Let's clear up COVID before tackling the other big questions
Spare us from politicians pushing ambitious change during the coronavirus crisis.
It's not that Canadians are against reforms that will make for a better world. It's just that right now we're overwhelmed by a global pandemic and restrictions.
Sharks are still circling, our boat is still taking on water, we're bailing as fast as we can while desperately trying to grasp the instructions on how to start the electric pump, but our politicians keep telling us, “Hey, how about that climate change?” or “How about that equalization mess?”
Build back better, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau preaches.
How about we get through the restrictions first? How about we see where we stand after taking on what could amount to $1 trillion in pandemic-related debt?
Let's shake up Canada with a constitutional debate, Premier Jason Kenney pushes.
Is this really the time?
Let's completely redo Alberta's power grid and go net-zero by 2035, the NDP'S Rachel Notley urges. Seriously? How about we see how Alberta's iffy economy is doing after a massive shock?
I'm not saying any of these notions from Trudeau, Kenney or Notley are bad or good. I'm saying we're necessarily preoccupied with a more important matter and also that it's no easy thing to bring in excellent public policy even in the calmest of times.
Why would we attempt to do so now when we're drained?
The pandemic and restrictions have hit us not in some theoretical sense, but right where we live and work.
If we've still got a job, many of us worry about keeping it. We've had to make major adjustments, either setting up shop at home, working under strict public health rules, or facing the closure of our workplace for a short time or for good. Our kids have been in and out of school, our elderly parents brutally isolated, and we don't even have the consolation of friends and family over to visit.
Little wonder that a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute reports that Albertans are mainly focused on explosive government debt and the economy, while across Canada other pandemicrelated issues, namely health care and the response to COVID, are the main political obsessions.
Meanwhile, the Trudeau Liberals are pushing hard to rewrite all our laws around internet use, while the Kenney UCP government is redoing an entire K-6 school curriculum all at once (as opposed to rewriting just a few major subjects every five years, as was considered wise in much less tumultuous times).
For now, conservative leaders like Kenney are most out of step with the public when proposing major change, mainly because the progressive base, which is always open to change, has been empowered to some extent by the pandemic, while the conservative base has been hammered.
Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, aptly summed up this new dynamic in our politics last August: “The shape of the fall debate is coming into focus. One party will speak to people who weren't terribly badly inconvenienced by the shutdown, promising to use other people's money to remake Canada in a way they describe as fairer and greener. Other parties, speaking for people who paid a terrible price in the shutdown, will talk primarily about recovering jobs, business income, schooling and normalcy. It will be a class-based debate as much as anything, with the protected classes — those with protected jobs and income streams — dreaming of dreamy futures and the at-risk classes reaching for security.”
Almost a year after Brodie's assessment, the wind remains behind the wings of progressives, giving some life to Trudeau's agenda for change, but that doesn't mean this support is rock solid. If inflation and government deficits keep rising, and if COVID hospitalizations and deaths continue to crash, conservative politicians and their own more aggressive schemes, including major budget cuts, will likely rebound in popularity.
It's one thing, after all, to spend endless billions on helping desperate Canadians through the pandemic, but it's another for a broke government to subsidize windmills.
For now, I suspect most of us are fed up with relentless uncertainty and simply hunger for summer vacation.
How about this? Let's see if the vaccines stamp out the virus and if we can get our economy up and running after major federal income supports are taken away. There's a good chance we'll bounce back fast, maybe as early as next fall.
If the economy does roar back, that will be a sure signal that it makes sense to turn our attention to other problems, but not until then.