Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to make a choice: cash for Quebec or an election, says Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe.

“I am now challenging Stephen Harper to respond to Quebec’s expectations,” a pumped Mr. Duceppe said Sunday in a speech closing a party general council meeting. “We are asking for simple fairness, elementary justice.

“Mr. Harper has a choice. He can respond to Quebec’s expectations or he can spark elections. For our part, we will not fold. We are going to stand up for Quebec. We are not going to give up, we are not going to be quiet.”

Apart from being pathetic losers, the Quebec nationalist movement — led by Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Quebecois — is forgetting one important fact: You need to have something the Conservative Party needs before you can start giving ultimatums. The Bloc is in a similar boat to the New Democratic Party: They will always be ready for an election because the outcome of said election doesn’t matter to them. As perpetual opposition parties, they don’t need to play the numbers to figure out when the time is right for an election, they’re ready to go whenever. As such, those two parties have very little bearing on votes in the House of Commons given that they’re diametrically opposed to any Conservative bill.

That being said, it’s not unlikely that they will attempt (yet again) to form a coalition government with the Liberal Party of Canada after the next election comes. For them, that’s their only hope of being anywhere close to governance, so sooner is rather than later. Duceppe can threaten the government all he wants, but the decision lies with Ignatieff. Scary, huh?

After much pondering, I have come to the conclusion that if we do have a federal election this spring, the result will be a Conservative majority.

Now I realize this forecast goes against conventional political wisdom.

Many pundits, using current public opinion polls as evidence, are arguing no party currently has enough voter support to win a majority.

Columnist Lorne Gunter has written, “Party standings would probably end the campaign at more or less their current levels. There is almost certainly no majority available to any party.”

And former Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella has declared, “Harper is still far from a majority.”

Really?

Gunter and Kinsella are forgetting one simple fact: Canadians are not yet politically engaged.

The Liberals recently released a poll, for instance, which showed only 15 per cent of Canadians are even paying attention to federal politics. (By the way, that’s completely normal. The average person rarely cares about the goings on in Ottawa. They would rather watch American Idol than The National. And who can blame them?)

But once an election is actually called Canadians will get focused on politics. They will start paying attention.

And what will these focused Canadians see when they start paying attention?

Well for one thing they will see a Prime Minister in Stephen Harper who is at the peak of his political powers.

A battle-hardened veteran of three national election campaigns and two leadership races, Harper is a wily political tactician who leads a united, well-disciplined and wealthy party.

The Liberals, on the other hand, are in a sorry state.

Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, is intelligent but a rookie when it comes to running a national campaign. He has only one national race under his belt, a Liberal leadership contest, which he lost.

Nor has he shown any evidence that he is a good campaigner or that he possesses good political instincts or that he can come up with a message that will resonate with Canadians.

His party is also demoralized and cash-poor.

[...]

However, all things being equal, we should expect 2011 to mark the true beginning of the Harper dynasty.

It turns out that Loughner is a leftwing, atheist/occult, pothead, and most importantly, mentally disturbed. However, seeing a political opportunity to attack the Right, the media did not let the facts get in the way of a convenient narrative.

One of the most sickening assertions has been that Sarah Palin is somehow responsible for the shooting, because she targeted Rep. Giffords’ district.

If Palin is responsible for the shooting of Giffords, you would expect politicians to remove similarly ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric from their websites, right? After all, with the knowledge that targeting a district inspires violence, as the media is telling us nonstop, only the most irresponsible of people would continue to incite hatred.

How about Canada’s own communist party, the NDP:

“Taking aim,” bull’s-eyes, “send Harper packing”. One can only presume that the NDP is planning on shooting targeted Conservatives, and sending them packing in body bags, right?

Of course, making such an assertion is patently absurd. Taking aim, bulls-eyes, and sending people packing are all political metaphors. If someone read that map and took it as a call to arms, they would have to be mentally unwell.

Even if a Tea Party conservative opened fire on innocent civilians, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, or any other liberal Emmanuel Goldstein would not be responsible. Some people are deranged. It is not possible to ascribe a logical reason to an illogical act. The Left’s attempt to pin the Arizona shooting on anyone but the lunatic involved is both libelous and malicious.

