Economy, not identity, is where the votes are

People may not agree on what `woke' means, but they sure can agree what `job' means, Andrew Macdougall says.

When Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre look at Canada, what do they see?

One suspects the leaders of Canada's two serious political parties see different countries, despite looking at the same set of facts, figures and images. More than that, the two leaders see different levers to pull in order to achieve their political aims.

Trudeau still offers paeans to love and tolerance, even as he regularly stoops to demonizing the Conservative supporters he once called his “neighbours.” Meanwhile, Poilievre spews regular fire and brimstone, even as he tries to show love to those Canadians cut off from economic opportunity.

But what if both men are, even if they don't realize it, searching for the same path to victory? And what if travelling on that path both solved some of Canada's thorniest problems while eliminating some of its biggest tensions? Wouldn't that be a nice plot twist after years of rancour and frustration?

Of what path do I speak? Why, it's the economy, stupid. Instead of focusing on religious or racial identity and the divisive culture wars these discussions so often spark, why not go retro and focus our politics back on economic class and the peace a revamped economy could produce if a government could successfully rewire it away from its current top heaviness, including the rampant asset inflation from 15 years of cheap money? Surely, removing unearned rents, monopolistic practices and housing NIMBYISM would do more to lessen the current malaise than arguing about who gets to have an opinion on what topic based on what they look like or how they pray.

It works electorally, too. The Conservatives need votes in and around Canada's major cities. As Andrew Scheer and Erin O'toole have both proven, racking up votes in places like Alberta might win you the popular vote, but that isn't a useful metric.

It's about seats, and cities are where the seats are. As for the Liberals, they need to keep the NDP'S hands away from urban seats while holding on to the metro cores and suburbs they already have in places like Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Absurdly expensive cities, affordable only to the dual-income families of the services lords of the modern metro economy, are antithetical to both Conservative and Liberal aims. Or at least they should be.

Focusing on economic class would make the definitions in our political debates mathematical, in that they would emphasize harder-to-misinterpret figures, and not subjective feelings or vague terms like “lived experience.” People might not agree on what “woke” means, but they sure can agree on what “job” means and what their take-home pay is.

Making politics mathematical and economic would also concentrate minds as to where the money now goes in an advanced western knowledge economy. Just who is benefiting from the current economic settlement and what might be done about adjusting it? And while the “working class versus the plutocrats” is hardly a new political frame, it feels like a missing one (where you at, NDP?) in an era where much of our political debate is framed by the very same information plutocrats whose interest is in the engagement and clicks the culture wars bring.

Getting away from identity would also take some of the heat out of the debate around immigration. This is good, now that Trudeau is planning on ramping up Canada's annual arrivals to 500,000 per year, most of whom will want to live in said absurdly expensive cities. Yes, people want to come to Canada in search of a better life, but that better life doesn't involve slaving away in the gig economy servicing the people who can actually afford to live in our cities. A modern economy needs to work for the people who work at Amazon, not just those who order from it, no matter what colour or creed they are.

Let's hope Poilievre and Trudeau see things the same way.