Ottawa’s go-slow approach hurts people who need action the most
Nothing minister is expected to say will provide fast change
The Trudeau government’s third budget, to be delivered on Tuesday, is likely to be an uneventful affair. And that’s worrisome. The country is strong, to be sure. And the Liberals can look back on their ambitious first budget as one of the reasons why Canadians have made gains in household income, the Canadian economy outperformed all G-7 countries last year and unemployment is at a four-decade low.
But an estimated 450,000 Canadian children live in poverty. An estimated 1.7 million Canadian families are “inadequately housed” — in many cases a euphemism for slum conditions. And quality of life in First Nations communities is scarcely better than when Justin Trudeau first took office with a vow to put Indigenous peoples at the top of his agenda — the first federal government to do so.
To be sure, Tuesday’s budget will likely touch on and embellish some promising and familiar themes that the Trudeau government has emphasized since taking power in 2015.
These include measures to further strengthen Canada’s middle class, and more investment in science. There will likely also be measures to provide an additional bolstering of Canada’s innovation prowess.
But the Liberals’ recently unveiled “supercluster” initiative is indicative of the confused sense of purpose that characterizes much of this government.
Earlier this month, Ottawa said that it and the provinces will invest as much as $950 million to create five concentrations of innovation activity across the country.
That will not turn any heads in Silicon Valley, the Liberals’ stated inspiration in creating a Canadian tech ecosystem that, in truth, has been taking form nicely on its own.
Bill Morneau, the federal finance minister, will probably put some gloss on the superclusters gambit in his budget presentation Tuesday. But he will likely not explain why we need five of these clusters, which dilutes the Silicon Valley model.
Worse, the $950 million will seep out over 10 years. In the real Silicon Valley, a decade is a millennium, given the rapid and ever-accelerating pace of technological innovation.
And it’s doubtful the headline $950 million will be spent. Instead, portions of the allotted funds will be diverted to suddenly more urgent causes, by both Ottawa and its provincial partners. And some of it will simply be hoarded by Ottawa, in a bid to at least come within hailing distance of the balanced 201920 budget Trudeau campaigned on in 2015 and that is a goal now hopelessly out of reach.
The desultory nature of that high-profile initiative is common to many of this government’s signature goals.
On Tuesday, Morneau will likely unveil several measures intended to bridge the gender gap. These may include commendable steps such as boosting women’s participation in the skilled-trades sector from the current woefully low 4.5 per cent, perhaps by attaching strings to the annual $2 billion in labour-market transfers to the provinces and territories. But the surest way of achieving genuine gender equality is with universal daycare, modelled on the long-standing Quebec model, and recently emulated by B.C.
Meaningful gender equality also requires adequate affordable housing, so that low-income working women aren’t preoccupied with where they will live next month.
And it requires more and bettertargeted tuition assistance, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) where women are also under-represented.
Yet, at least in this budget, the Liberals will likely shun those necessary measures to bring about the “inclusivity” with which they intend to brand this budget.
On the crisis in affordable housing, for instance, the Liberals’ ballyhooed National Housing Strategy commits an impressive-sounding $40 billion, jointly funded by Ottawa and the provinces, to rescue low-income families from substandard shelter.
But those funds will dribble out in $4-billion increments over the next 10 years. And even those funds, modest relative to the pressing need, don’t begin flowing until 2020. It will be many years before those 1.7 million Canadian families in acute housing distress begin to see relief.
A “couch-surfing” woman living with parents and then with friends for two-week intervals, because she lacks secure housing, or is unable to leave an abusive partner for lack of alternative shelter, is not going to be part of the gender-parity solution.
At the most recent Davos conclave, Justin Trudeau cited the estimated $150-billion boost to the Canadian economy if women were fully participant in the workforce. But that prospect is la-la-land absent the upfront investment in safe affordable housing. And until women are relieved of the $12,000 or so annual cost of daycare for an infant or toddler.
Certainly we have some work to do on inclusivity, which is a measure of living standards. By that measure, Canada ranks a dismal 17th among 29 advanced countries, the World Economic Forum reported last month.
Surely if inclusivity means anything, it requires prompt action in relieving Canadians from misery.
But on Tuesday, Morneau will likely recommit to Ottawa’s go-slow approach on the housing crisis. And Morneau will likely similarly recommit to the stunted renaissance in Indigenous communities.
As he rises in the Commons to deliver his third budget, 91 Aboriginal communities across Canada will still be struggling with long-term drinking water advisories.
Many First Nations communities are beset by a range of complex challenges. Provision of pure water should not be among them, but rather a straightforward fix.
Yet after more than two years in power, this government has managed to reduce the number of Indigenous communities with unsafewater advisories by just 16 per cent. Its plan won’t see an end to the crisis for another three years.
Why the achingly slow pace? In December, the Parliamentary budget officer reported that Ottawa is spending, at most, only 70 per cent of the $3.2 billion required to build proper First Nations water and wastewater-treatment infrastructure.
We will probably hear more about the government’s stated top priority Tuesday when Morneau promises reforms to First Nations child-care practices. But the promise of such avowals has to be matched against Ottawa’s sloth in providing the basic essential of pure water.
Morneau said Feb. 16 that he will not take “impulsive” steps in response to last year’s U.S. corporate tax cuts or the continued uncertainty over the North American Free Trade Agreement. Each of those factors raise the spectre of a decline in Canadian business investment.
And yet, the government’s halfhearted action on the policy goals that got it elected is a sign that Ottawa is allowing external forces to dull its reformist promise, to the point where some of its key goals now seem amorphous.
Is this gradualism, this lack of resolve, the stuff Canadians are made of? Alas, nothing Morneau says on Tuesday will give cause to think otherwise.