Stephen puts us in our place

While more words were spent on the federal budget last week than dollars on the real problems that face us as a nation, I thought I might add a few words of my own.

The Prime Minister has indicated that he doesn’t care about votes out this way, though he will be happy to have his party faithful, especially those cashing their child tax credit returns, give some of it back to the party. We knew Harper and his advisors had contempt for us, so in a way it’s good to have the air cleared, though most of our regional Conservative MPs are looking pretty dog-faced and their bud, the Premier of Nova Scotia, was again, seemingly, the last to know.

I’m no tax lawyer, but my early calculations are as follows: a two-income family with two kids, earning a combined income of $80,000 will save $620. A one-income family with two kids with an income of $50,000 will save $829, with $209 from an increase in the basic personal amount credited for a work at home spouse.

Speaking with tongue deeply in cheek, one might say that if we could just convince more spouses to quit their paying jobs and women to have more babies, there’s no end to the money they might have! Sounds like an episode of Father Knows Best, eh?

If you’re a two-income family with no children, earning a combined $21,167 - oops! No such savings, you! You’re obviously not one of the chosen and will just have to work harder.

And for those whose kids are over 17, raised with the sweat of your brows and deficit financing that keep the banks smiling, no savings for you either. That’ll teach you not to support those Liberals and New Democrats!

If you’re a one-income family making $150,000 a year, with a work-at-home spouse and two kids, you too will receive $829. Seems fair, what with the cost of keeping your kids’ cellphone accounts covered?

Gosh knows, with those sorts of Harper tax goodies, you might have some money left over to take advantage of the government’s largess in augmenting the RESP to make sure that your kids have easy access to post-secondary education, ensuring that no under-class or First Nations kids take your kids’ rightful place in the natural order.



Those at risk were overlooked

Sure, it’s hard to be opposed to kids and, indeed, some of this money, transferred to folks in the mid- to lower income class categories, will be welcomed, though it’s peanuts when looking for quality day care.

However, those kids really at risk - those who need a breakfast to keep them learning well at school and those in families in too many of our First Nations communities - should have been our first priority. For them, $500 high-tech hockey skates, purchased by the Finance Minister for his son before budget day, just aren’t on the shopping list.

But the real story of the budget was how the PM and his right-hand men from Nova Scotia undid what many saw as Atlantic Canada’s best chance to an equitable future. They cut our promise adrift in order to play for votes in central Canada. And while I’m a friend of Quebec, M. Charest’s promise to spend their bounty on tax cuts is a real disappointment, given that their argument for such money was that it was needed for schools, hospitals and roads.

What the Tories fail to understand is that the money they just put in the pockets of these budget “winners” will be quickly forgotten, perhaps as early as yesterday’s Quebec election. Breaking his word and harming the future of those of us in the Atlantic region will be remembered for a generation.

Harper may have to do quite a bit better than he thought in Quebec and Ontario to make up for the Conservative seats he has put at risk in the Atlantic Provinces, in Saskatchewan and B.C. We’re starting to get an inkling of who fits where in his vision and what he meant when he declared that we wouldn’t recognize Canada after four years of a majority Conservative government.