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OTTAWA — Stephen Harper declined yesterday to buy off Canadians before a possible election campaign, but it wasn't because he didn't have money.
Rather, say his supporters, it's because he wouldn't have maintained his government's credibility if he did.
Having told Canadians their country was facing tough economic times, the Prime Minister opted to funnel a substantial $10.2-billion surplus to debt repayment in yesterday's budget, rather than spend it on programs aimed at creating jobs or relieving increasing anxiety about the Canadian economy.
And with an election potentially coming this spring or fall, the Prime Minister would not risk contradicting his own conservative principles.
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- Full coverage: The 2008 Conservative budget
- Interactive: The Budget 2008: The priorities
- Interactive: Highlights
"Now is not the time to bribe the electorate," a senior Conservative told The Globe and Mail yesterday. "We would have undermined our brand. People know they get what they pay for and we're what they elected."
In fashioning yesterday's budget, the Tories hoped to present their leader as a dependable steward of the economy and to generally build Canadians' trust in him.
Despite pressure from quarters such as Dalton McGuinty's Ontario Liberals and a general increase in unease over the economy's performance, the Tories resisted a quick political fix by dangling only a few baubles in front of the public, including a tax-free savings account that offers savers a break from taxes on the interest they earn.
The reason for the thrift, according to Mr. Harper's backers, is that polls consistently say that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives are the best-placed to deal with a potential downturn in the economy. It's a new emphasis for the Conservatives, who have not made fiscal prudence a centrepiece of their earlier budgets.
Among other things, it helps them chip away at the Chrétien-Martin legacy of deficit-fighting and returns the party to a more traditional Conservative position of decrying big-spending Liberals.
The Tories also note it's no secret that Mr. Harper is seen as overpartisan and sometimes too strategic a politician for his own good. So it was important that he held to his line that the budget would be a frugal document. If a majority is in the offing for Mr. Harper, it comes only if he can build more trust with the electorate.
Still, senior Tories also say they were tempted to spend the surplus on a potential pre-election goody.
They had considered, for example, an idea to accelerate the speed with which they planned to increase the size of the basic personal exemption, a big-ticket tax-cut item. Another scenario that made the rounds was to boost government infrastructure spending to approach a Liberal election proposal that would see all but $3-billion of future surpluses spent in the area. Doing either, however, would have eaten up a lot of the extra cash and would probably have been seen as crass.
In squirrelling away the surplus, the Tories are prepared to live with attacks from the left that they haven't done enough for the economy. This prudence will also appeal to right-of-centre Liberals who supported the deficit-cutting policies of former prime minister Paul Martin.
Tories also figure there is just enough in this document to stave off attacks on other fronts. Mr. Harper can inoculate himself from criticism by saying that the government at least found some dollars for priority areas like mental-health care, infrastructure and aboriginal communities, even in a time of relative scarcity.
Finally, Tories have also continued efforts to cast their nets at specific demographic groups that marked past budgets. The chief example of this was money earmarked for transit construction in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The party figures it can attract the votes of suburban Canadians who shuttle their support from the Liberals to the Conservatives and back again.
That's an important group, of course, but what the Conservatives really wanted do yesterday was to convince Canadians that the Prime Minister has a solid hand on the till.
If they can accomplish that, the party might just get voters to overlook concerns of those who don't like Mr. Harper's style or his sometimes-brittle nature.
"It's important that Canadians think we can handle the economy," said another Conservative. "It has to be steady as she goes."
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