Opposition
The Liberals and the New Democrats announced shortly following the presentation of the budget that they will not support in its current form.
Nova Scotian politicians have criticized the new equalization plan, as it cuts back payments on the assumption that various offshore programs will result in increased revenues. Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald has stated that this situation is caused the by the few Nova Scotian seats in the Federal Cabinet. This is expected to be a cut of approximately 5 million dollars. Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams criticized the budget as being a "betrayal" and a violation of the terms of the 2005 Atlantic Accord. Bill Casey, Conservative Member of Parliament for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, voted against the budget, because of the unfair equalization formula for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, and the effective cancellation of the Atlantic Accord. He has since been removed from the Conservative caucus.
Parti Québécois leader Andre Boisclair spoke in opposition to the budget, saying that the new money for Quebec was part of an effort to buy votes for the federalist Liberal Party of Quebec before the March 26, 2007 provincial election.
The Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, also criticized the budget for its alleged lack of funding for cities.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Canadian Federal Budget
Famous quotes containing the word opposition:
“Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as “right” in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as “brute force.””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,—let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”
—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale 1788–1879, U.S. novelist, poet and women’s magazine editor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 36-40 (December 1828)