Canada’s Conservative Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, has brought his country’s corporate tax rate down from 21% to 16.5% over the past six years, with a final cut scheduled, bringing the rate down to 15%. With the rhetoric on the Left about “corporate giveaways,” you would not be blamed for thinking that Minister Flahrety’s rate reductions were an irresponsible reduction of government revenues, especially during a recession.

The facts paint a very different story. Corporate tax revenues are higher today than when Minister Flaherty began slashing rates. In 2002, with the old rates intact, revenue from corporate taxes was $24.2 billion; 2003, $22.2 billion; 2004, $27.4 billion; 2005, $29.9 billion. In 2010 corporate tax revenues were $30.3 billion, equaling the average of the past nine years. Additionally, corporate tax revenues provided 13.9% of government income in 2010, compared to the past decade’s average of 12.6%.

This should not come as a surprise. The argument over tax rates and tax revenues has been settled. To a point, lower tax rates result in higher revenues, whereas higher rates result in lower revenues. The static modeling used by many economists is premised upon “ceteris paribus” – with all other things being equal. Static modeling is constantly used to justify claims that tax rate reductions will result in lower government revenues. In reality, all other things are never equal.

In a dynamic economy, all events are interrelated, and changes in one secotr can, and usually do, effect all other sectors. Therefore, when tax rates are raised the government consumes capital that could have been invested in a business that could create more jobs. A more profitable business, with higher earnings and more employees results in larger tax revenues. Additionally, lower tax rates act as a disincentive to sheltering capital. When tax rates are lower, people conclude that it is more sensible to invest in a thriving economy, increase their capital, and thus pay more in taxes. Conversely, when tax rates are increased, less money is spent in the private sector, money becomes idle, and tax revenues decrease.

The evidence of the success of tax cuts is overwhelming. The numbers on income taxes are irrefutable. From a research paper I wrote on the flat tax:

In 1921, before the Harding-Coolidge tax cuts the top income tax rate was over 70% , while government revenue was $700million and the federal government’s real revenue growth rate was -9.2%. Following the tax cuts, the top marginal rate was reduced to 25% , resulting in the government revenue growth rate rising to 0.1% and government revenue to $1.2 billion . In 1961 the top marginal income tax rate was over 90%, while government revenue was $90billion with a revenue growth rate of 2.1%. Following the Kennedy tax cuts, the top marginal rate was reduced to 35%, government revenue boosted to $155 billion and the growth rate had gone up to 9% . In 1980 the top marginal rate was 70%, government revenue was $550 billion with a growth rate of -2.8%. President Reagan cut the top marginal rate to 28%. The result was an increase in government revenue to $1.4 trillion , with the growth of government revenue rate rising 6.4%, up to 3.6%.

Results were similar under President Clinton when capital gains tax rates were reduced. Revenues and the rate of revenue growth increase dramatically when tax rates are cut.

Canada’s reduction of corporate tax rates will attract more business to Canada, which can now boast of having the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7. The corporate tax rate reduction in Canada is yet another tax cut success story.

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Industry Minister Clement commented:

We were concerned the bid would mean that other capital expenditures would not be forthcoming

Wow. So-called conservatives are telling companies how they should be investing their money. I wonder how Minister Clement defines small government.

It’s amazing that the Harper Government is so arrogant to presume that it has the moral authority to determine what is good for Canadians. You’d think that a ‘conservative’ government would understand that the government is not the grand arbiter of morality.

This is not the first time the Harper government has interfered with the free markets – recall the sudden elimination of income trusts. Millions of seniors saw the value of their savings plummet because of a Harper government decision. It’s a wonder that the Harper government even calls itself the ‘Conservative Party’.

The government is creating a made-in-Canada discount. If your public company is listed in Canada, the government may actively inhibit your ability to deliver value to your investors.

Its always sad to see how the Conservative Party of Canada now represents the fashionable right. It’s time that they stick to their principles – rather than trying to appease a small group of voters to the detriment of the country.

I’m curious how many government bureaucrats are holding short positions on Potash Corp (betting that the stock price will go down).

Is Canada’s Reform Party of the 1990s a Tea Party model?

By Tom Cohen, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Before anyone ever heard of the Tea Party movement, there was a grass-roots conservative group from out West that shook up the political status quo.

It happened in Canada more than 20 years ago, and the rebel Reform Party’s rapid rise and eventual amalgamation into the political mainstream might offer some perspective on what is happening today on the U.S. political right.

In particular, the Reform Party’s rise split the so-called conservative vote in Canada, helping the Liberal Party win three straight elections to stay in power for 13 years.

