A Hint of Harper + A Helping of Trudeau = The New Liberal Platform

There's also a bit of Dion in there, but Michael Ignatieff is hoping no one will notice.

The Liberal party’s platform booklet is out, and the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert says it’s “akin to slipping into an old pair of shoes … The party’s core vision of an activist government that is omnipresent throughout its 94 pages dominated Canada’s politics for much of the country’s modern history.” Hébert says it makes sense for the party to hark back to its activist past, considering that governments that take a functional role in shaping society for the better are popular with most Canadians and it was the Grits’ ethics scandals, not their activist platform, that precipitated their toppling in 2006. Hébert judges the platform is “about restoration of the past Liberal order” rather than doing anything innovative; hence the lack of strong measures to rehabilitate Canada’s democracy, despite the accusations of Conservative unaccountability over which the Grits triggered an election.

The Globe and Mail editorial board says the Grits' platform, with its $1,000 handouts to students and tax credits for homeowners, resembles Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s strategy more than it does the great Liberals of the past. “Sprinkle a tax benefit here, spending money there, and hope to make enough people happy to win an election,” seems to be the philosophy. Harper has announced similar targeted handouts and tax credits, but says he wouldn’t put them into effect until the deficit was eliminated years down the line. “That is a low bar for new ideas,” says the Globe. “The Liberals have leapt over it, with some constructive proposals for families.”

The new Liberal policy isn’t anything like the Red Book, say the National Post's editors, that legendary “mix of sensible, centrist planks” that brought the Liberals to power in 1993. The current platform promises $8 billion in social spending over two years, largely funded by a corporate tax increase that will only generate about $5 billion. Plus it’s sneaky. Hidden on page 46 of the document is a cap-and-trade plan that looks very much like Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift. Considering how toxic that policy was for the formal Liberal leader, it’s no wonder the current one hid it away this time.