Thursday, December 4, 2008

What's Best for Canada

Stephen Harper is shutting down the Canadian Parliament for the next month and a half. That makes him the wisest, most benevolent head of government on this side of Bhutan. While the rest of the West falls over itself passing ill-advised stimulus packages - the stimulus will last a few weeks, the debt will last for decades - Harper figured it was better to shut down his own parliament than to let the opposition take over and practice voodoo economics.

Better for him? Maybe. Six more weeks as Prime Minister of a non-meeting parliament isn't much of a prize, and his reputation will no doubt suffer for being so intransigent. But better for Canada? Almost certainly.

(evidently it's Canada Day at Global Review)

1 comment:

Macro Guy said...

My Canadian friend Andrew added this comment on Facebook:

To be fair, it's not like he closed shop because he feared the coalition running massive defiicits to finance stimulus packages - Canada's near-bankruptcy of twenty years ago has taught us a collective lesson - but because being Prime Minister is a much better gig than Leader of the Opposition.

Conversely, the only reason the opposition wants the fancy office is not to enact their questionably grounded economic policies, but to get back the $1.95 per vote political parties receive to fund operations, a donation Harper was going to axe.

If you want to get politicians moving, attack their pocketbook, not their beliefs.