NDP Reverts To It's Old Ways

Jack Layton today unveiled the NDPs platform during a stop in Toronto. The article title in The Globe And Mail seems a bit harsh though. Is it necessary for 'moderate' to be put in scare quotes? Why not just 'NDP's platform heavy on taxes'? Anyways I'm drifting here.

I'm actually quite surprised that the NDP came out with a platform that was so tax heavy. The NDP has spent the last couple of years trying to convince people that the party would be fiscally responsible. In a strict sense, raising taxes in and of itself, does not prove that you are fiscally irresponsible but it will be very hard for the NDP to convince the public of it regardless. In short if you raise taxes you obviously don't know how to handle the nations money. It may not be fair but most people would instinctively agree with that statement.

So what have the NDP accomplished with their platform? Not much as far as I can tell. An election platform for a party that has no real chance of winning should accomplish one simple goal... to allow the party to play the spoiler and/or to win as many seats as possible. This basically means that though your 'base' may not be large you intend to 'steal' as many votes as possible from the larger parties that have a more established base.

I guess I could give credit to the NDP for being upfront about raising taxes. In a sense it is quite refreshing. But the sceptic in me says that though the NDP are telling me that they'll raise my taxes 'just a little bit' that they may be trying to pull one over on me. Though I was too young when the provincial NDP parties came to power in Ontario and BC I suspect that they didn't go out of their way to warn people that they intended to economically ruin their provincial economies.

The NDP has to shake the past that its provincial parties has given it. This budget won't do that. I suspect that national support for the NDP has just fallen a few percentage points.