Posted: Saturday, 30 June 2007

New Policy Developments and Analysis

Chapter 5 of federal Budget 2007 is entitled A Stronger Canada Through a Stronger Economy. It features five major sections: the Fiscal Advantage, Infrastructure Advantage, Entrepreneurial Advantage, Knowledge Advantage, and the Tax Advantage – all of which constitute the federal government’s vision of Advantage Canada.

The introduction of Chapter 5 frames Advantage Canada as the “long-term economic plan to improve quality of life and ensure a strong economy”, from which the five ‘Advantages’ are then defined. The thrust of the Knowledge Advantage is to “create the best-educated, most-skilled and most flexible workforce in the world.” i

Along with the Infrastructure Advantage – the thrust of which is to create a “modern, world-class infrastructure” under the management of a resourced, federal office helping to execute public private partnerships throughout the countryii – the Knowledge Advantage reveals what may be the primary distinction between the ‘neoliberalism’ of the past federal government, and the ‘neoconservativism’ of the current one. While the current government has maintained the neoliberal goals of debt reduction, deregulation, tax reduction, and privatization, what is new and distinct is the Conservative government’s blatant application of a cost-benefit analysis to each and every aspect of social and economic decision-making.

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