Only when Canada’s conservatives came together under one banner, as the Conservative Party of Canada, did they wield the coast-to-coast clout to win enough seats in Parliament to take over the prime minister’s office.

“It’s hard to reconcile them all,” Reform Party founder Preston Manning told CNN in a telephone interview. “The argument we used is that you all need each other. You do agree on a whole bunch of other things.”

Canada’s parliamentary system differs from the U.S. system, with the party that holds the most seats in the House of Commons forming the government. Political labels such as conservative and liberal don’t always mean exactly the same thing in the two countries.

Still, a look at the Reform Party’s history and influence on the Canadian political system reveals some parallels with the relatively new Tea Party movement south of the border.

In the United States, the Tea Party movement has shaken up politics-as-usual with its anti-Washington sentiment that helped topple some Republican incumbents in primaries for the November congressional midterm election.

The latest could be Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who trailed her Tea Party-backed but little-known opponent, Joe Miller, in the Republican primary held Tuesday. Miller led by a hairsbreadth when polls closed, but there are thousands of absentee ballots left to be counted, and the race might not be decided until next week.

The success of far-right candidates such as Miller, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada fostered hopes in the self-described grass-roots uprising that it could win power with its small-government, anti-deficit ideology.

“I’m very proud of my association with the Tea Party,” said Marco Rubio, a former Florida state representative who won Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary vote. “But people misunderstand what the Tea Party movement is in America. It is not a centralized organization or a political party. It’s the sentiment of everyday Americans who think that Washington has it wrong — they’re taking our country in the wrong direction. And they are looking for voices in American politics that will stand up to that and offer a clear alternative.”

However, an inherent social conservatism in the Tea Party movement has exposed rifts with more moderate Republicans, much to the delight of Democrats.

A main Tea Party spokesman, Mark Williams, was ousted last month after a controversial blog post about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Abraham Lincoln, and the emancipation of the slaves. He resigned, but defended his remarks as satire.

Tea Party protesters outside the U.S. Capitol were accused of using racist and anti-gay epithets against African-American and gay Democrats in March, and spitting on an African-American congressman.

Republican House leaders criticized the alleged incident but said it was an isolated case, and Andrew Langer, one of the organizers of the protest over health care reform, said his “Institute for Liberty roundly condemns the isolated incidents of intolerance that occurred. … As a core value, the Tea Party movement believes in the precept upon which our independence was declared and this nation was founded: that all men are created equal.”

In Nevada, Angle’s candidacy revived what was thought to be a deeply troubled re-election bid by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Now Reid and Angle are in a tight race, due in part to concerns over some of Angle’s policies and comments, such as a call to do away with the federal Department of Education.

Even while Alaskans waited for a final result in the state’s Senate Republican primary, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee derided Miller as “an extremist who intends to transition-out Social Security, phase-out Medicare, and end unemployment benefits for all Alaskan families.”

In Canada, Manning’s Reform Party faced similar challenges in the 1990s as he tried to unite it with the Progressive Conservative Party, the traditional home of fiscal conservatives.

Led by Manning, a politician’s son known as a shrewd pragmatist, the Canadian reformers emerged from the Western provinces in the 1980s as a protest movement against the federal government back east in Ottawa, Ontario.

In particular, they were angry at what they perceived as Ottawa’s reliance on oil revenues from Alberta, a Western province, to appease Quebecers threatening a separatist movement in the nation’s only francophone province.

Manning built on the Western anger, attracting support by calling for stronger provincial powers and a smaller federal government and emphasizing the needs of rural communities.

The Reform Party formed in 1987 and used the strength of its Western roots to win more seats than the Progressive Conservatives when the Liberal Party came to power in 1993.

However, Manning’s efforts to expand the party’s support were stymied by a diversity of interests and agendas within its base that ranged from political moderation to extremist vitriol.

In particular, issues such as gay rights and immigration caused public rifts among Reform Party members of Parliament.

In one of the most memorable, two Reform lawmakers were suspended for disparaging comments about homosexuals and immigrants, and two others who criticized them for the comments ended up quitting the party over the dispute.

James Harold Farney argued in his 2009 doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto that the rise of the Reform Party gave Canadian social conservatives their first political home. “It was only when the Reform Party upset both the institutions and ideology of Canadian conservatism that social conservatives began to gain prominence in Canadian politics,” Farney wrote.

