Ignatieff Must Raise Taxes to Pay for "Big Ideas"

This weekend's policy bender in Montreal saw the Liberals wealthiest elites make a number of large program spending promises while also promising to reduce the deficit by 2/3 in 2 years. But what was not being webcast to riding associations across Toronto was how on Earth they would ever be able to afford paying for such lofty ambitions. They were reluctant to discuss raising taxes, and the only real tax policy that emerged from Thinkapalooza was withdrawing support for a tax cut that hasn't happened yet; money that is not yet affecting current tax revenue accounts. Cancelling something that hasn't happened isn't going to suddenly pay for billions of dollars of increased program spending.

Ignatieff can't come out and say that he is going to raise taxes, because then nobody will vote for him. Running an election platform on raising taxes is not a winning strategy. He won't come out and lie like Dalton McGuinty and tell us that he won't raise taxes when clearly that's the only way to pay for overly ambitious spending packages; then immediately after winning an election do a complete reversal and announce massive new taxation.

Instead Iggy is just saying that the deficit is not his fault and he'll do what he "needs" to do, whatever that might be. Iggy may want to be careful how often he says that he had nothing to do with the deficit. I seem to recall video of him in January 2009 demanding a large multi billion stimulus package or else he would not support the budget in our minority Parliament.

I think you did have something to do with the deficit Mike, because the Tories had not made any commitment to a stimulus (which is responsible for most of the deficit) until after the opposition demanded it. I also recall several Liberal MPs running around Ottawa saying "a coalition if necessary, but necessarily a coalition" and some Libdippers wanted the budget voted down to continue with the coup they had attempted a few weeks earlier! Short is the memory of he who today can't remember the loud demand that he had made himself just 14 months earlier.

How long before Iggy re-launches the "Green Shift"? How long before Iggy promises to jump a football field on a motorcycle?