Our lunch with Stéphane

A Golden Opportunity: Sound tax cuts for Canadians
Une occasion en or : de vraies réductions d’impôts pour les Canadiens

So, your intrepid bloggers learned last night that Stéphane Dion was going to be speaking at the Canadian Club of London today, Monday, October 29, 2007. Nothing if not dedicated to our liblogging duty, we of course attended.

We weren't the only ones. This was the largest crowd ever for a Canadian Club of London (CCL) event - clearly Dion is popular in the London area. Liberal MPs and candidates from across southwestern Ontario were also there.

Dion was introduced by the CCL president, Doug Ferguson. Yes, the same Doug Ferguson who is National Vice-President, English of the LPC.

In his intro, Ferguson mentioned Dion's "courage under fire" - were truer words ever spoken? If I was writing vol. 2 of Dion's bio, I think that would be a perfect title.

For an audience of business people, today's speech was a "call for economic responsibility; a forward-looking vision for Canada."

The entire speech is available online here: http://www.liberal.ca/story_13263_e.aspx (EN) and here http://www.liberal.ca/story_13263_f.aspx (FR) so I won't go into detail about the contents. (Especially as this blogger is not an economics expert.)

Here are some highlights (paraphrased from my scribbled notes)...

[About the Liberal economic record:] When the Liberals took power, the Wall Street Journal had made Canada an honourary member of the Third World. Thirteen years of Liberal government has made us the envy of the First World.

The challenges we face are enormous. We need to make the right choices right now.

After Toronto, London has the highest number of smog days.... Liberals will have a strong platform for clean air, clean water, a credible plan for climate change and a healthy natural environment.

We need a fairer Canada. More than a half million senior citizens live in poverty... More than a million Canadian children live in poverty. Most poor people work. A job should be a path to dignity and self-sufficiency.

A plan to fight poverty is urgent. It will be at the heart of a Liberal agenda. [BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE HERE]

Conservative interest deductibility proposal will cost Canadian companies billions of dollars and enrich foreign governments.

We need to improve access to post-secondary institutions such as the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College. [YAY FANSHAWE!! - ed.] I don't want to live in a country where only the rich have access to post-secondary education.

He made the point, which he has made before, that another 1% cut of the GST, would be a serious mistake:

There's only one person who has studied economics who wants to cut the GST. Unfortunately that person is the current Prime Minister.

Cutting income taxes gives people the choice to save or spend their savings. When the GST is cut you have to spend to benefit. Canada needs people to save more, which leads to investment, which leads to innovation, job creation etc.

He called the proposed GST cut an "irresponsible use of the Canadian budget. It will cost $6 billion a year or a massive $30 billion over 5 years. A budgetary decision of that magnitude should focus on creating jobs and improving Canadians’ standard of living."

He talked about the Liberal record of "significantly reducing taxes across the board. We significantly lowered the cost of doing business in Canada. We reduced corporate income tax rates from 28 per cent, to a planned 19 per cent by 2010." He committed to further corporate tax and personal income tax reductions.

We must take advantage of this golden opportunity to offer broad-based income tax relief to Canadians, while investing in the urgent priorities of Canadians.

In response to a question of Doug Reycraft, Mayor of Southwest Middlesex [?] and on the exec of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), Dion committed to working with municipalities to strengthen their capacity to manage their infrastructure needs. He said "if there is a fiscal imbalance it's for the third level of government - municipalities. I will be an excellent partner for municipalities." He noted that any tax cuts would be responsible and would not destroy government's capacity to do essential things like infrastructure renewal. (Note - he got lots of standing O's at his speech to the FCM in Calgary a few months ago; he obviously has a good record with them from when he was intergov affairs and environment minister.)

After the speech and questions he did a scrum with local media. (Click here for the Facebook photo album.) One of the questions of course was about the Blair Wilson thing. Asked "Do you still support Wilson?" Dion responded (paraphrase from memory): "I support his actions and call on the Conservative government to do the same thing." Dion noted that Wilson contacted Elections Canada himself and asked them to investigate as soon he learned about allegations of Elections Act violations by his campaign. He resigned from his revenue critic position and from the Liberal caucus immediately and is calling on Elections Canada for a speedy investigation and resolution to the matter.

