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The Trudeau Liberals are officially out of ideas

If progressives want to beat back the populist tide — or find a way to surf it — they need to do more than just regurgitate right-wing arguments about tax relief. Photo by Alex Tetrault

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Justin Trudeau’s Liberals haven’t technically lost the next election yet. But in the broader battle of ideas, it sure looks like they’ve already surrendered to the Conservative Party of Canada. 

Last week, the Liberal government announced a temporary pause on the GST for two months on an eclectic basket of goods that includes diapers, toys, beer, wine, Christmas trees, snack foods, and video game consoles. It also announced it would send GST rebates worth $250 to anyone who worked in 2023 and made less than $150,000.

This is what political desperation looks like, folks. After months of talking about the importance of bringing down inflation, the Trudeau Liberals are now engaged in explicitly inflationary policymaking. Worse, it’s regurgitating a move by the Ford government in Ontario that already announced its own attempt to bribe voters with their own money. 

The federal GST holiday also inadvertently (I hope, anyway) adds pressure to some existing fractures in our political discourse, given that people living in provinces with a harmonized sales tax will get a bigger break on the temporarily exempted goods than those living in BC, Alberta, and Quebec. Oh, and because it’s only being given to people who worked in 2023, those who didn’t — whether they’re students, unemployed, or on disability leave — won’t get the cheques they probably need more than anyone. 

All told, this gesture could cost the federal treasury as much as $7.7 billion. That’s money that could go towards any number of other priorities, whether it’s building more homes, investing more heavily in childcare, or expanding the new dental care program to more Canadians. It represents a striking failure of political imagination on the part of a government that desperately needs to start showing more of it. And it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in whatever moves it might have left. 

If there’s any consolation for Trudeau’s team, it’s that they aren’t the only progressive politicians who seem to have run out of ideas. The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh not only tried to take credit for what he called “an NDP demand” but suggested it ought to be made permanent. But that was actually Erin O’Toole’s idea, one he pitched to Canadians back in 2021. 

Even provincial New Democrats are trying their hand at playing the populist economic card using the language created by Conservatives. In Saskatchewan, for example, opposition leader Carla Beck is pressing the Moe government to “axe the (Saskatchewan gas) tax.” Her chief of staff, Jeremy Nolais, suggested on social media that she’s “focused on what actually matters to people, like making life more affordable.” That the promised affordability is apparently best delivered by cutting taxes, the preferred path for Conservative populists and politicians, is something of a confession. 

Progressives in Canada need to remember that they’re never going to cut their way to political success. They can’t compete with Conservatives here, if only because Conservatives will always be willing — and, indeed, eager — to cut further and deeper. To win, progressives must reclaim their natural reputation as builders. They should tell Canadians what they intend to create with their tax dollars instead of finding ways to return them. That means articulating a vision of optimistic abundance, one in which government investments and interventions create a richer and more prosperous society. And it means spending far more time talking about how that abundance and prosperity gets created than how it should be distributed. 

As The Tyee’s Andrew Nikiforuk wrote in a wonderful — and worrying — analysis of the US election’s aftermath, this is a defining moment for progressives. “In many ways the Trump triumph, which may explode under its own contradictions, has provided the left with an opportunity to snap out of its incoherence and come back to reality. Maybe, just maybe, it is time for a visionary populist movement that challenges the concentration of money and technology with a practical plan for civilization’s survival. Maybe that is the only way to fight right-wing populism funded by techno-optimists.”

If the Trudeau Liberals want a fighting chance in the next election, they actually have to start taking a few big swings — and connect on a few of them. So why are they doing their best Doug Ford impression instead?

We’re still a long way from that awakening here in Canada. Instead of articulating a clear and coherent alternative to Poilievre’s plan to pillage the CBC, cut taxes for the rich and reduce services for everyone else, the Trudeau Liberals and most of our New Democrats are offering up some warmed-over version of economic populism. The problem with that, as Abacus Data pollster David Coletto noted on social media, is that “it’s the vision and purpose behind the policy that inspire loyalty and drive political momentum. Without it, even well-intentioned measures risk falling flat.”

Indeed. The Liberal government’s GST measures are the political equivalent of trying to treat someone dying of heart failure with a botox injection. If they want to actually save the patient, they’ll need to do something much more dramatic — and invasive. Yes, that might mean a new leader and some new faces around the cabinet table. But at the very least, it must offer Canadians a clear alternative to the economic ideology of the government-in-waiting — and a vision of the future that can excite and energize people. All the GST rebates in the world can’t do that. 

 

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