They’ve tried to recast themselves, as evidenced by the last throne speech and provincial budget, as the caring conservatives.
The PCs have tried to distance themselves from their own reputation of cutbacks and freezes, recasting themselves not as a government of spending cuts and tax breaks, but instead as a government of increased spending — and still tax breaks. They’ve leaned into the progressive, but carefully tried to keep the conservative brand for their regular voters in the process.
It’s a marvellous fiscal magic trick, promised by many but delivered by none.
It’s also political pragmatism in its rawest form: having checked their math and consulted the oracles of public opinion polling, the Stefanson government has clearly decided it would benefit from trying to land the segment of voters who might have short enough memories to vote for the gift of today’s shiny bauble, as opposed to remembering the spending cuts that got the province to where it is now. That is political business as usual, common to governments and oppositions alike.
Voting is your own personal perogative: you get to consider the recent spate of good-news announcements by the Stefanson government, announcements on everything from deals with doctors to plans to keep the rural elderly closer to their homes to housing funding, and decide if the announcements change your voting intentions.
It’s perhaps a better idea, though, to try and keep in mind the totality of what governments — and oppositions — have said and done throughout their last term in office.
And keep in mind a simple fact about all political committments from all sides, especially those made in the heat of the election moment: there’s likely to be the usual post-election refrain, “When we made those promises, we didn’t realize how economic growth wouldn’t live up to our expectations/how inflation would impact the province/how interest rates would take such a big fiscal bite…”
It’s surprising how often political parties promise something before an election, only to say quickly after the vote that the promises actually weren’t possible after all.
