What are people buying into with Poilievre?

OTTAWA—In 2008, when then-prime minister Stephen Harper delivered a formal apology to former students of the residential schools program, Pierre Poilievre said the Indigenous recipients of compensation payments needed to get to work, not get money from Ottawa. “My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance. That's the solution in the long run—more money will not solve it,” Poilievre, then parliamentary secretary to the Treasury Board president, told a talk radio show. He also questioned whether federal funding was being mishandled by powerful Indigenous chiefs. "That gets to the heart of the problem on these reserves where there is too much power concentrated in the hands of the leadership, and it makes you wonder where all of this money is going," he remarked. Sure, with outraged opposition MPs calling for Harper to dump Poilievre from his parl-sec job, Poilievre came out with an apology. But the incident gives anyone who cares to look a glimpse into what the man who could soon have a shot at prime minister thinks about federal social spending and the need to help others. Poilievre was, after all, a fervent supporter of a government whose hallmark over 10 years was trying to chip away at Canada’s progressive, compassionate socio-economic framework while sharply reducing corporate income taxes. It started in the Harper government’s first year in 2006. Announcing that the Conservatives had inherited a $13-billion budget surplus from the Liberals, then-finance minister Jim Flaherty decided that despite this fiscal windfall, it was time to start eliminating federal programs. That day, Flaherty axed $1-billion in spending. He dropped support for the Court Challenges Program, which had financed legal actions by LGBTQ and rights activists. Also negatively impacted were the Law Commission of Canada and Status of Women Canada. (And this, of course, was after Harper scrapped the Liberals’ $5-billion, five-year national childcare program.) And that was only the beginning. Take health-care funding. People forget that it was Flaherty who walked into a meeting with provincial finance ministers in 2011 and unexpectedly dumped a less-generous health-care deal on the table. In effect, provincial governments were estimated to lose $21-billion in health funding between 2016 and 2024. With a majority in 2011, the Conservatives got to work cutting social programs in earnest in the 2012 budget. Among other things, Flaherty killed off the famous Katimavik youth program and reduced spending for Environment Canada, Aboriginal Affairs, and the Canadian International Development Agency. The Conservatives eliminated a useful national environmental round table created by Brian Mulroney and told everyone under 54 years of age that they would have to work longer to qualify for Old Age Security. Environmental protections were eroded, as were equal-pay rules, plus Flaherty sicced the CRA on charities, including environmentalists, who were allegedly too political. By the 2015 election, unemployment insurance was harder to get, the Conservatives had given cabinet (read Harper) sweeping environmental powers and everything possible was being done to undermine labour unions. Poilievre hasn’t said much yet about economic policy. But you can bet his plan to make Canada “the freest nation on earth” will include freedom to pay fewer income taxes, including especially the rich and corporations. The trickle-down theory that says everyone benefits from lower taxes at the top is the most successful political hoax of the modern age. And it, of course, fits with slashing the size of government, something Poilievre can be expected to prioritize. Appealing as it may sound, this fiscal approach doesn’t work; it just helps the rich get richer. For instance, by 2010, Statistics Canada said the top one per cent of Canada’s tax filers held 10.6 per cent of the nation’s total income, compared to seven per cent 30 years previously. Claiming that lower corporate taxes spur investment and growth, the Harper government continued the cuts in corporate income taxes that for years had been reducing big business’ share of the national tax burden. By 2015, corporations were contributing only $41-billion a year in taxes, less than one-third of the $145-billion in personal tax revenues collected by the feds. But it didn’t produce the promised results. To begin with, according to Finance Canada, public investment in infrastructure and other programs creates five times the number of jobs and immediate economic activity as tax cuts. And, tax cuts or not, business investment per worker in Canada has remained flat since the 2008 recession while gradually increasing in the U.S.—to the point where the U.S. rate may soon be double that in Canada. Which translates into lower Canadian productivity, which translates into a lower standard of living. So, Canadians who care about what kind of country they’re living in need to think twice about what they’re signing up for when it comes to Poilievre. Populist rhetoric exalts the importance of average people, but in reality, works to entrench the advantages of the well-connected and the rich. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times

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What are people buying into with Poilievre?

Populist rhetoric exalts the importance of average people, but in reality, works to entrench the advantages of the well-connected and the rich.

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