The Conservative Party will release its platform today, which will likely detail what they have said during the campaign and undoubtedly there will be a couple of new items to be disclosed.
As I said in the blog posting yesterday, it will no doubt have the least amount of new spending in their proposed plan. By the end of the week we will release a detailed summary of all the major party spending plans and hope that will assist you in deciding who you want to vote for.
As a follow up to yesterday’s blog, I made a detailed second posting in the comment section and I will repeat it here. During any election campaign we always get accused of being too hard on the Conservatives, too soft on the conservatives, too bias, not hard enough, etc., etc. The same commentary will always produce varying responses.
For the record, as I stated yesterday, the NCC does not and will never support a political party. We do not get any government handouts and would never take them. We have been critical of the Conservative government in the past and will continue to do so. We believe that the income trust decision was handled badly and we launched a campaign to say so. We will continue to campaign for barley farmers who want to sell their own crops to whoever they want, keeping government spending in check, and reigning in runaway human rights commissions. This follows a tradition in the NCC. In fact many card-carrying Progressive Conservatives are still angry at us for opposing Brian Mulroney on the GST and the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.
We have always believed that in very difficult economic times, government needs to tighten its belt and we are looking at whoever is elected to do so. It is just a statement of economics right now that the only party that is showing any sign of fiscal sanity is the Conservatives. In other words, the alternatives - Green, Liberal, Bloc and NDP - would attack our current fiscal challenges with higher taxes and more government. If global warming, social justice or big union power is more important to you than economics, then vote for an alternative.
Peter Coleman
President and CEO
National Citizens Coalition



