Our economic conversation has become tedious

Time for a more moral chat, writes Mark Dance.

Far and away the worst leaders’ debate this federal election was the cringeworthy affair hosted by the Globe and Mail on the topic of the economy. “The big loser?” asked Sun News columnist David Akin, “Voters. Anyone who wanted to learn something.”

Indeed, after the 90 minutes of shouting and posturing among Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau, the audience probably knew less about their country than they did beforehand.

And while it’s tempting to blame the hosts for a problematic format, or the long election for debate fatigue, there are two more serious reasons why federal politicians have been unable to articulate anything meaningful — or real — about our economy.

The first is that the term “economy” itself, uttered on stage some 75 times at the Globe debate, is a malleable abstraction, a slippery rhetorical device. When Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign realized that “It’s the economy, stupid,” the result wasn’t a substantial articulation of how American labour functions or an appraisal of the rise of the financial capital. Rather, what advisers like James Carville figured out — and the cursed insight with which we are still living — is that “the economy” can be deployed as a hypnotic and vacuous mantra. Whatever unease or hope voters feel can be poured into the empty vessel of economic stability and growth.

The second reason for this election’s lacklustre economic discourse is that there’s not actually much on which the parties disagree. “We’ve reached a consensus on the economy,” commentator Andrew Coyne has proclaimed. On matters of monetary, trade and tax policy, the major party leaders have comparable visions, differentiated primarily by stylistic flourishes. Questions about whether to give tax credits to teachers or to firefighters, whether the government should run a rounding error of a deficit or a rounding error of a surplus, are more flash than flesh.

And yet, even in the midst of a (potentially dubious) consensus on macroeconomic matters, talking about the economy can — and should — sound much more human.

It could mean talking about investment in First Nations education to inject young blood and a new culture into the Canadian workforce while fulfilling the obligations of the Crown toward indigenous people. It could mean bridging the cultural and legal gap between Canadian citizens and tens of thousands of migrant workers so that we no longer have an unsettling shadow labour market in our midst. It could mean prioritizing basic scientific research, an activity that can still change how we work and live.

The obsession with job creation — with Stephen Harper most recently promising to create 1.3 million jobs — is another instance of sacrificing a substantial and interesting conversation for an abstract one. What sort of jobs? In what industries?

“There is no bad job; the only bad job is not having a job,” the late Jim Flaherty brazenly asserted during his last term as Conservative finance minister. But is that true? Is the federal government incapable of considering the qualities of labour and unemployment? Why not start a conversation about developments in Sweden for a six-hour work day or tap into the debate in Switzerland about guaranteed annual income? Why not get serious about reigniting national work-study programs for underemployed young people longing for meaningful occupations?

Consideration of these proposals is not just more vibrant than our current stultifying prattle, but it is also much more moral. It’s not a conversation about what the economy needs — something alien to daily work and life — but rather a conversation about what we all need to feel healthy, productive and in community.

It’s not too late in the democratic day to start such a conversation. And you never know — it might even make for a debate worth watching.

‘There is no bad job; the only bad job is not having a job,’ the late Jim Flaherty asserted. But is that true?