Dion's economic and crime plan

Over the last little while much has been focused on Dion's failings and it has been argued that he is pulling the party too far from the centre. I disagree with such characterization, but I realize politics is more about perception than reality so if Harper is perceived as being more mainstream and closer to the centre than Dion, he will be re-elected. Environmental sustainability and social justice are important topics, but we cannot win on those alone. Rather we need to realize most Canadians are neither right wing nor left wing, but support ideas on both sides of the spectrum, so our goal should be to take the good ideas on each side and avoid the bad ones. In addition it is the middle class suburban vote is who will determine the winner of the next election, not the rural or the downtown vote. In Ontario, Rural Ontario is likely to stay predomiantely conservative as will the BC Interior. Likewise both Toronto and Vancouver proper are off limits for the Conservatives and should stay predominately Liberal with a few NDP wins possible. Where the election will be decided is the 905 belt here in Ontario and the Lower Mainland suburbs in BC. These areas are neither strongly Liberal or Conservative and could go either way. They like lower taxes, safer communities, a cleaner environment, as well as a strong health care system.

This week Dion hit on two themes that will likely reasonate in those areas and may bring back some of the voters we have been losing here. First he spoke about the need to make sure our taxes are competitive. While we need taxes to fund our social programs, our taxes must also be internationally competitive, which is why I support income tax cuts over GST cuts. In fact most economists on both the left and right agree that income tax cuts are preferable to GST cuts and I am glad to see Dion will implement those if he forms government.

The second issue is law and order. While the lock'em style justice has been proven ineffective, Canadians want safe communities and those seen as soft on crime will pay at the polls. That is why I am glad to see Dion come out with a reasonable law and order package that isn't based on solely locking them up, but also understands serious and repeat offenders should face longer jail times. He also recognized the importance of having more police officers since locking people up after they commit the crimes doesn't do any good, rather we need to prevent the crimes from happening and studies have shown that a greater visibility of police leads to less crimes being committed.

Hopefully these issues will be mentioned during the election so we can counter any conservative claims we are too left wing. If we can convince Canadians we are a centrist mainstream party, we can win the next election, so hopefully Dion will continue to promote his balanced vision.