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Worse, it’s yet another “boutique” tax credit, disguised spending cunningly designed to look as though government is getting smaller, while actually making it bigger. The cliche that Harper shrank government suits partisans on all sides, but it is false.

Worse still, it rests on the premise that anything you want should be subsidized. The Tories were already pumping out dozens of press releases a week touting handouts to everyone from bison farmers to door makers, which assumes that nothing good can be produced through unaided private markets, a theory not even the NDP ever endorsed. Now they’ve doubled down, promising to subsidize anything you happen to like.

If you’re going to get socialism, at least get it from honest socialists.

According to the prime minister, “For most Canadians, the family home is their biggest asset and their most significant investment in their future financial security. I’m therefore very pleased to announce that to help make it more affordable for Canadians to adapt their homes to their changing needs and to maintain and increase those houses’ values, we will establish a new home renovation tax credit.”

There’s absolutely no claim here that such handouts are a legitimate government function. It’s a bribe, plain, simple and naked: vote for us and we’ll give you money. Lots of it.

It was bad enough for them to subsidize my children at other people’s expense through the enriched Universal Child Care Benefit. But my patio? Could it be more crass, or insulting?