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Government kicks off unofficial election campaign with retail politics budget

Government kicks off unofficial election campaign with retail politics budget

The government’s focus on retail politics and catering to target demographics, in the lead up to the next federal election, may add some complications for opposition parties as they try to jockey for votes.

In Joe Oliver’s first budget as Canada’s finance minister, tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday, the government put forward a message of fiscal discipline, relishing that the Conservatives kept their promise of a balanced budget while producing a modest surplus.

The Conservatives also treated various segments of the population with specific inducements, “a kind of retail politics approach to specific segments where they have to shore up support,” says Frank Graves, CEO of EKOS Research. Segments such as families with kids, seniors and small business owners.

This may present a challenge to the opposition that doesn’t want to — and nobody wants to do this — draw any ire from those types of voters.

“Seniors, in our research, are absolutely critical to this government’s success,” Graves said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

“[The government] achieved its majority last time by doing extraordinarily well with seniors, and seniors have become a larger portion of the voting electorate, and so they will once again.”

Measures that seniors are bound to appreciate include extended compassionate care leave, doubling of the yearly limit for Tax Free Savings Accounts and a reduction in mandatory RRIF withdrawal rates for retirees.

There was a lot of talk about benefits and targeted tax cuts for families in Oliver’s budget — income splitting and the like — before the document was released Tuesday afternoon.

For Tim Powers of Summa Strategies, the most obvious example of the government’s retail politics targeting is for families with kids, recipients of the expanded Universal Child Care Benefit program.

“They will be recipients of those cheques some time in the summer. So there’s a lot of families in certain parts of the countries that I think the Conservatives hope will be pleased with that initiative, and in turn support them,” Powers said

These benefits will likely help out families in places like the 905 region and British Columbia, he suggested.

Cutting the small business tax rate of 11 per cent to 9 per cent by 2019 is another interesting, possibly complicating, incentive. The NDP has proposed something similar, Powers said, and Liberal leader noted Wednesday that he has no issue with the measure, only with its timeline.

“So what’s fascinating is that other than the TFSA and direct criticism that’s coming of that from the opposition,” Powers said, "it’s been very hard for the opposition…because they also don’t want to feel the ire of, whether it be seniors or small business owners who will be pleased with the things that are there, that are directly targeted towards them.”

But will the positives for seniors, inducements for other segments of the population and promises kept about balancing the books do enough to get the Conservatives back in office for another mandate?

“The budget alone is not going to make or break what happens in October on the 19th or the morning of the 20th,” Powers said. “It’s a start. It’s a big piece in the puzzle, but it’s [just] a piece of the puzzle.”

Graves said that although the budget is “relatively astute, politically,” the government may have a hard time addressing some of the concerns that are weighing heavily on Canadians’ — of all ages — shoulders.

“I don’t think those messages [of fiscal prudence] are nearly as important for a lot of voters who are looking for something which will restart what’s seen as a pretty moribund economy, where apart from a few people at the top, nobody’s seeing much progress,” he said.

That issue, Graves continued, isn’t really dealt with in the budget and the very narrow lead the Conservatives have maintained in most polls, ahead of the Liberals and NDP, might not be sustained through to a fall election.