Andrew Coyne's analysis of Scheer's platform - National Post   
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   Like the other parties, the Tories are in the habit of counting spending   
   increases as tax cuts (because they are delivered in the form of “tax   
   credits”), while grouping actual tax cuts with spending increases. The   
   platform offers no annual totals for    
   either spending or taxes, or even how much either has been raised or lowered.   
      
   By my reckoning the platform includes some $6 billion in spending cuts in the   
   first year, rising to $13.6 billion in the fourth — more than enough to   
   cover the cost of the dozens of relatively piddling spending increases it   
   identifies.   
      
   How real these cuts are may nevertheless be debated. By far the largest —   
   accounting for roughly a third of the total — is achieved merely by   
   extending the period over which the current Liberal infrastructure plan would   
   be rolled out, to 15 years    
   from 12.   
      
   The program would still cost the same $187 billion in total, but less in each   
   year. That’s not smaller government, just slower.   
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   Another significant chunk of savings is supposed to come from freezing   
   operating expenses, as well as public service employment, at 2019-20 levels. I   
   don’t doubt it can be done — the combined effect, five years out, would be   
   to leave operating    
   spending about six per cent lower than the level to which it would have   
   otherwise grown. But that does mean cuts in real terms, and without specifying   
   where these would occur, the party is asking its opponents to fill in the   
   blanks in the most lurid    
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   The $1.5 billion to be cut from corporate subsidies every year is surely   
   welcome — you could easily cut five times as much — though again   
   unspecified. Less welcome is the proposed 25 per cent cut in the foreign aid   
   budget, especially when justified    
   by fraudulent claims about how much of our foreign aid now goes to “middle-   
   and upper-income countries.”   
      
   That same spirit of guile informs much of the rest of the platform.   
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   It is to be expected that a party would craft its campaign promises with one   
   eye on its popular appeal, but one would hope the other eye was cast somewhere   
   in the vicinity of sound public policy.   
   So many of the Tory platform proposals fail that basic test. They aren’t just   
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   cynical: they’re bad ideas.   
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   How it became “conservative” policy to give out tax credits like dog   
   treats to members of the public who behave in obedience with government   
   designs — who insulate their homes, or ride the bus, or enroll their   
   children in fitness programs — I    
   will never know. These are meddlesome at best, superfluous (so far as people   
   would have done the same anyway) at worst.   
      
   The idea that housing might be made more affordable by loosening lending   
   regulations — lifting bank “stress tests,” extending amortization   
   periods — is similarly poorly judged. Quite apart from the risks to the   
   financial system, its chief effect    
   will be to stimulate the demand for housing, and further inflate prices.   
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   Of the Tory plan to substitute yet more subsidies and regulations, in place of   
   carbon pricing, as a means of reducing Canada’s carbon emissions, much has   
   already been written. Suffice to say that Mark Jaccard, a leading climate   
   economist, has calculated that emissions will actually rise under the Tory   
   plan,   
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   let alone fall enough to meet our international commitments.   
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   If you are tough on crime, soft on guns, worried about illegal immigration,   
   not so concerned about climate change, the platform is intended to signal to   
   you that the Tories are your party.   
      
   But if what you seek is a coherent vision of conservatism in the 21st century,   
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   you will have to look elsewhere.   
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