Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff announced today that he would support the Conservative Party’s budget only if they agreed to certain Liberal-proposed amendments. Ignatieff said he wanted regular budget updates (Mar, June, Dec 2009) that would determine whether or not the Conservatives are successfully implementing a budget that is helping Canada and its citizens. At each update, a confidence vote would be held so that if the opposition parties are not happy with the Conservatives’ progress, they could take down the government.

This “probation” that Ignatieff is proposing has been met with mixed feelings.

Some people are commending Ignatieff for allowing the budget to go through, as he recognizes that a speedy budget will be in the best interest of Canadians. However, I think that he only supported the budget because the Liberal Party was not ready for another election and he is buying some time to gain funding and support from Canadians. He only threw in the probation clause to protect his public image. Had he fully supported the budget without his proposed amendment, he would be accused of having no backbone, of breaking the coalition, and much more. Also, the economy is still going to get worse before it starts to improve, so you never know, once the economy starts improving, the Liberals may reject a Conservative budget report in order to try and seize power. Then it will seem as if they are leading us out of the recession.

NDP Leader Jack Layton commented that Ignatieff has disregarded the coalition agreement and that the new “coalition” on the Hill is the Liberals and the Conservatives. Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe was equally pessimistic, calling the coalition dead. However, Ignatieff never acknowledged that the coalition is finished, stating that it accomplished its goal here by forcing Harper to back down and create a proper budget and that the coalition may be needed again in the future to accomplish another important task. Clearly Ignatieff has the ability to manipulate the NDP and Bloq because the Liberal Party is their only way to power. Regardless of what Layton and Duceppe said today, they will jump at the chance of a coalition if one of the budgetary reports is deemed unsatisfactory.

As for the actual contents of the budget, there has also been mixed feelings. Many people feel that the budget is lacking in practicality. They don’t see how the budget will help find them a job today if they are unemployed, or how it will provide day care for working parents. As well, people don’t see a proper exit strategy allowing for Canada to get out of its deficit once the recession is over.

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Tags: Budget, coalition, Conservative Party, harper, ignatieff, Liberal Party

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.