In the last election campaign, Stephen Harper held his first rally of the New Year in the basement of an Ottawa hotel where he unveiled the top five priorities of his government. They were — you probably know them by heart by now :
- Clean up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act.
- Cut the GST.
- Crack down on crime.
- Universal Child Care Benefit ($100 a month per child under 6)
- Establish a Patient Wait Times Guarantee
How about another five? Ok, then, the Prime Minister just gave a speech on that subject and here they are:
- Clean up the environment.
- Cut taxes
- Crack down on crime.
- Rebuild the Canadian Forces
- Strengthen the federation by reforming the Senate and addressing fiscal imbalance.
So before we get into year number two of Canada’s Nearly New Government and the Next Five Priorities, how about a quick review of the Famous Five?
1. Did most of Number 1. The Accountability Act is not exactly as advertised in the last campaign, partly because the opposition monkeyed with it but notably also because the Tories did not do as they promised in some key areas, such as Access to Information.
2. They lived up to their word on number 2, cutting the GST by one percentage point in the Jim Flaherty’s first budget. In Flaherty’s most recent economic update, the Conservatives promised another point off the tax within five years — just as they promised.
3. They looked awful busy on number three but I’m not sure how much they actually got done. When he was Justice Minister, Vic Toews introduced a pile of ‘we’re crackin’ down’ legislation but Harper had to bring former House Leader Rob Nicholson in as Justice Minister in order unplug the legislative backlog.
4. As I am the proud father of a five-year-old daughter and threee-year-old son, I am reminded once every month that the Conservatives made good on promise number 4.
5. But as the son of parents who are at that point in life that Catscans and other hospital procedures are increasingly common, it’s not clear to me that we’ve got any kind of wait times guarantee that the Conservatives can brag about. The Liberals can trot out convincing statistics that, under their watch, wait times were already decreasing for some procedures but the Conservatives have an equally compelling array of stats that show it’s getting worse.
So I’d say they bagged two out of five in their first year; fiddled around on another two and really didn’t do that much at all on one of them.
I expect you to jump in with your assessment of the Next Five and your assessment of progress on the Famous Five.