IDENTITY POLITICS BY BUDGET.

Reading Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s 367-page fiscal plan brought to mind John Stuart Mill and Hillary Clinton. John Stuart Mill because he wrote: “Every additional function undertaken by the government is a fresh occupation imposed upon a body already overcharged with duties.” Hillary Clinton because, with its focus on gender and racial politics, this is her kind of budget.

It divides its actions into four pillars: Growth, Progress, Reconciliation, Advancement. That’s a little like an aptitude test: Which of these four doesn’t belong? Correct answer: Reconciliation. How exactly Growth, Progress and Advancement differ we might need a synonyms task force to work out. In total, there are roughly 165 separate budget lines — that is, changes in spending or taxes — in this budget. Multi- tasking is what we do in the 21st century. But Mill knew even in the 19th that when you try to do 165 things all at once, “most things are ill done.”

Advancement prompts fully 64 budget lines, Progress 32, Growth 21, and Reconciliation 19, including for health, safety and “distinctions- based” housing policy, which recognizes the supposedly distinct needs of each Indigenous nation. An additional 29 “Other” changes are relegated to an appendix. The dollar breakdown in terms of net fiscal impact over six years is: Advancement: $10.3 billion; Progress: $ 6.4 billion; Reconciliation: $ 4.8 billion; and Growth, just $950 million. The six-year total of increased net spending is $ 23.4 billion, probably more than we need, but only a little over one per cent of sixyear total spending.

Growth actually gets nearly $5 billion of gross spending — as well as tariff cuts under the TPP that probably will boost growth — but it also includes revenues from cutting tax breaks and from raising taxes on passive investments in small businesses. Raising tax revenues is normally viewed as a growth enhancer only if the broadened tax base leads to cuts in tax rates — which isn’t the case here.

Most of what comes under Growth is in fact encouraging women to get trained, get into the workforce or get help from men and boys in achieving gender equity. Here we enter Hillary territory. The government buys into RBC Economics’ factoid that if women had the same work- f orce participation rate as men, GDP would be four- per- cent higher. Maybe it would be. Women providing day care for their kids at home doesn’t count as GDP; women buying day care from others does. But economic activity isn’t about maximizing GDP. It’s about increasing welfare, utility, happiness — call it what you will. Women should choose what’s best for them, not what juices GDP or satisfies first-wave feminist orthodoxy.

With all the progress we’ve made in terms of women assuming power and influence in this society, is now really the time to start institutionalizing gender relations? In his budget speech, Morneau mentioned the poster of Malala Yousafzai hanging above his daughter’s bed, which says: “We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” Referring to his private sector experience, he continued: “I can tell you that there is not one CEO out there who would stand for anything that arbitrarily holds back half the people in their organization. It just doesn’t make sense. Yet as a society we allow it to happen.” Do we really?

This budget buys into the argument that “a 1 per cent increase in gender diversity in Canadian workplaces is associated with an average increase of 3.5 per cent in revenue and 0.7 per cent increase in workplace productivity.” But private businesses — competitive ones, at least — are not in the habit of leaving money on the table. Morneau’s CEO friends run into grief from their shareholders if they do.

There is not a more self-consciously politically correct group of people than federal civil servants ( 55 per cent of whom are female). Yet sexism supposedly is so rife within the federal government it will now subject itself to comprehensive new pay equity disciplines. And all federal policies will be filtered through “GBA+,” or “GenderBased Analysis Plus,” which assesses “how different groups of women, men and gender- diverse people may experience policies, programs and initiatives.” This year, the budget says — in bold print, no less — “every single decision on expenditure and tax measures was informed by GBA+.” And the government will legislate to make this part of all future federal budgets.

In this year’s GBA+ chapter, departments that were not satisfactorily co-operative are taken out to the woodshed via short, bullet- point mentions. The Canada Revenue Agency, for example, conducted only “a cursory GBA+ in support of their revenue generating initiatives” and it “did not undertake an in- depth analysis of past and potentially future cases of tax avoidance and tax planning, the gender incidence and potential gender impacts.”

Hillary Clinton built her political strategy on a base of women and minorities. Justin Trudeau, with GBA+ and his focus on Indigenous relations, is opting for identity politics, too. It didn’t end well for Hillary. We’re a different country, of course. But I’m guessing not that different.

WOMEN SHOULD CHOOSE WHAT’S BEST FOR THEM, NOT WHAT JUICES GDP.