Dion: GST cut won't trigger an election.

Dion just looks sicker and sicker. I am sure that Rae and Ignatieff are happy that he continues to swallow Conservative poison pills to discredit him as a person of principle, one of the few things he had going for him. Dion just sounds silly when he says that he is not voting against the budget because Canadians are in no mood for an election. Everyone whose brain is not turned to mush or simply isn't tuned in to political reality at all knows that the real reason is that the Liberals are down in the polls. If the Liberals were at 40 per cent Dion would playing a quite different tune.

GST cut won't trigger an election, Dion says
Canadians still in no mood for trip to polls, Liberal Leader believes, setting bar higher for defeating government
CAMPBELL CLARK

With a report from Steven Chase in Ottawa

October 25, 2007

OTTAWA -- Stéphane Dion took election speculation off the boil yesterday by signalling that he is not likely to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government over a cut to the GST.

There has been speculation that the Tories might transform the government's fall economic statement into a mini-budget that could include the promised second cut to the goods and services tax, which the Liberals have opposed.

Mr. Dion said last week that Canadians do not want an immediate election when he announced that Liberals would abstain in last night's vote on the government's Throne Speech. And he suggested yesterday that he does not expect to trigger an election over the GST cut, either.

"The only thing I want to say about that is if Canadians didn't want an election last week ... I don't really think that they will want an election next week," Mr. Dion told reporters.
Mr. Dion said that cutting another percentage point off the GST is the wrong way to cut taxes, but said his Liberals "will continue to do our role as [the] Official Opposition, explaining why we disagree with the government."

"We want tax cuts for Canadians, but we want tax cuts that will help this country to be more competitive and to be fairer and we have better ideas than another GST tax cut," he said. The Liberal Party prefers income tax cuts.

A two-percentage-point cut to the GST was one of Mr. Harper's marquee election promises in the 2005-06 election campaign. His government cut the tax by one percentage point to 6 per cent last year, and promised to cut the second point later. Some Tories have recently floated the idea that they will go ahead with the second cut this fall.

Mr. Dion's statement yesterday not only indicates that a GST cut alone will not spark a trip to the polls, it sets the bar higher for defeating the minority government this fall on any issue. Mr. Harper has sought to set up a series of confidence-vote showdowns in the House of Commons that force the opposition to decide whether they will defeat the government. He not only prorogued Parliament to deliver a new Throne Speech, but has declared several bills confidence matters - and promised more.

A mini-budget automatically triggers a confidence vote - and because the Liberals have opposed a GST cut, there has been speculation that the Conservatives would include it as a "poison pill" to engineer their own defeat. The economic statement is traditionally limited to an update on Ottawa's financial situation and the latest forecast of its budget balance, or surplus.

Speculation is increasing that the Tories will hold the fall fiscal update earlier than usual, in late October or possibly the week of Nov. 5, when MPs are on a break and the House of Commons is closed. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Tuesday only that the update will take place "within the next few weeks."

The update is usually delivered to the House of Commons finance committee. The committee could be recalled during the break week but opposition MPs would not be able to attack the document in the full Commons the next day.

If a mini-budget were introduced and passed, it's unlikely the Conservatives could table any new confidence measures before the Commons breaks on Dec. 14.