Slava, I wonder if your "scoring points" analysis, which I tend to agree with, has a lot to do with the way media covers elections in Canada in the 21st Century?
Getting the message out and getting everyone talking about it over the internet, radio, tv and new media forums seems to be what it's all about. Sometimes, even if the policy is a head scratcher, like the energy dividend or the child care benefit, that doesn't matter. What matters is all the good and negative press the party that introduced that policy it is getting.
Perhaps it truly is a matter of "no publicity is bad publicity".
I will have to disagree with you regarding the GST, however. While it is more difficult for the Fed-Cons to reduce the deficit without the extra 2%, the much bigger problem (which can be put at the foot of the Fed-Cons and every other Canadian Federal government since the tax was introduced in the early 1990s) is that the GST was being used as a crutch to supplement revenue for a government that refuses to live within its means. It was introduced by a government that needed the tax to reduce the burden of its overspending and then kept by subsequent governments through boom and bust times alike because the government got addicted to it.
I could see some strength in your argument if I had any confidence that a future government would abolish it entirely when the deficit was wiped out, but I see no prospect of that ever occurring. Accordingly, reductions are the only good thing to ever happen to that wretched tax.
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