[Rerun]

Jim Flaherty vs Paul Martin, a study in contrasts and public perception

As a study in contrasts, and the oddities of public perception, it would be hard to beat. Mr. Martin, a multi-millionaire businessman rich enough to build an estate with his own private golf-course, somehow conspired to be cast as the everyman Liberal. Mr. Flaherty, who, as far as I know, never got richer than you can get serving 18 years on a government salary, is treated as another flinty-eyed Tory who lives to serve the wealthy. Mr. Martin has the means to spend his retirement amusing himself as he desires, jetting around doing good deeds for native Canadians. Mr. Flaherty had to get out while he was still young enough to earn some real money on Bay Street.

Both served eight-plus years as finance minister, establishing themselves as powerful No. 2 figures to strong-minded prime ministers. Mr. Martin, supposedly the kind-hearted Liberal, “saved the economy” by attacking the deficit, firing civil servants, chopping away at programs, raiding the unemployment insurance kitty and closing the spigot of transfer payments to the provinces, leaving their budgets to sputter and flop like fish deprived of water. Under Mr. Flaherty the debt ballooned, the civil service grew and Ottawa spent millions advertising its own unbridled profligacy.

Mr. Martin was lionized for acting so unlike a Liberal, hailed as one of the best finance ministers ever. Mr. Flaherty has suffered slings and arrows from fellow conservatives for failing, in their eyes, to abide by true conservative principles.
Mr. Martin took no prisoners — provincial health-care budgets suffered just like everything else. Mr. Flaherty agreed to generous annual increases in health-care transfers and has had nothing but grief from the provinces in return. Mr. Martin inherited a deficit and turned it into a surplus by being tough-minded and ruthless; Mr. Flaherty inherited a surplus and (his critics contend) frittered it away on ill-advised GST cuts and family-friendly tax giveaways.

Both men were largely trapped by circumstances. Mr. Martin had little choice but to reverse course because decades of free spending financed by slap-happy borrowing (by Tories and Liberals alike) had left Canada close to ruin, mocked as a Third World economy, piling up new debt to pay the interest on previous loans. For his part, Mr. Flaherty threw open the treasury doors to combat the perceived danger of an onrushing recession. He succeeded, to the extent that Canada escaped the 2008 global meltdown with barely a scratch, while the U.S. and Europe teetered perilously on disaster. Both continue to try and claw their way back to prosperity; Canada biggest concern is whether it can continue to extend its good fortune.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...ic-perception/