I draw the article below to the attention of all those who voted NDP last election so as to defeat Liberals on the grounds that giving Harper a minority would not cause lasting damage to Canada.
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Tom Flanagan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's longtime confidant and former chief of staff, is delighted at the Conservatives' success in "tightening the screws on the federal government" to dramatically reduce its significance in the daily lives of Canadians.
The Conservatives' three budgets have left Ottawa financially incapable of offering any new national social program like affordable housing, higher education or day care. Although overall spending went up, mostly on the military, measures were taken to deplete revenues to the point future governments' hands will be tied unless they raise taxes or run deficits, both prescriptions for political suicide.
By 2010, federal revenues as a share of GDP will fall to their lowest level since John Diefenbaker left office in 1963. Three years before national medicare, revenues were 14.9 per cent of GDP. They rose to a peak of 19.5 per cent in 1974-75 but are projected to drop to just 15.3 per cent in 2009-10.
In fact, the federal Finance Department's fiscal monitor, released at the end of March, shows that revenue growth came to a sudden halt in January, shrinking that month's surplus to a mere $600 million as the GST and personal income tax reductions started eating into Ottawa's tax take
"They've gradually re-engineered the system. I'm quite impressed with it," Flanagan told The Canadian Press in an interview last month. "They're boxing in the ability of the federal government to come up with new program ideas... The federal government is now more constrained, the provinces have more revenue and conservatives should be happy." Much more here:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/columnists/top3/story/4161048p-4748030c.html
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