The house of commons may have been empty for the Christmas adjournment, but January was a busy month just the same on Parliament Hill as all parties were busy positioning themselves for a spring election that nobody admits to wanting.
Amid all this bustle, there were signs the Harper government finally has decided to pay some serious attention to business instead of constantly wooing its core middle-class supporters.
Just after the cabinet mini-shuffle in the first week of January, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on the road visiting one business audience after another. So were his ministers, with \u201cbusiness-related announcements,\u201d including the formation of a commission to cut red tape faced by businesses.
But perhaps most telling is the way the federal government is conducting its pre-budget consultations this year.
In the past couple of years, business groups were invited to meet with the backbench MPs who form the Tories\u2019 finance caucus. This year, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and other senior ministers, such as Chuck Strahl, minister of transport, infrastructure and communities, are travelling the country to hold pre-budget meetings.
This year\u2019s budget \u2014 which is expected in late March \u2014 probably is on its third or fourth draft by now, making major changes unlikely. But budget consultations, no matter how late, are important optics just the same.
In addition, the government is pressing ahead with its plan to cut business taxes down to among the lowest in the world \u2014 even though the three Opposition parties probably will be able to make political hay with them.
No doubt part of this sudden interest in business is due to the arrival on the Hill of investment banker Nigel Wright as Harper\u2019s new chief of staff \u2014 just as the Obama administration is looking to business for support with the hiring of Bill Daley, also an investment banker, as the president\u2019s new chief of staff.
Renewed outreach to business by both governments is likely to be the main narrative in the media this winter and spring. The Harper government will be watching how this plays with a cranky middle class.
Regardless of what that reaction is, after five years in power, the Harper government can\u2019t take the business vote for granted much longer.
Business groups have not publicly opposed this government during its life. However, they haven\u2019t been overly vocal in their support, either.
For the most part, they have stayed silent on just about every issue with economic implications, from the deficit to the cancellation of the long-form census.
It\u2019s likely the Tories have decided it is the business sector\u2019s turn for some TLC, in case there is an election this year. Besides, it\u2019s also likely the Tories have grown their core vote to its optimum level, no matter how many more law-and-order bills are tabled in the Commons.
With a deficit looking more and more difficult to wrestle to the ground, an increasingly vocal parliamentary budget officer, a slow recovery and a middle class in hock up to the eyeballs, the government is very vulnerable on the matter of the economy.
The business sector finally has the government\u2019s attention. But will lower business taxes be a ballot question? Maybe not.
The government may decide to back off if the Liberals show signs of finally being able to convert a hot issue into political capital.
There is a strong case to be made for very low business taxes, now that the Canadian economy can no longer grow its exports on the back of a cheap dollar. But can that case be made to the public when the government has no fiscal room to offer corresponding cuts to voters\u2019 income taxes?
It will be interesting to see how resolved the Tories are in maintaining their bonds with business in the months ahead.
You know a government is worried about a major decision when its ministers are fanning out across the country to re-announce the supposed benefits. You know a government is very worried when the prime minister heads out to re-announce those benefits once again.\tIE<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The house of commons may have been empty for the Christmas adjournment, but January was a busy month just the same on Parliament Hill as all parties were busy positioning themselves for a spring election that nobody admits to wanting.Amid all this bustle, there were signs the Harper government finally has decided to pay some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3013,3014],"tags":[2812],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":370576,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316694\/revisions\/370576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316694"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=316694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}