McNeil getting his chance to shine
Liberal leader Stephen McNeil emerges as the default victor on the winners-and-losers political scorecard as the provincial government’s financial outlook becomes increasingly bleak this f all.
McNeil, who has struggled over the past two years to define a party vision that voters can eagerly embrace, has finally found a little meat to sink his teeth into.
It’s not that the Liberal boss has undergone some sor t of transformation since the June election, where his party picked up all of two new seats among the many up for grabs and he took over as leader of the Official Opposition.
It’s just that the financial woes being shouldered by Premier Darrell Dexter and his NDP government have created some open political territory that McNeil is happy to occupy.
With news of a $590-million deficit this year and the new NDP government under fire for backing away from optimistic promises made during the election campaign, McNeil has hit his stride as the guy who gets to hammer the NDP over broken promises and attack the choices the government makes in the months ahead.
“This is a government that knows it misled Nova Scotians," McNeil said Monday after Dexter and Finance Minister Graham Steele presented the government’s response to the economic advisory panel’s report on the economy.
“They did it intentionally during the election campaign, and since they’ve gained power, have been finding every possible way to back away from the commitments they’ve made."
Political tradition dictates that the third-place Tories, who get a big chunk of the blame as the previous party in government that stewed up this financial mess to begin with, now hold little moral sway in their criticism of the NDP.
There is no denying the Tories’ share some responsibility for what economist Tim O’Neill last week described as a structural deficit that goes beyond the ebbs and flows of economic activity.
O’Neill is a member of the economic advisory panel struck by Dexter to help the government sort its way through the red-inked provincial books. He told journalists last week that even after an adjustment to the deficit claimed by the NDP, which includes two years of funding for universities, instead of one, the annual overspending remains a major problem that needs major intervention.
The extra money for universities — being paid in this year’s budget rather than 2010-11, for no clear reason — is one of the items that McNeil has seized upon as part of his claim that the NDP have deliberately inflated the current budget.
“From June 9 to present day, they’ve added $500 million to the deficit of this province by the decisions they’ve made."
He also pointed to the decision to remove the HST from electricity, a $54-million fund for government restructuring, and $81 million for wilderness protection as examples of poor choices that will add to the deficit.
In fact, the land protection fund is a capital expense that is not part of the operating deficit, but will add to the total debt.
Still, this is a no-lose situation for the Liberals and they’ve been prepping for it since before the election campaign ended.
McNeil’s own election promises came without detailed costing and probably also wouldn’t have withstood the deficit battering that the NDP are attempting to fight back against. The Liberal leader says his proposed small-business tax cut would have done more to stimulate the economy than anything the NDP has done since coming to power.
It is easy pickings for McNeil and the Liberals, who now get to snare the moral high ground as the party that charged, even before votes were cast in June, that the NDP could not keep its promises to balance next year’s budg et.
A more relevant note is McNeil’s statement on provincial tax levels, compared to other provinces, that neatly summarizes the conundrum facing the NDP as they seek the best choices to remedy Nova Scotia’s fiscal outlook: “We are becoming more uncompetitive, and we already were before this.
“If we’re going to continue to raise taxes, and think that’s how we’re going to move towards economic prosperity, we’re in big trouble."
Source: The Chronicle Herald, column by Marilla Stephenson, Wednesday, November 18, 2009, p. A4
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