‘Electoral Wars,’ a reality race

Justin Trudeau looked invigorated, if not exalted, about being able to talk in specifics on how a Liberal government might help middleclass voters.

His policy announcement at Dinty’s diner in Aylmer, Que., was the first time since becoming leader two years ago that he has been able to talk particulars, rather than deflect questions with platitudinous parables about “sunny ways.”

Trudeau looked relaxed, spoke without notes and was in command of his brief. He is said to be looking forward to the upcoming leaders’ debates, given the widely held expectation that he will come across as a shallow, callow pretender.

The Liberal leader was galvanized in a way that he did not seem to be when he talked about other potential policies — for example, the call for the federal government to lead the way in infrastructure spending, which dominated last year’s party convention.

In Montreal, the party faithful adopted a motion that urged a Liberal government to commit one per cent of GDP to infrastructure spending — from which there would not be much change left from $20 billion.

Since Trudeau has committed to balanced budgets, and his new child-benefit plan and middle-income tax cuts will cost an incremental $7 billion, it does not look like the Liberals could afford to spend much more than the Conservatives on infrastructure.

The platform commitments he made Monday are not fully funded — the child-benefit pledge is $2 billion short, money that will be found by making “different choices,” the leader said, while many economists expect the $3 billion projected to be raised from increasing the top rate of tax will prove wildly optimistic.

There were, by some accounts, vigorous internal debates about the central thrust of the Liberal campaign. The blue corner argued the party should attack the Conservatives where they live, on the home turf of tax cuts and child care, taking care to outbid the Tories for the voters’ affections.

The red corner pointed out the dangers of pushing marginal tax rates over 50 per cent when the prevailing argument was meant to be about “fairness,” while advocating the use of low interest rates to invest in infrastructure, even if it meant going into deficit.

The blue corner prevailed, and the upshot is a small middle-class tax cut, a whopping top-end tax hike and a childbenefit program that promises targeted, tax-free monthly cheques, with amounts geared to family income.

This is a smart political move, if only because Trudeau is better equipped to sell a family tax-cut plan than an illdefined concept about productivity and growth.

It also fits with the broader narrative Trudeau is trying to spin — that Canada has become less fair with Stephen Harper in charge, that the middle class is struggling and the economy is not growing. It allows Trudeau to paint the Liberals as the real champions of the middle class, unlike the unprogressive NDP, which will subsidize daycare spots for the well-off, and the plutocratic Conservatives, whose income-splitting plan benefits the wealthy.

As such economists as Stephen Gordon have pointed out, this idea that middle-class dreams have turned sour under Harper doesn’t fit the Canadian data.

Median after-tax income has reached an all-time high in recent years, in part because the share of government transfers going to the middle-income quintile has risen substantially.

But we are already through the looking glass — a nonsense world of cabbages and kings where nothing is what it is because everything is what it isn’t.

The Conservatives have already tried to convince voters that the “Trudeau tax” will make them worse off. There’s no doubt that if you earn more than $200,000 a year, you may have to defer your next Lexus for a year. But that was not the point employment minister Pierre Poilievre made — there’s very few votes to be made defending the wealthy, or pointing out that the middle class has never had it so good.

He didn’t even mention the middle-bracket tax cut is so piddling that when the Conservatives looked at implementing it in 2005, they decided it was too expensive and too inconsequential to bother with (they ended up cutting the GST instead). If you’re earning $55,000, you will get only about $150 a year in relief under the Liberal plan.

Instead, Poilievre made the patently false claim that the Liberal plan will raise taxes for two million families, which would be some feat given they plan to spend $4 billion more on their child tax benefit.

This election is already shaping up as a particularly surreal episode of Storage Wars, the reality TV show where professional buyers take part in a cash-only auction for the junk in abandoned storage units.

We’re just starting to find out what the parties are prepared to pay for what’s behind the door.

Election 2015 promises to be just as trivial and magnetic as trash TV.