Faux promise from Paul Martin

So... Paul Martin and Ralph Goodale are taking a page from Klein's playbook and offering to send cheques to Canadians if they have too much money.

It will never happen. Why? Notice that they are not saying "We are going to send every taxpayer $400" like Klein did. They are saying that given the right set of conditions, we will send you money. Problem is, they know they can ensure those conditions never occur.

The primary condition they have set is a surplus in excess of $3 Billion. At which point dollars available over $3 Billion are split three ways - spending, debt reduction and cash to people. So if there is a $4 Billion dollar surplus, about $333 million dollars will be divided amongst about 23 million tax filers. Oh boy - 15 dollars per person!!! So even if there is a surplus, the payout to taxpayers will not be worth to overhead cost of sending cheques.

But the real reason it will never happen is that the surplus will never again be more than $3 Billion. We know this because it happened in 2005. The projected surplus was somewhere in the $8 Billion range - so the government INCREASED SPENDING to reduce the size of the surplus. Trust me - they will do it again. Because Liberals would rather spend your money than let you choose to spend it.