Liberals start to suffer backlash of supporting the government

While Ignatieff and the Liberals have partly denounced the Conservative budget presented last week, their support is now coming at an undetermined price.

Four Newfoundland and Labrador MPs have vowed to vote down the budget, saying it negatively targets their province and robs it of about $1.6 billion in federal equalization funding.

MPs Judy Foote, Scott Andrews, Scott Simms and Siobhan Coady have all said they'll vote against the budget if the document isn't changed.

This comes after months of discussion about the intent of the government to review the equalization payment scheme, in order to cap the growth of payments to the rate of Canadian economic growth.

Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, said yesterday in the House of Commons:

"Certainly one of the principles involved in equalization is that all provinces should be treated equally," he told the Commons.

"It is not open to one province to elect to have unrestrained growth of equalization, sharing payments, whether it is through the accords or through formal equalization."

The proposed measures on pay-equity are also leaving a bad taste in many Liberals’ mouths. The proposal which was decried by the Liberal, NDP and Bloc members when it was included in the fiscal update in November, now figures in the soon to be adopted budget.

The budget released this week says the government will introduce a new means to establish pay equity. "The existing complaint-based pay-equity regime is a lengthy, costly and adversarial process that does not serve employees and employers well," the budget documents assert.

While the measure to have pay-equity measures included in collective agreements rather than have women fighting in court seems full of good sense, the opposition continues to call it an affront to women’s rights.

It will be interesting to see the impact of these recent Liberal decisions on the party’s future. When all is said and done, Ignatieff may have a lot of trouble looking like the left-of-centre force he claims to represent. Not a bad thing for the overall direction of our country, I suppose.