If it's Saturday, this must be Senegal

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent travels make Santa's Christmas journey look like a walk around the block. Earlier in November, Harper went to China for a trade mission, but he cut the visit short by a day so that he could attend the Remembrance Day ceremonies back in Ottawa. Then he immediately jumped back aboard the government's aging Airbus A300 to hop off to New Zealand for the G20 summit and a spot of light Putin-baiting. Today we find him in Dakar, Senegal, for the opening ceremonies of la Francophonie, a largely ceremonial grouping of French-speaking nations.

This sort of globe-trotting is standard behaviour for political leaders trying to big themselves up with their domestic electorates, and of course Harper is facing an election some time in 2015.  While the PM's away, his colleagues back home are equally busy setting themselves up for the vote. Finance Minister Joe Oliver introduced a Fall Economic Update that was effectively a mini-budget and included a raft of tax cuts. In case anyone was in any doubt that the current Parliament is in its lame duck phase, the statement was introduced at a lunch in Toronto rather than in the House of Commons.

The key element of the tax cuts, a plan to allow couples to save tax by splitting their incomes, was widely seen as unfair (as indeed it is), so Oliver quickly followed up with the announcement of a $5 billion package of "new" spending. The Government's claim is that this can now be afforded because the budget is coming back into surplus, even though just weeks ago it appeared to be saying that the tax cuts would eat up all of its fiscal room.

In any case, the spending hikes are much less than they seem, since most of the "new" items had already been announced.  And as a measure of the Government's flagrant insincerity, even in dealings with those it supposedly favours, you could hardly do better than look at a new plan to help veterans dealing with mental health issues. This scheme accounted for about $200 million of the supposed $5 billion in "spending", but it transpires that the full sum will be spread out over fifty years!  OK, so it's the job of government to provide for future generations, but it's remarkably shameless, even by the standards of the Harperites, to claim credit now for spending that won't actually take place until people yet unborn have done their military service.

There will be a lot more of this kind of chicanery as election day approaches.  The so-called fixed election date is in October 2015, but it will be a mercy for the whole country if Harper decides to go for it a few months earlier.