"Liberal Throne Speech Casts Its Shadow Over the Nation"

February 4, 2004

Groundhog Day. I'm not certain what the furry little animals saw when they came out of their holes in the ground on Monday, but I do know that when Paul Martin emerged from his new digs at 24 Sussex Drive, he must have seen his shadow.

Mr. Martin's Groundhog Day Speech from the Throne has assured Canadians of at least several more weeks of fanciful Liberal promises designed to get Mr. Martin re-elected.

Delivered by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, the speech was a 23-page document of vague, feel-good platitudes recycled from previous election documents like the infamous 1993 Red Book.

First the good news. Cash-starved municipalities were finally assured of a break from the federal government in the form of GST rebates, amounting to $7-billion over 10 years. Municipalities were also promised the Liberals would begin negotiations to give them a share of gas taxes, something Conservative Party MPs have long advocated.

Mr. Martin also promised to set aside $2-billion to help the provinces resuscitate their healthcare systems. It comes nowhere near the $25-billion Mr. Martin cut from the provinces as Finance Minister, but Canadians gladly welcome even the smallest dose of preventative medicine.

The bad news is that the vast majority of commitments from Liberal Throne Speeches are never kept. Only about 20 percent of the promises made in the 2002 Speech from the Throne were ever fully implemented.

The rate of success from this speech may be somewhat higher however. That's because so many of the so-called "new" promises aren't really "new" at all. Much of Mr. Martin's "new" commitments are simply Jean Chrétien promises, with the planning underway long before Mr. Martin became Prime Minister.

Still, the word "new" popped up in the speech 31 times, part of the "new" Prime Minister's attempts to differentiate himself from his predecessor and convince Canadians to forget that as Finance Minister, he signed the checks through most of the past decade of Liberal waste and scandal.

The other predominate theme in Monday's speech is bad news for fiscal conservatives. Mr. Martin indicated he'll make a huge effort to "woo the Left" in the upcoming election. So worried about losing urban votes to the NDP, his speech looked more like NDP Leader Jack Layton's Christmas wish list … promising billions of dollars in increased social spending and no tax cuts.
It's a sharp reversal in tactics by Mr. Martin, who appears to have quickly forgotten his recent pledge to "woo the West". Missing from the speech was a plan to resolve the beef crisis and to assist beef producers previously abandoned by the federal Liberals. And while a strategy to end the costly softwood lumber dispute with the United States was glaringly absent from the speech, Mr. Martin did expand upon Mr. Chrétien's multi-billion dollar commitments to the Kyoto Accord, an agreement that has been poorly-received in western Canada.

Mr. Martin is doing his utmost to make Mr. Chrétien's old song sound new again. Yet east or west, conservative or socialist, Canadians everywhere are growing weary of a decade-long exercise in public relations by a government that doesn't govern.

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