by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
april 8, 2004
It turns out that it was, but it could have fooled me. actually it did fool me--I believed it right up until the time I learned it was a joke.
On april 1, the lead item on Bourque Newswatch was that Prime Minister Paul Martin was going to announce that he would scrap the GST and then call an election. Sounded to me like something he would do.
Let’s face it: Martin has not gotten off to a good start since he was sworn in last December. Not only has he been plagued by scandals but he has shown that he lacks his predecessor’s (or most other politician's for that matter) ability to handle himself well in times of crisis. The guy upon whom it was ordained would lead the Liberal Party and be blessed with another Liberal majority, will now have to fight to keep the government in a minority position.
as it was with his seeming ignorance of government expenditures when he was Minister of Finance, Martin spent so much time working to become prime minister that he never thought about what he would do when he reached office. This makes Paul Martin a good candidate for the Christopher Columbus award, an annual award that is bestowed upon the person who most resembles the Italian explorer. Columbus as we all know, when he set out, didn’t know where he was going, when he got there, didn’t know where he was, and when he got back, didn’t know where he had been. and he did it all with someone else’s money.
Martin is also in danger of becoming another John Turner. When Turner was a young MP he met former PM John Diefenbaker on a Carribean beach. Diefenbaker told Turner that he (Turner) would be prime minister one day. Dief was wrong--John Turner was actually prime minister for 79 days. Much like John Turner was, Paul Martin just can’t wait to call an election and get his own mandate. So it would make perfect sense for Martin to promise anything to avoid the electoral wipeout that John Turner suffered when he called an election simply because he just assumed office. That Paul Martin would promise anything, including the abolition of the hated GST, is not so unbelievable as to be clearly recognizable as a joke.
One reason to believe Martin’s promise to get rid of the Goods and Services Tax is that it’s not an original idea. Jean Chrétien won a majority in 1993 by promising to get rid of both the Free Trade agreement with the U.S. and the GST. It was all right there in his Little Red Book, or was that the Red Book (it’s sometimes hard to keep Mao and Jean straight). The Red Book was written by policy advisor Chaviva Hösek and a Quebec MP named Paul Martin. So why wouldn’t the desperate Martin not promise to rid the country of the GST a second time?
Besides, promising to abolish the GST would undoubtedly assure Martin of another majority and the recycled idea would fit Martin who has never had an original idea in his life. He did his undergraduate university work in philosophy because that’s what his father did. He went to law school, although he never practiced because his father went to law school. Paul Martin Sr. told his son not to go into politics until he was 45 but to make money first. So Paul made money first and didn’t run for office until he was 50. Paul Jr. isn’t big on originality.
When it became clear to the Chrétien government that the deficit had to be slashed (the idea came from Marcel Masse, not Paul Martin who nonetheless takes credit for it), Finance Minister Martin eliminated the deficit and reduced the debt. Where other Liberals moaned and groaned about less money for health care and the CBC, Martin just slashed away. So Paul Martin, unlike others, would not be worried about replacing the revenue that would be lost when the GST is abolished. He would just disband what’s left of the military or cut payments to the provinces or make similar spending reductions.
Vote Liberal and you won’t have to pay the GST anymore. Unlike Paul Martin’s statements that he knew nothing, saw nothing or heard nothing while $100 million was misappropriated when he was Finance Minister, this is believable.