A Long Left-wing Wish List For Coalition Short On Cohesion

Even retired Tembec chief executive officer Frank Dottori had visions of sugar plums dancing in his head this week: With a coalition government, maybe we'll spend less on the military, on bombing in Afghanistan. We will, I hope, spend more money to save our forest industry, which is agonizing.
If you think Barack Obama has his hands full managing down expectations, our new coalition government will have an even harder time keeping its backers happy. After all, its leaders don't have an ounce of the Obama potion in them combined and the cabinet is bound to be about as cohesive as a box of repelling magnets.
How will Finance Minister, say, John McCallum, who can't yet estimate the size of a stimulus package because the prudent thing to do before committing to a dollar figure is to see where we're starting from, beat back demands from Industry Minister, say, Libby Davies, to keep sawmills open in B.C. and christmas present ideas for your boyfriend Quebec?
How will Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, say, Justin Trudeau, repel Bloc Qu b cois demands that the projected growth in provincial equalization payments be restored to the trajectory it was on before Tory Finance Minister Jim Flaherty capped it a few weeks ago? Reinstating the projections would mean an extra $1-billion for Quebec in 2009-10.
How will Transportation Minister, say, Ralph Goodale, explain to Bloc MP Pierre Paquette that, well, no, the coalition cannot promise to have a high-speed rail link between Quebec City and Windsor up and running by next summer or even the summer after that? Try 2020, at the earliest.
The Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition has given little indication its members agree on a specific, detailed set of policy actions. It doesn't look like it would exactly hit the ground running.
Other than the apple pie promises outlined in Monday's tripartite Policy Accord to Address the Present Economic Crisis - such as accelerating infrastructure spending - the document proposes nothing that either the Tories haven't already promised or that will provide the short-term boost the economy needs. Hilariously, it lists the cancellation of $45-million in cuts to arts programs (mostly devoted to foreign travel) among other priorities to stimulate the economy. Chief economic adviser Margaret Atwood must have recommended that.
Coalition backers keep saying that Canada has failed to plow that magic 2 per cent worth of gross domestic product in new spending into the economy that countries attending last month's Group of 20 summit figured might reasonably be needed to prevent a recession from turning into a depression.
The truth is, no country has spent that much yet. At best, they have promised money. The U.S. has focused on stabilizing the financial system, not delivering economic stimulus. That won't likely come until the week following Mr. Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20.
You only have to look at Mr. Obama's economic policy team - made up of Clinton-era free marketeers - to figure out that it won't be the game-changing grab bag the American left dreams of. The package will be big, newborn baby girl present but it will be targeted and, most important, it will be temporary. A New Deal not.
The U.S. stimulus package needs to be bigger than Ottawa's for two reasons: Their economy is bigger and in more trouble than ours. And second, america past and present 6th edition state governments in the U.S. can't legally run deficitshave far more limited financial resources than any Canadian province. Here, the responsibility for injecting that 2 per cent of GDP into the economy falls on 14 governments. In the U.S.almost all of the stimulus must come from Washington.
But the coalition backers here won't let that detail spoil their fun as they write up their Christmas list.