On being Fiscally Conservative

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

-John Stewart Mill

Friday's Mop and Pail editorial asked if the Conservatives would be fiscally conservative in their next budget.

Darn good question.

I certainly hope not.

It's a curious term, "fiscal conservative." If we look at the recent history of Fiscal Conservatives, it is a history of high deficits, public investment in capital intensive, and low-return public policy, while cutting social investment in things like education, welfare and healthcare.

Regan, Thatcher and Mulroney - all fiscal conservative in their day- ran up massive deficits and national debts. The result was that centrist governments who inherited these deificits found themselves fiscally ham-strung, it was left up the 'wet-kleenexes' to balance the books.

Here at home, there has been much hullaballoo about Bob Rae's fiscal record. He was, in the Thatcher/Regan/Mulroney tradition, a fiscal conservative, in that he managed to run up quite a nasty deficit.

In his defense, he did so in some pretty awful economic times in Ontario, driven prinicipally by a high-interest policy from the Bank of Canada and an inherited mess from Liberal David Peterson.

But what he didn't do was take a $5.5B surplus, and turn it into a $2B deficit in some most incredible growth periods Ontario has ever known.

No, if he'd managed that monetary nadir, he would not be running for Liberal leadership, he'd be Stephen Harper's new finance minister, Jim Flaherty.

And so will the Harper Conservative be fiscal conservatives?

For the love of God, I hope not.