Shooting his bolt

Canada's Federal Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, says that the Tories will probably find ways to continue to cut taxes if they win re-election come October. Two questions here: is that a credible promise, and is it likely to be a vote-winner for Oliver and his boss, PM Stephen Harper?

As to the credibility, it's been perfectly clear for many months that the Tories were aiming to leave the Treasury as bare as possible in advance of the election. They've done this by getting the budget into the merest of surpluses, and then making all manner of commitments that will use up all available funds over the next several years -- the income splitting plan, some oddball tax credits, the tax free savings boost and so on. The goal was and is to leave no room for the opposition parties to make spending commitments at election time, unless they are also prepared to raise taxes -- at which point the Tories will pounce.

But if the cupboard really will be bare when the next Finance Minister takes office -- and it certainly looks that way -- it will be equally bare whether that minister is a rookie from the Liberals or NDP, or if it's Joe Oliver back in his current job. In promising further tax cuts,  Oliver is betting that the Canadian electorate will have forgotten by election day that the Tories have already spent any future surpluses. So, the answer to our first question is, further tax cuts are not a credible promise.

But can it be a vote winner anyway?  Both the NDP and the Liberals are promising to roll back some of the Tory giveaways: the NDP will reverse the income-splitting plan, and the Liberals will undo the tax free savings boost. In both cases, these moves will allegedly provide room for new spending initiatives, albeit on a modest scale. There are constituencies for both income splitting and tax free savings, but both measures are seen (correctly) as favouring the better-off, and most of the people who will benefit from them would probably be voting Tory anyway. It's not likely that the desire to save either measure will bring many voters from the NDP or Liberals over to the Tory camp.

So, as regards the second question, the tax cut promise may not be a winning strategy.  Opinion polls, at this early stage, show that about 70 percent of the electorate want to see the back of the Harper government. Harper's only chance of victory lies in the fact that the opposition is quite closely split between the NDP and the Liberals.  Canada's first-past-the-post system means that the Tories could still wind up back in office, as long as neither of the opposition parties succeeds in rallying the anti-Harper vote.  Here's where it promises to get interesting: Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is charismatic but callow and inexperienced, and his family name is still poison in parts of western Canada; NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is cerebral and experienced, but Canada has never elected a socialist government at the national level.

There's still all to play for -- but can we first just enjoy the summer, please?