Political disconnect leaving Liberals far behind

OTTAWA—I’m guessing no one can tell me off-hand how many programs to support Canadians, and their domestic and global priorities the current Liberal government has brought in during its eight-plus years in power. You can go through the recent budget document page by page and still have no idea. Unless you count them one by one, which would take hours. Suffice to say there appears to be more than 100 new programs and initiatives in this year’s 405-page economic and fiscal package, in addition to the hundreds of others since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first budget in 2016. The new ones cover everything from house-building incentives to breaks for companies pursuing carbon capture to more support for childcare to money for Ukraine. In all, there’s $39-billion in net new spending. But that kind of funding is minor compared to the spending the Trudeau Liberals rolled out during the COVID pandemic to try to protect Canadians’ businesses and jobs. That totalled somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500-billion. What it comes down to is that this has been an extremely activist government. But, as we have seen in the past year, voters’ appreciation of all this appears in negative territory. However one looks at it, the messages of support are not getting through or registering with the public. Take the carbon tax rebate, for example. An Angus Reid poll late last year showed that half of the population is either unaware of the rebate or unsure whether they are receiving it. Then there’s the housing issue, which now dominates public concerns along with the related matter of inflation. Having accepted responsibility for the housing affordability crunch—which in recent decades had been considered the constitutional responsibility of the provinces and cities—the federal government has sought to marshal an all-of-government, cost-be-damned strategy to launch an ambitious national house-building campaign, including $25-billion to incentivize construction, and help renters and the homeless. But the massive housing plan has done nothing to improve the Liberals’ poll standing, and an Abacus Data survey found that, of those who said they were familiar with the budget, only one in five said Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s policies would have a positive impact on the housing affordability problem, with half of respondents saying it would have a negative impact. This skepticism is of course part of a much-wider issue when it comes to government and the economy. Despite Freeland’s managing to keep the economy from slipping into an extended period of no growth since COVID, a large majority of Canadians have been telling pollsters for nearly two years that Canada is in a recession. It’s the same in the United States where the bulk of voters have been convinced their economic situation is a lot worse than it actually is, leading many to say they think they would be better off economically under another Donald Trump administration. Researchers have attributed this pessimism to widespread uneasiness spawned by the pandemic experience, sharply rising prices, and uncertainty about the future. People don’t feel better about their economic situation even if it is in fact better than it was a few years ago, researchers found. As in Canada, the current malaise in the U.S. is also a feature of the long arc of growing inequality owing to government policies favouring the wealthy and investors over half a century. The resulting decline in the prospects of the middle class has been an ingrained feature of life in North America since long before the pandemic arrived. Huge government outlays to protect people during COVID eased the wealth gap a bit, but it was temporary. And what’s more, many people have bought into the incorrect accusation that government spending during the pandemic caused runaway inflation, rather than the actual main causes: global economic factors, and supply shortages. In this context, it’s not at all clear that the Trudeau Liberals—fixed in the policy-oriented, best-efforts brokerage politics of the pre-social media era—are playing the same game as their opponents. As Trudeau has said, Canadians are angry, and his central argument that government can be a force to help the public solve its problems seems to be increasingly going unheard. The policy-free zone established by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre seems at the moment to be much more to the public’s liking. Appealing to emotion and selling his idea that Canada is “broken,” Poilievre has put himself in position to win the next election handily without providing any reason for people to vote for him other than he supposedly gets their anger. Altogether, it’s not a propitious moment for a country that needs serious, well-thought-out programs and policies to deal with its many complex, ongoing, and divisive problems. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times

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Political disconnect leaving Liberals far behind

It’s not at all clear that the Trudeau Liberals are playing the same game as their opponents.

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