Flawed choices

Will the federal Libs bring in more relief for houseless young couples? Will Ottawa increase the tax load on higher income-earners? Will the CRA employees win the 30% pay raise they’re threatening to strike over? Are we finally on the cusp of higher capital gains taxes? Is the federal government committed to more health care spending so your knee gets fixed faster?

Why do we give $7,000, tax-free, per kid to parents, but CPP and OAS payments to oldies are taxed? Is it reckless or necessary that Canada takes in half a million new people a year? Should we have a carbon levy to fight climate change or is this another senseless tax grab? Have we overdone public policy catering to transgenders and Aboriginals, or is this enlightened? Does it make sense to have the cabinet balanced by gender, or should brains and talent be the criteria?

Was Covid a legitimate public health emergency, or a classic example of government overreach? And was it justified for the nation to plunge into deficit and over $1 trillion in debt because of the pandemic? Was that spending not a material cause of the inflation that led to a swelling of mortgage rates?

Lately what the feds think, and do, has had a material impact on our lives.

Since the Trudeau Liberals did a deal with the Singh NDPers, policy has drifted left. Spending has increased. Social programs augmented. And still we have a generational ‘housing crisis’ and people dying in ER waiting rooms. The trucker-led convoy a year ago lit a fuse. While the brutish, honking malcontents were a credit to nobody they decapitated the Cons and helped elect Pierre Poilievre. And thus a polarized political divide came to be.

PP said buying Bitcoin would help families cope with inflation. But BTC then lost 60% of its value. He said he would fire the head of the Bank of Canada for keeping rates too low for too long. But Tiff Macklem has raised them seven times and critics have decried any move to politicize the central bank. Poilievre laid the blame for crazy lines at passport offices and snarled air traffic at snow-entombed airports at Trudeau’s feet. He would cancel carbon taxes. He would slash government spending. Details to come.

The latest polls: Cons 35%, Libs, 30%, Dippers 21% (according to Canada 338). If an election were held today, Poilieve would have a minority, but be at risk to a Lib-NDP voting coalition. In recent weeks, the Cons have made strong gains. Does this mean, increasingly, Canada will be changing course on all those issues above, come the election next year?

Is Poilievre too wacky for most voters? Is Trudeau too woke to be tolerated any more? Did Singh make his socialist party completely irrelevant by propping up the Liberals for two years?

So there’s an election in a year and a bit. For ages now the Libs and Cons have been diddling around the 30% support mark, unable to break through to numbers that Mulroney or Chretien once enjoyed. During that time, Canadian politics has become more polarized. Unlike Brian or Jean, who governed from the middle, Steve and Justin pushed further to the ideological edges. Now, as a new book by punted Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau states, T2 governs from the fringes – giving gender, Indigenous and climate change issues precedence over boring stuff like defence, health care or (gulp) balancing the budget.

Take CERB, for example. Doling out billions during the pandemic in a gush of cash gave Canada its worst-ever balance sheet and helped double the national debt.

“During the period when the largest government expenditures as a portion of GDP were made in the shortest time since the advent of the Second World War,” Morneau writes, “calculations and recommendations from the Ministry of Finance were basically disregarded in favour of winning a popularity contest.”

Morneau told Trudeau the CERB giveaway was nuts. Trudeau shrugged. Then the guy with decades of Bay Street financial experience found himself replaced by, well, a non-financial finance minister. But Chrystia is loyal.

The message today is simple. Political polarization is bad. Look south for all the proof you need. It’s a Dem-MAGA war down there. Biden keeps spending. The Republicans now threaten to shut the place down.

Do a significant number of Canadians crave moderation? More of the Mulroney-Chretien-Martin brand of compromise and tempered governance? If the current Libs or Cons moved in that direction, would the odds of a majority government – with more stability and a lessened role for the crazies (like Jagmeet) – improve?

One poll says so. A large survey done for the Association for Canadian Studies found about 26% of Canadians claim they’re political moderate. Centrists. Almost 18% identify on the right (with Pierre) while close to 24% are on the left (Justin). The other third are unsure of where they lie on the political spectrum.

Also interesting: more Canadians in their thirties, than older voters, are rightists. The most lefties are between 18 and 24 (no surprise). People with more money lean right. Those with more education lean left. And the hot button topics are what you’d expect – Covid, vaccine, climate change, immigration, racism, gender, and Indigenous.

Can, or will, Poilievre dump the truckers and appeal to Bunnypatch soccer moms? Does Trudeau have it in him to pivot from social justice wokeness and talk to Bay Street? Or will 2024 be a rerun of 2020, leading Canada into a spiral of swelling debt and taxation?

Sigh. Does anyone else miss the Rhinos?

About the picture: “I’m a long time blog dog – I’ve even posted a comment once or twice (sorry about that – I couldn’t help myself),” writes Josh. “This is Charm,  our one year old Springer Spaniel. In the picture Charm is having a staring contest with a couple of neighborhood deer in the lower Laurentians north of Montreal. Thanks for sharing your insights every day.”