In the 1997 election, the Reform Party finished second overall to become the official opposition party in Parliament, but failed to grow beyond its Western roots.

Manning realized it would never win control of Parliament, and therefore the prime minister’s office, without gaining support in Eastern provinces, particularly populous Ontario.

He launched an ambitious campaign to merge with the Progressive Conservatives, in a process that took years and left him on the sidelines when it finally occurred.

The effort led to creation of the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance in 2000, with Manning defeated by Alberta provincial official Stockwell Day for the group’s leadership.

Day’s fundamentalist Christian beliefs and lack of national political experience proved costly, and the Alliance — caught off guard by a snap election called by the Liberals — gained only six more seats in the next national election.

Only when a formal merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance occurred — creating the Conservative Party of Canada — did it achieve Manning’s goal of gaining significant support in the East.

The new Conservative Party forced the Liberals to form a minority government in 2004, and then defeated the Liberals to form its own minority government in 2006. Stephen Harper, a one-time Reform legislator who left the party in 1997, became prime minister.

Looking back, Manning said he stressed democratic principles within the Reform Party to try to achieve unity among its divided supporters. That meant getting fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and what he called democratic conservatives — dedicated to grassroots democracy — to accept a single platform.

“I argued they were not philosophically incompatible,” Manning said.

At caucus meetings and other party gatherings, he stressed open debate to ensure everyone had a voice. “Whatever your position is, you can get up and say it,” Manning explained. “When everyone has a say, you vote,” and the result stands.

The idea was to use the democratic process “to get people to disagree civilly,” he said.

“If we can’t apply democracy to reconcile these differences within the party,” he used to argue, “then why should the public believe we can do this on a larger scale?”

Could a similar process occur in the United States, driven by the Tea Party movement?

Manning sounded skeptical. “These people are trying to build a coalition in a political culture that tends to favor polarization,” he said. “That does make it difficult, because people want to go to their corners rather than come together in the center of the ring.”

In 2009, following the election of Barack Obama, Australia came to the conclusion that the United States had broken its end of the deal. Australia realized that they could no longer depend on the United States. As such, Australia greatly expanded and retooled its military. It would appear as though Canada has come to the same conclusion.

Canada, the country famous for nixing military spending in favor of socialist healthcare, is set to rearm. Under Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the Canadian military was neglected, as Canada thought that the United States would always be there to fight. As a result of this thinking, Canada cut back on all types of expensive military equipment. However, with President Obama projecting weakness around the globe,  severe cutbacks in American military spending, all paired with an enormous expansion in social spending, have resulted in the creation of an apparent power vacuum. This vacuum is forcing other countries to reassess their national priorities. According to the National Post Canada is set to unveil a $16 billion dollar plan to purchase the brand new Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter. 10 years ago, Canada scrapped plans to spend $5 million of EH-101 helicopters, deriding the choppers “airborne Cadillacs.” That was an entirely different time. With the realization that the United States is on its way over the precipice, set to join the West in stagnant socialism, countries like Canada and Australia are acting preemptively, readying their own defenses. This is a decision the rest of the West is being faced with – without the backing of the United States will other countries chose to remain weak, or will the vacuum left by the destruction of American power cause socialist countries to rise from the slumber, reduce social, and rearm?

The left has followed Norman Thomas’ plan and implemented socialism incrementally. Once an entitlement is entrenched it is all but impossible to have it repealed. In a country like Canada even a nominally conservative government will not touch the enormous welfare state. Rather, the political debate rages over who can most effectively manage the welfare state. This is not so much an indictment of the Conservative Party as it is a realistic view of  government. Most people do not have the courage to dismantle an unsustainable welfare state because they fear the political backlash. Instead, governments pile on debts, put on band aides and kick the can down the road. This can work as a quick fix, but eventually countries have to face a day of reckoning. In order to make this eventuality less painful it would behoove  conservative governments to start scaling back the government while it is still our choice. The question is, is there the political will to rollback the state? In the United States, if Obamacare passes and Democrats lose in 2010 and 2012 will the GOP have the intestinal fortitude to scrap Obamacare? Will Social Security be reformed to make it solvent? Will the precious entitlements in the budget actually be cut? One can only hope that it is still possible not just to run on a conservative platform, but to actually implement conservative solutions once in power.