Tuesday, November 29, 2005

My 30 point plan for making Canada a better place

Here is what I'm looking for on each of the issues that will come up in this campaign (not that anyone should care):

Economy:

1. An acceleration the personal income tax cuts already scheduled to take place and a flattening of the tax brackets.
2. A hold on spending. Ten years ago, the federal government spent about $100 billion a year. Now, it's up to $180 billion. This is madness. And pay down that frickin' debt.
3. Expand free trade whenever and wherever you can.

National security:

4. More targeted spending on things like urban transit security and borders. We are on al-Qaeda's list and we are vulnerable. Let's prevent an attack before it happens.
5. A strong defence of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Foreign Policy:

6. A vigourous defense of our efforts in Afghanistan and by extension, a defense of Western liberal democratic values.
7. Support for UN reform. Broaden the Security Council to include India and Brazil, among others.
8. Giving Israel a fair shake.
9. Encourage reform in the Third World to reduce corruption and introduce democratic, market-oriented policy frameworks.

National unity:

10. Defend the Clarity Act and speak the truth to Quebeckers about sovereignty.

Justice:

11. Mandatory minimums for violent crime.
12. A reform of the parole system. Don't end conditional release but limit it.
13. Scale back the gun control program. It's of use, but a limited one at that.
14. Don't move on the decrim of dope. The penalties are fine the way they are.

Environment:

15. Scrap Kyoto. The "science" is bogus.

Indian Affairs:

16. Take a good hard look at what 35 years of the Indian Act has wrought (Kasechewan, anyone?) and take steps to end the culture of dependency.

Transportation and infrastructure:

17. Open up Canadian domestic travel to foreign carriers (I don't want to pay a grand to go visit my sister in Winnipeg, dammit).
18. Get out of the business of funding municipal infrastructure programs. Stop overtaxing Canadians and give the local level the tax room to take care of it.

Immigration:

19. Place more emphasis on the economic and entrepreneurial class of immigrants rather than the family class.
20. Make sure you properly fund the provinces in the areas of English as a second language training so they aren't left holding the bag for federal immigration practices.
21. Put an end to the bleeding heart refugee system.

Health care

22. Allow for the provinces to experiment with private delivery within a public system.

Families

23. Let the provinces deal with day care and keep the feds out of it.

Heritage:

24. Make the funding requirements for arts projects more stringent (I believe there is a role for government here but too much of what qualifies as "art" are the politically motivated dribblings of stoned twenty-somethings);
25. Merge CBC Newsworld with the main network and do the same in French Canada.

Agriculture:

26. Put an end to farm subsidies. Now.

Civil service:

27. End the practice of priority staffing for ex-politicos.
28. Loosen bilingualism requirements (don't eliminate it, just reduce it) and scrap any and all hiring quotas.

Democratic reform:

29. Set fixed election dates.
30. Look at proportional representation (the way the system is now, the separatists hold the balance of power, and that's not good for anyone).

5 Comments:

At 10:33 AM, Blogger Road Hammer said...

I would respectfully suggest that this version of the CPC has more in common with Paul Martin than with Mike Harris. For instance, they would not cancel a single bit of the pre-government spending announced by the Libs. Mackay has been clear about that.

 
At 12:13 PM, Blogger Road Hammer said...

The CPC needs to cancel all that spending, and pronto. They also need to be clear about their position on the Clarity Act. I also didn't hear anything out of them with regards to the hiring quota policy that was briefly implemented last week by Public Works.

Where is the Reform party when you need it, dammit?

And since when do liberals defend Christmas?

 
At 12:57 PM, Blogger Road Hammer said...

Who cares what the Toronto Star says? Anyone who reads their editorial page is going to vote Liberal anyways.

 
At 1:18 PM, Blogger Road Hammer said...

If trends from 2004 hold, I think there will already be one Green voter in my house and that's already one too many.

 
At 3:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You make some good points about the civil service. How what amounts to linguistic apartheid can exist in this country is beyond me.

 

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