Amidst this summer's political games in all political parties, taxpayers are taken for granted. No one is engaging in a substantive discussion of coherent public policy. What the parties must offer up instead are concrete policies that address the economy, governance, and social issues.

The Economy: First, the tax mix must move from reliance on income taxes (personal and corporate) toward consumption taxes. This effort should be coupled with expenditure reductions through privatization, Crown asset divestitures, constitutional limits on spending and a legislated debt reduction schedule.

Second, articulation of a two-track trade policy is essential. Trade subsidies should not be seen as a source of competitive advantage, no matter how specific or short-term we are told they will be. Instead, a more aggressive stance is needed in future trade negotiations that aim to level the international playing field for all.

A national plan to reduce inter-provincial trade barriers is also needed. The 1994 Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) is not working. Labour mobility is still restricted for many professions and political will to adhere to the AIT timetable is non-existent. For Ottawa to ignore this problem while embracing international agreements and promoting multilateral trading frameworks is sheer hypocrisy.
Third, we can no longer ignore the economic clout of Canada's cities. Cities fuel our GDP. Yet they cannot continue to deliver public transportation, infrastructure, and myriad social services on the current property tax base.
To this end, Ottawa must facilitate - not lead - constitutional discussions to ultimately change the relationship between the three orders of government to cede more power to the provinces and cities.

Governance: Taxpayers are demanding concrete performance results as the best measure of the value for their tax dollars. Tangible measures that focus on outputs, not inputs, must become the benchmark for evaluating government program effectiveness.

In Parliament, free votes and committees actually empowered to improve legislation must be adopted. Outside Parliament, voting reform and reflective democracy measures must form the bedrock of any governance reform initiative. Our first-past-the-post voting system is obsolete and ill suited for a post-industrial democracy such as Canada. A national referendum on ditching this system with a follow-up vote to adopt a more proportional system is long overdue.

Social Issues: Cross-generational fairness in health-care reform, public pensions and aboriginal policy must be tackled.

The current principles of the Canada Health Act: universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness and portability, can all be rolled into universality as public opinion polls clearly show that Canadians believe them to be one in the same. Public administration should give way to public governance and new principles of choice, accountability, quality and sustainability should be added.

As for the future, government actuaries tell us the CPP is stable. However, reports indicate that between 66%-75% of Canadians disagree. Today, CPP premiums stand at 7.8%; pegged to hit 9.9% by 2003.

Back in 1966 - when the CPP was instituted - premiums were pegged to never rise above 5.25%. Indeed, we were told they would only reach 5.1% in the year 2025. It's time to let Canadians invest this money for themselves in their own retirement vehicles.

Almost two-thirds of our native population is under the age of 35: their baby boom is happening now. Implementing a series of reforms in concert with aboriginal leaders including individual property rights, transparent and accountable band governance and abolition of the Indian Act would all be steps in the right direction. Politics in Canada should be about policy. Sadly, today it is not.