On policy, Mulcair has questions to answer
Let’s make it official: Tom Mulcair is the new golden child. Any day now, the NDP leader will ride into Ottawa on a donkey, palm fronds laid in his path by rapturous crowds of ideologically conflicted swing voters. The major parties are effectively in a dead heat, and New Democrats have the momentum.
But what are the implications of imagining Mulcair as Canada’s 23rd prime minister? His new lustre raises questions.
Most obviously, the New Democrats have a growing cluster of big-ticket promises, and no balance sheet yet in evidence. The most recent was to restore home mail delivery. Even assuming this refers to just the roughly onethird of Canadian homes that received the service before the reforms now underway, what’s the NDP strategy to prevent Canada Post becoming a billion-dollar a year liability by 2020? Is there one?
Since last year, Mulcair has rolled out one policy after another, the better to highlight his pledge to provide “competent, responsible public administration.” As prime minister he would restore funding to the CBC; raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour; cut small business taxes to nine per cent from the current 11 per cent; have health transfers to the provinces grow six per cent annually in perpetuity; and establish $15-a-day daycare, nationwide. And that’s just a smattering.
At the same time, there’s to be no hike in personal income taxes for the wealthy, such as the Grits propose. Mulcair prefers to soak corporations instead, raising their federal tax rate from the current 15 per cent to an as-yet undisclosed level “closer to the G7 average.” He says he’ll scrap the Harper Conservatives’ income-splitting plan, saving the Treasury $2 billion a year. Where he gets his other billions is anybody’s guess.
Mulcair no longer speaks about “Dutch disease” for obvious reasons; the notion that an ‘inflated’ Canadian dollar, propped up by a high oil price, crimps eastern factory exports, is of little use when crude is tanking and the dollar sliding. But here we are now, with the loonie at 81 cents (US) and Ontario and Quebec manufacturers continue to struggle. Does Mulcair have an industrial strategy — that is to say, a plan to boost private-sector job growth — that goes beyond embracing a weakened currency?
Where are his strategies to revitalize and support Western and Northern energy and mining resource development, for example? We know the NDP would like for Alberta bitumen to be refined in Canada and not in Texas, and presumably the same could apply to mining. How we get there from here, and at what cost to taxpayers, is a cipher.
National unity is off the burner because the separatist Parti Québécois has been becalmed for a year, since former premier Pauline Marois got trounced by Liberal Philippe Couillard in the 2014 provincial election. Advantage, federal NDP, which otherwise would have been squeezed by its reliance on the soft nationalist vote in Quebec.
But it would be foolish to assume the PQ, led by Pierre Karl Peladeau, has no chance of making a comeback in 2018. And Peladeau is all about the neverendum. Federal NDP policy holds a vote of 50 per cent-plus-one should be enough to trigger negotiations towards the breakup of Canada. The Dippers are still officially committed to ripping up the federal Clarity Act — arguably the single most effective instrument in the federalist arsenal since it became law 15 years ago. How does Mulcair defend scrapping it, without torching the prospects of every NDP candidate west of Quebec?
In foreign policy, which these days mostly means the global struggle against Islamist extremism, the New Democrats are offside of public opinion, with their steadfast opposition to any military action against ISIL. That may turn out to be a wash electorally, since foreign affairs is well down the list of issues that determine voting outcomes.
But this still leaves one final, very big item, seemingly a bit esoteric, which will prove to be anything but should the NDP take power. That is the Senate.
In a spasm of populism, the NDP has promised to abolish the Upper House. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made no appointments since the Mike Duffy scandal broke in May of 2013; there are now 20 vacancies in the 105-seat chamber, with dozens more to come in the next few years. Canada’s Constitution requires that there be a Senate and, therefore, senators to pass laws, and the Supreme Court has ruled it can’t be abolished without a full-on constitutional rewrite. It’s not as simple as sending them home and burning all the furniture.
So would Prime Minister Mulcair appoint senators? Or seek a new, halfway independent appointment process as the Liberals have proposed? Or would he thrust Canada back into the constitutional cauldron, Brian Mulroney-style? Would Meech 3.0 occur in a first Mulcair term?
Inquiring minds will want to know, before five months are out.