Polls show that most Canadians believe in the tooth fairy

Straight Goods' commentator Larry Solway sounds off on public opinion polls, the politics of tax cuts and the upcoming federal election

Commentary from Larry Solway

  Once again I simply do not understand how pollsters reach conclusions. Are they asking the right questions, and, more importantly, are they asking the right questions the right way?
  My own pet theory about "public" opinion is that what we say in "public" reflects not what we truly think but how we would like to be perceived. No one wants to be seen as a Scrooge, a misanthrope, or patently selfish. So when pollsters ask what we think is the most important issue facing Canadians, we give them the answer that's righteous, caring, and makes us feel good and makes other people feel good about you: Health Care! In fact, the rest of the moral high ground answers are always righteous and comfortably cuddly: Environment, Housing, Child Care, Education. Tax cuts, if we believe the answers to the polls, are way down the list where the really caring people think they should be - number seven or eight.
  The Liberals are having fits that the former "Christian"* schoolteacher from Alberta is making political hay with tax cuts. They have offered even more tax cuts. Mr. Alliance Lite, Finance Minister Paul Martin, takes no back seat to the tax assassins. Only Alexa, staying above the fray (and below the Mendoza** line in the ratings) says Health Care and Day Care and Housing. Good for Alexa.
 

The whole point is that, in spite of Alexa's brave words about Health Care and a national Child Care system, Canadians are going to vote for tax cuts, while believing devoutly in the tooth fairy

  After the smoke and fuss about priorities is cleared away, we find that Canadians are really closet tax cut advocates. They vote for tax cuts. They elect Members of Parliament who promise tax cuts mixed with a healthy dose of self-righteous vengeance.
  And that's the other hot-button issue.
  What, after all, is Stockwell Day really promising Canadians? Honesty. That's an easy fix. Youth? Churchill was in his prime at 75. New ideas? Like abolishing freedom of choice? Returning prayer to secular education? Referenda? Capital punishment?
  What he is promising is a chimera, a phantom, a lightning-in-a-bottle notion about what makes a better society. It's more money, and, to echo George Dubya, people know better than government what to do with their money. Tax cuts are the clincher. If that doesn't work, there is always another Stock Day stock answer: law and order. Lots and lots of law and order.
  During a campaign stop in New Brunswick, where the people I saw, on camera at least, were uniformly older, male, white and probably Christian.* One man, puffed to the eyeballs with indignation, said that a "good smack with a paddle on a bare bottom" would be enough to deter vandals, stopping them once and for all. While we're at it, how about debtor's prison? Or wait - Young Offenders should spend time in the stocks.
  Charles Dickens anyone?
  If the priorities were actually what the polls tell us they are, why would the winners be touting tax cuts? Of course, they all piously declare that health care is a priority, but can't answer where the money will come from.
  It may come as a surprise to those with short memories, but it was actually Ronald Reagan who once said to the American people that there was no such thing as a free ride. Instead of raising taxes, he cut spending. When America was fighting that futile war in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson gave them "Guns AND Butter." They fought a war and there were no tax increases to pay for that war. Richard Nixon carried on the same fiscal madness when he escalated the war and did not raise taxes. The American deficit blew through the roof. The Nixon gang borrowed two billion dollars a month just to keep fighting.
  I once interviewed the former President of The First National Bank of Chicago, who also sat on either the IMF or the World Bank board. I asked him how America could stand spending more and borrowing more and not raising taxes. He warned that the increasing deficits would hurt the U.S. dollar. Of course it did.
  But that's my quick foray into the misty world of macro-economics. I'd better not, as they say, "go there."
  Somewhere Alexa decided to resonate with more Canadians by mentioning in passing, that if there were to be tax cuts it should be in the hated GST (a uniformly unfair tax, the GST is paradoxically inherently democratic because it falls equally on rich and poor.) The whole point is that, in spite of Alexa's brave words about Health Care and a national Child Care system, Canadians are going to vote for tax cuts, while believing devoutly in the tooth fairy. More money for health care will come from somewhere. The neo-conservatives say it will come from a thriving economy. Hell, I thought inflation and over-employment came from a thriving economy. Did I mention brain drain? Oh well...

Postscript: Isn't there delicious irony in Stockwell Day's celebration over an Alberta judge overturning Third Party election advertising legislation. Now Stock's buddy Stephen Harper of The National Citizen's Coalition can continue his third party political assault. One of the cornerstones of the Alliance (and all other hard right wing populists) is that Parliament must be supreme. He wants no more of these damn judges, whom nobody voted for, (and who are political appointees of the hated Liberals anyway) undoing the "will of the people." It's an Alliance mantra that judges should not make laws. I suggest that Day make up his mind. He thinks it's a victory that the Coalition won in a battle with his nemesis: the Charter of Rights. Depends on whose ox etc....

^* references to Christian are not meant as a slur. I have trouble with that group who claim a monopoly on the word, presuming that their particular belief system defines Christianity as it should be.

^** a baseball expression. Mendoza was a major league shortstop who never hit over .200. When referring to people who can't hit the ball worth a lick they "fall below the Mendoza line".

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