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Posted by Kate Butler Jun 29, 2007 |
It’s been with great interest that I have followed the current saga in Ottawa this month, this time involving politicians from Atlantic Canada and our Prime Minister and his loyal henchmen. From what I’ve seen so far, I would have to say that for a man who tends to make few tactical errors, one such error was certainly made in the handling of this whole issue.
For those of you who have been living under a rock (or, of course, those who do not live in Canada), the current entanglement in Ottawa is nothing particularly new. This beautiful country of ours is constantly in battle over the increasingly complicated subject of equalization and the so-called fiscal imbalance.
Background
To give this issue a bit of context, we have to look at why it is that the eastern Canadian Premiers are feeling so hard-done by. According to New Brunswick Premier Rodney MacDonald, the federal Conservatives broke an election promise regarding off-shore oil resources and equalization payments.
Premier MacDonald and his counterpart in Newfoundland, Danny Williams, claim that they were told prior to the January 2006 election that non-renewable resources would be exempt from equalization payments. The Premiers are referencing the Atlantic Accord, signed by Williams and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in February 2005, and basically promised Atlantic Canadians that they would get to keep off-shore oil resources, and not lose out on equalization payments from the federal government.
What It All Means
The interesting thing about this whole debacle is how badly the federal government has looked in the eyes of the media. It’s hard for me to see how the Atlantic Accord makes any sense at all, and yet, the way that the Harper government has handled this has meant that the Atlantic Premiers seem relatively coherent. As a western Canadian, I don’t tend to feel particularly strongly about the Atlantic Accord, and yet the fact that the Harper government has so blatantly broken a promise makes me (and the media and much of the interested public) suddenly care more.
Harper has been extremely careful in crafting his public image: above all, he wants to make sure that Canadians see him as mainstream and trustworthy. Therefore, incidents such as the equalization disaster of the past month, cannot be seen as anything but hugely problematic for the Conservatives; time will tell whether these problems dissolve away, or whether the CPC is in real trouble.