I've noticed that many commentators are referencing the Liberal promise (broken) to scrap the GST in relation to the Conservatives promise (broken) on not changing tax regulations with respect to Income Trusts. The logic goes that the Canadian electorate did not punish the Chretien Liberals and therefore the same is likely on Income Trusts. Now the electorate may not end up punishing the Conservatives over Income Trust, that remains to be seen, but I did want to point that the Liberals were punished. They barely won a majority in 1997 and their popular vote dropped to 38.5%. If the "Three Sisters" of the conservative movement weren't so busy fighting against each other and instead offered an acceptable alternative the Liberals would have won a minority government at best and could have possibly lost their government.
So the Chretien government was punished and it is not the Liberals fault that they didn't notice.
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Chretien was punished
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 3, 2006 11:12 AM.
The previous post in this blog was Wake me up.
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Comments (4)
Didn’t Cretien end up as the longest serving PM (or pretty close?). I’m sure Harper would be happy to receive some of that same ‘punishment’.
Posted by Jeff | November 3, 2006 12:29 PM
Posted on November 3, 2006 12:29
The profile of Trust investors is the profile of Conservative voters. Many are very angry on a very personal basis. This will not be good for the CPC. I have 4 voters who will NOT vote CPC.
Posted by Bill MacLean | November 3, 2006 3:23 PM
Posted on November 3, 2006 15:23
Jeff: Not even close. (MacD, Laurier, Mac-K, Trudeau easily beat him for time in office, and he just barely surpasses Mulroney and St. Laurent - neither of whom had their chief opponent split into two parts.)
Greg: I was still in elementary school during the 1997 election, but my understanding is that the Libs’ seat count and popular vote declined more on the basis of their cuts to social programs. GST might have been a nice side-issue, but I don’t see anyone changing their vote on that. If anything, it would’ve been the refusal to repeal free trade.
Consider: numerically speaking, most of the Lib decline could be attributed to the last stand of the PCs, who won an extra 18 seats, mostly picking off Libs (who declined by 22 seats since 1993). (Compare the Maritimes in 1993 and 1997.) The Maritime campaign was all based on campaigning to the left of the Libs on government programs and transfers.
Posted by Jarrett | November 3, 2006 4:43 PM
Posted on November 3, 2006 16:43
It’s election day in the U.S. and I just heard Adler sucking up BIG TIME to some Democrat operative. When he ended the interview by saying to this fellow, “Thank you so much for what you’re doing” I just couldn’t take it anymore. Absolutely Adler is entitled to his opinion and I’m glad he has an opinion. But to be so vehemently behind a “September 10th Party” (as Mark Steyn would say), with absolutely no ideas other than, “we like whatever George Bush doesn’t!” just makes no sense to me. The equivalent up here would be to support Bob Rae, Mr. Senior Rhetoric of the Liberal candidates. But who knows, maybe Adler supports him too.
Posted by Robert W. | November 7, 2006 4:27 PM
Posted on November 7, 2006 16:27