Contrast that with the Conservatives who are not cooperating with Elections Canada about violations that Elections Canada has reported, and have not stepped down from their positions; in fact several are cabinet ministers.

Here's what Deb Prothero had to say on the Unity Facebook group:

Stephane Dion addressed the largest crowd ever in the 102 year history of the Canadian Council of London at noon today. He was focussed and deliberate in his presentation on how to create a Greener, Fairer & Richer Canada. The crowd was receptive and to demonstrate his capacity for leadership, Dion took several questions, giving unrehearsed answers that were short, sweet and hit the nail on the head and sometimes a delightful bit of humour. Results: standing ovation from the business community!

My impression - Stephane Dion is the only leader with the courage to face the Canadian people's questions and the media's questions in a scrum afterward. Only a leader who can do this is capable of the depth of principled thought and emotional maturity to take this nation into the future. I want my Canada back and I want Dion leading it. And his integrity under fire and his sense of humour are so refreshing!

For more on Dion's London appearance, see also "Our lunch with Stéphane, part 2 - social issues":
http://femmeverte.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-lunch-with-stphane-part-2-social.html

After the Cdn Club event, Dion toured UWO's Biotron Institute for Experimental Climate Change Research.

Elgin/London West provincial all-candidates meeting

Went to an all-candidates-&-referendum-info meeting for Elgin-Middlesex-London and London West this evening, sponsored by "Women - Our Votes Count," among others.

The sitting MPPs for the two ridings are Steve Peters (Elgin - Labour Minister, formerly Agriculture Minister) and Chris Bentley (London West - Training, Colleges & University Minister, formerly Labour Minister).

Candidates from the PCs, NDP, Greens and Freedom Party were also there, as well as someone from the referendum education body who gave a 5-minute summary (which I'm not going to repeat here; you can get it all at yourbigdecision.ca).

Overall impressions of the candidates . . . I can't pretend to be objective or unbiased, but boy, I really don't like those PCs. The provincial ones are just as prone to revisionist history, fairy-tales and self-righteous finger-pointing as their federal cousins.

Allison Graham, for instance (PC candidate in London West) - decries poverty and homelessness and talks about her experience working with the Salvation Army. Yet it was a PC government under Mike Harris that cancelled affordable housing projects (the minute they got into office as I recall) and slashed welfare payments, putting thousands of people out on the streets because they could no longer afford housing. Ms. Graham didn't mention that part.

Ms. Graham's solution for poverty and homelessness? Entrepreneurism.

Both Ms. Graham and Bill Fehr (PC candidate in Elgin-Middlesex-London) talked a lot about clean air and water. So, ah, anybody remember what government it was that privatized water testing and degraded environmental lab services to an extent that the Walkerton scandal could happen? Oh right, it was the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government.

Neither Conservative candidate acknowledged their party's responsibility for the messes that they're now blaming the Liberals for - in health, education, housing, poverty, the environment, downloading to municipalities. I don't think too many people in the audience were fooled though - our memories aren't that short.

It certainly doesn't say much for the PCs' devotion to principles of accountability and transparency.

OK, so I've vented about the PCs, I'll move onto the environment.

As my neighbour mentioned to me, we really wish that the provincial Liberals would borrow some of the NDP's and Green's environment policies, e.g. no more new nuclear plants, more renewables, more conservation etc. Or to put it differently, maybe the provincial Liberals could borrow some of the federal Liberals' environment policies! Dion's policies seem to me to be much more environmentally-friendly than the provincial Liberals.

Gary Brown, the London West Green candidate introduced an interesting idea. Not sure of the exact numbers but something like this - They would take the ???$40 billion??? earmarked for new nuclear power and give it to homeowners ($12,000 each) for renewable energy projects to take their homes right off the grid. I'm sure there are lots of bugs - e.g. getting enough solar panels etc. and trained technicians to actually implement this - but I like the direction. And it's great to get some innovative ideas out there for discussion. [Anybody who actually knows anything about this - feel free to set me straight on the details.]

Although I've converted to big-L Liberalism federally, I'm still partial to the provincial NDP and I was impressed with the Green candidate. But after listening to the PCs, I'm more determined than ever not to do anything that would help them win, so I'm leaning toward a strategic vote.

And I'm planning to vote in favour of MMP, hoping to see some Greens in the legislature eventually because they have a lot to offer.