So where’s this ‘real change’ stuff?
When Canadian voters went to the polls last year, their emphatic message was that it was time for meaningful change from a decade of a government that we’d come to know all too well.
During the course of the campaign, waves of support shifted back and forth between the two main opposition parties, based on voters’ calculations as to which was more likely to oust a tired Conservative government. And the ultimate beneficiaries were Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
Unfortunately, Trudeau has since decided that a change in style is far more important than a change in substance. And so, while he tries to make as much hay as he can out of the perception of being less stuffy than Stephen Harper, the Liberals’ campaign promises — both in their general commitment to “real change,” and their most crucial platform planks — have been abandoned in favour of policies indistinguishable from the Conservatives’.
Never mind a campaign commitment to working with the provinces on a more sustainable funding system for health care.
Now, Health Minister Jane Philpott has declared that the Conservatives’ unilaterally announced restrictions on future funding will stay in place. And promises such as a national prescription drug plan also have been discarded.
Never mind a commitment to rein in global warming, including by a pledge to have Canada do its part to set and meet meaningful greenhouse gas emission targets.
Instead, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is pointing to the same Conservative targets her party formerly described as “catastrophic,” and adopting them as her own. And this week, the Liberals also approved a massive liquid natural-gas project in British Columbia that stands to further increase emissions while also putting the Great Bear Rainforest at risk.
And never mind a promise to fully respect aboriginal rights while taking steps toward reconciliation. The Liberals, instead, have gone out of their way to grease the skids for controversial projects that may have devastating effects on First Nations territory — notably including British Columbia’s Site C hydroelectric dam — before First Nations have any real opportunity to be heard. (In the case of Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, that has meant trying to deflect blame for her government’s “running roughshod over aboriginal rights” — which she publicly protested just four years ago.)
Meanwhile, no matter how many times the Canadian Human Rights Commission orders the federal government to at least end systematic discrimination against children on reserves, the Liberals have had nothing to offer other than excuses for delaying any fix — unless one takes some comfort in flowery, but meaningless, rhetoric left over from the election campaign.
What’s more, the problems range beyond even those that can be seen as reflecting the Liberals’ familiar run-to-the-left, govern-from-the-right credo. There’s no ideological win to be had in meddling in public data — yet Trudeau has become the second consecutive prime minister to see Statistics Canada’s chief statistician resign in an effort to counteract political intrusions.
If there’s any reason for optimism in the current term of government, it won’t be found in the policy-consultation processes that have been replaced with a general principle of asking “what would Stephen Harper do?” Instead, the one basis for longer-term hope is that, against all odds, sorely needed electoral reform will be the lone promise that gets translated from a campaign commitment into a real-world result.
After all, we’ve seen once again what happens under a system whose primary accountability mechanism is to replace one artificial majority with another. And so far, the Trudeau Liberals have proven to be just one more frustrating chapter in the same old story.