Unifor head comes to populism from left
Canadians who have been looking for a Donald Trump of the north may want to cast their eyes left, not right.
Union leader Jerry Dias is unabashedly channelling Trump’s political brand to fight the General Motors shutdown in Oshawa, and urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take some pages from the Trump playbook as well.
“If somebody has a better way to get General Motors’ attention, I’m all ears,” Dias, the head of Unifor, said as he floated the idea of punishing tariffs and joint, Canada-U. S. retaliation against GM and Mexico in the wake of the Oshawa closing.
Asked whether he was urging Trudeau to be more like the U.S. president, Dias said, “I’m asking him to behave like Jerry Dias.”
Immodesty aside, Dias’s second day of rage provoked an intriguing question or two in the immediate aftermath of the GM announcement on Monday: Why was Dias the angriest public figure in Canada about this decision by General Motors? Why did the prime minister and Ontario’s premier seem so resigned to the shutdown and the almost certain loss of thousands of jobs?
It almost seemed like Trudeau, Doug Ford and Dias made a pact to divvy up the famous five stages of grief — the politicians took depression and acceptance, while the union leader plunged into bargaining, denial and anger.
Plant shutdowns breed populist discontent, as we’ve learned with Trump’s support in Rust Belt, U.S.A., and populism creates unexpected coalitions with unpredictable results.
This is what is making the news about GM such a wild card in Canadian politics at the moment — it’s whipping up many of the same sentiments that gave political heft to Trump, among some of the same demographics, notably men in the suburbs.
Anger toward General Motors is coming from the left and the right of the political spectrum in Canada. Union members feel betrayal about the unionized job losses, while Conservatives are wondering whether Stephen Harper’s bailout of 10 years ago to the big automakers bought any loyalty from GM.
Repeated reports over the past few years, including one just about a month ago, have revealed that nearly one-third of the $13.7-billion bailout offered to the big automakers back in 2008 will never be recovered.
Now, that is a story that the average taxpayer can understand, and certainly resent. It plays into the populist belief that the odds are stacked in favour of rich individuals and corporations — who only turn around and, in Dias’ colourful turn of phrase on Tuesday, “give the finger” to everyone else.
Populist anger doesn’t like the mushy, complicated middle, and that’s where Trudeau’s Liberals might need to watch their own political backs amid the fallout over GM’s announced Oshawa shutdown.
For three years now, the Trudeau government has been trying to assure Canadians that there is a middle ground between the environment and the economy — and that we don’t have to choose between the two.
That is not going to be an easy message to sell to laid-off GM workers or all those other middle-class autoworkers aspiring not to be laid off (to borrow a phrase) as carbonheavy industries adopt to climate-change measures. GM, with its announced intentions to head into the electric and autonomous vehicle market, appears to confirm that saving the planet will come at a big personal cost to those in the old economy. This of course, isn’t news to those in the resources industry, especially in Alberta, where currently record low oil prices are delivering a long, sustained blow to people’s hopes and livelihoods in the West.
In short, the combined shocks in Oshawa and the West seem designed to sow disbelief that Canada is capable of transitioning to a greener economy without a huge price.
Dias was heavily involved with the negotiations over a new Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade deal and, the union leader often sounded as suspicious as Trump about how Mexico was taking jobs away from the rest of North America. Dias was back on that soapbox on Tuesday, accusing General Motors of planning to relocate those lost Canadian jobs to Mexican plants.
He wasn’t saying that Canada should build a wall with Mexico — at least not yet — but if Trump was listening to the Canadian union leader slam GM on Tuesday, he would probably have sympathized.
Dias says his fight against the GM plant closure is just beginning. So too may be the stirrings of Trump-style populism — unleashed by this decision — be only now starting to unfold in the Canadian political universe. Like Trump himself, the end result is unpredictable.