How The Federal Government Has Performed To Date
Since the 2015 election and Justin Trudeau promise to make “real change” they have been able to fill some of what they promised but are having some difficulty with other areas. The current government has been making some progress towards growing the economy by creating new jobs and making some CPP changes for 2019. They have currently created over 400,000 new jobs and have pledged to decrease taxes by 9% for small businesses. Canada has brought in over 40,000 Syrian refugees since the liberals have come into power which has brought in some whole new challenges into Canada on the immigration issues that they will need to work on in the future.
They also hoped to work on repairing the relationships between the States, Mexico, and Canada. This has become a bit of a challenge for Justin since Donald Trump is not is number one fan. The federal government has ended the fiscal 2016-17 year with a $17. 8-billion dollar deficit. After promising to run deficits of the lower than $10 billion for their first three years in office. Since the last election, the Liberals have spent thousands in consultations to improve the current voting system. They also promised to give more access to information that applied to the Prime Minister and office members but has not currently done so. They have done the opposite to that promise and made information harder to access since coming into power. The liberals have gone to some extent to improve the entire supply management and have sought out new trading relations with China and India. They have strengthened their trade relations with EU by having CETA agreement coming into effect.
After coming into power Justin Trudeau quickly took an approach to make the cabinet a more equal gender-based of 15 men and 15 women. They have maintained this cabinet to the current date and are working towards creating pay equity legislation by applying a gender-based analysis on the current federal policies. They have also incorporated a new Canadian Child benefit that allows for 9 out of 10 Canadian families access to more funds. They have decreased the taxes for the middle class giving them more access to cash to invest in their futures, the economy in the hopes that this will help everyone grow. They have asked that the richer citizens contribute more to the economy in their taxes to make things a little fair. They have also started to plan a carbon pollution pricing plan to help reduce emissions into the environment and to create more jobs and keeping the environment cleaner to raise our children and children in for many years to come. The liberals have reinstated the long-form census which will now make it possible to include evidence-based decision making with reliable data source into making better policies.
They are protecting Canada’s oceans, waterways, fisheries, and parks by putting the environment and their citizens first. Well at least trying to project the image that they are doing so. They have also given funding to women’s shelters, increased income supplements for single seniors, returned OAS eligibility to 65, legalized medical assistance in dying, enhanced services for veterans, given more money to students in grants, and signed the Paris climate change agreement. Although the liberals have achieved some of what they promise they are still lacking in a lot of other areas. They have promised to improve relations with the first nations, Inuit and Metis people. They intend to boost funding for first nations health care, housing, education, clean water, and to also launch inquiries into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. They still have a long way to go in following through on some of these promises.
According to the Trudeau Meter he has been in office for 1062 days and has made a total of 230 promises to date. He has currently achieved only 79 out of the 230 promises, has 68 in progress, has not started 42 and has currently broken 41 promises to date. I found this to be a very interesting way to view what the liberal party has promised using one website. Now with that, being said, I also found a Canadian voters election study survey that was completed after the 2011 elections. It stated that only 6. 9% of the respondents thought that political parties will keep their promises most of the time, 62% stated it was some of the time and 29. 1% stated that they keep their promises hardly ever.
I found that the biggest Liberal pledge that they made was to invest $125 billion dollars into public transit, green infrastructures, social housing, water, and wastewater infrastructures. The problem I found with this promise is that it was all to be invested over the course of 10 years. This goes way beyond the 4-year mandate that the liberal will have the power to do so. It all reality the liberals should only be promising the people what they can complete during there rein in power. The actual mandate should be pledging only $17 billion that is broken down into three separate categories. The first being green infrastructures, social infrastructures, and finally public transit. After researching this issue more, I found that the liberals spent way less then what was promised over the 3-year span. They had spent less than $1. 1 billion in public transit a year and less than a one billion in green infrastructures per year. It is very highly unlikeable that the liberals will ever reach the target goals that were promised in their campaign platform.
In conclusion, I think that the liberals personally can do more to keep their promises to the public. I think that although they have achieved 79 promises, they were still unable to meet the full demands of the other 151 promises that were made during their election campaign. I think it important that politicians deliver for the most part of what they say they can. Politicians should only be promising the public things that are realistic and obtainable in their futures. If every politician were to act in the best nature for their country and the people in it. It would make that country and even better place to live & grow in. Better policies should be in place that can protect the citizens against politicians that do not act in the best interest of their country and the people in it. If certain precautions were taken ahead of time it could have made it easier to prevent or minimize the bad ones from reoccurring or just not being looked at all together
