Strange way to Create Jobs

Try as he might, Prime Minister Stephen Harper couldn’t come up with an economic plan to help people losing their jobs. He just sat there with a smile pasted on his face.

Harper still won the election but leaders of the other G-20 countries began pressuring him right away to formulate an economic plan.

The International Monetary Fund said Canada should spend 2% of its GDP to stimulate its economy. That’s about $30 billion. That’s not a lot. Harper gave banks, oil companies and big corporations in tax cuts two years ago.

Harper said not to worry. His finance minister, James Flaherty, would reveal a plan at an economic update on Nov. 27.

Sounded great. But the update was a bust. There was nothing. Flaherty just read off some figures. It wasn’t a plan; it wasn’t a budget. The books were cooked. Parliamentary Budget officer Kevin Page said as much. The stats didn’t add up, he said. This is a guy appointed by Harper.

Flaherty could have told it straight. No need to fudge, call it a ‘technical’ deficit. The economic crisis is worldwide. Flaherty didn’t invent it. We don’t blame him for it; we do blame him for doing nothing.

Worst of all. Hidden in the economic update was a great, big, stinking pile of hard-right, conservative ideology - stuff nobody could stand.

First, abolition of the right to strike in the public service, won 75 years ago. Now how would that create more jobs?

Second, abolition of women’s legal right to seek pay equity -- equal pay for work of equal value -- something women won 35 years ago. Now how is that going to help? If women earn less, they’ll get fed up and go back into the kitchen – is that it?

And thirdly, replacing public financing of political parties with private political donations. It’s like going back to the days of the sponsorship scandal eight years ago.

How exactly will that create more jobs, except maybe more jobs for influence peddlers and party bagmen?

Why did ideology trump economics in the economic update?

Was it deliberately to provoke the three opposition parties into voting against the update and and forcing a snap election, so Harper could run against Dion again, and this time really beat him?

If so, the plan backfired. The Liberals and NDP formed a coalition.

Harper chickened. He went to the Governor-General Michaëlle Jean and got her to pull the plug on Parliament for six weeks so he could duck the vote and hang on to power.

Now before he has to face the Commons again, Harper has come up with a job creation plan, which he’ll make public before Christmas.

Harper will appoint in one fell swoop 18 of his friends and party faithful to the Senate.

They’ll be paid $130,400 a year -- whether show up for work or not.

Now there’s a thoughtful Christmas gift.

Harper is doing exactly what he said he would never do – appoint unelected Senators. He broke that promise once before when he appointed his leadership campaign bagman Michael Fortier to the Senate two years ago, and now he plans to do it 18 more times.

The appointments will bring the Senate to a full roster of 105 senators. It costs $157 million a year to run the Senate. That's more than $1 million a year per senator.

These new senators will be different. They won’t be free to vote as they please. They will have to agree to do everything Harper tells them, including vote for a law to make the Senate elected and then resign and try to get elected. It’s not clear what will happen to those who break their promise.

Harper takes this kind of job creating seriously. It came out recently that on Nov. 28, the day after Flaherty delivered his do-nothing update, Harper quietly appointed 32 friends, party faithful and donors to cushy government jobs on commissions, boards and agencies.

He didn’t want them to miss out on partisan largesse in case there was an election called and he got defeated before they got their jobs..

Smart guy that Harper, when it comes to helping his own.