A few questions left after love- in
Policy matters: Liberals sizzled but where’s the steak?
It will be deemed by Liberals to have been a brilliantly successful event. And by some lights, it was. This conference was efficient, focused and energetic. The leader gave a good speech. The troops are motivated. The tills are full. If you’re a Liberal, all’s well with the world.
Here, though, are some niggling questions. Where’s the beef? This was, as annoyed New Democrat and Conservative partisans noted on Twitter on Saturday afternoon, a policy conference, not a campaign event. It was billed as the first serious unveiling of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s much-proffered plan to help the middle class, which he has defined as anyone whose livelihood stems from working income, rather than investments.
Whether the Canadian middle class needs rescuing is up for debate. The 30- year, rising trend of income inequality and income stagnation, particularly among men, is not. The data are clear, as economists such as David Autor, Miles Corak and Kevin Milligan have shown. This long- term, global trend is the foundation of Trudeau’s self- identified political mission; his promise to mitigate it, the bedrock of his message. Yet beyond identifying education, trade and infrastructure as central to the eventual Liberal plan, neither Trudeau nor his team have yet explained how they intend to help the middle class. They did not do so this weekend. How is this different? Trudeau noted with studied wryness in his Saturday keynote that Section 93 of the Constitution makes education a provincial responsibility. Nevertheless, he said, “there’s a lot the federal government can do to support provincial policy.” Well, sure. But what? The Conservatives are also moving full bore on education and skills training, particularly for aboriginal Canadians living in communities proximal to major resource projects. The government’s entire northern and resource strategy, as articulated during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Arctic tour last August, is founded on skills training. How will the Trudeau plan differ from this, if at all?
Likewise trade. It’s fair to hammer the government for its failure to secure the Obama administration’s approval, thus far, for the Keystone XL pipeline, a critical piece of trade infrastructure. But beyond that, on trade, the Conservatives present a very small target indeed. In recent years any country willing to split a Popsicle with Canada has landed a free trade deal. The European trade pact achieved last year was a legitimate, huge win for the Conservatives. How do the Grits propose to outdo them on this file, or distinguish themselves? Infrastructure, ditto. The Tories’ Building Canada Fund proposes $ 14 billion in infrastructure spending over the next decade. Are we to assume the Liberal plan, as in Rob Reiner’s Spinal Tap, will merely crank the volume on infrastructure to eleven?
Fiscal conservatism: Now you see it, now you don’t?
The implicit bargain Trudeau has long offered — which he made explicit Saturday — is to provide sound management, fiscal discipline, open trade, essentially a right- leaning economic program, while at the same time offering purely liberal social policies. It’s a clever strategy, because it allows the Liberals to appeal to libertarian Conservatives, and socially conscious New Democrats, simultaneously. The party can justifiably lay claim to having the best modern fiscal record, under former finance minister Paul Martin, of any Canadian political party.
But in the lead- up to the recent federal budget, senior Liberals critiqued Finance Minister Jim Flaherty — for going too fast on deficit reduction. So a party for which balanced budgets were once a sine qua non, now places itself to the fiscal left of a party that has not managed a surplus since 2008. Though there are no specifics, Trudeau has suggested that a future Liberal government would spend even more generously than the Conservatives have, which is saying something. How does that square with a strategy to win over kitchen- table conservatives and swing voters?
How new is this Liberal party, anyway?
A policy session Friday ostensibly aimed at fostering a “competitive economy” featured not a word ( that I heard) about tax cuts or reducing costs or red tape for small and mediumsized businesses. Instead there were scads of measures, most of which passed without debate, directed at ending the “war on science.” Based on those and other floor sessions I heard, this Liberal party still believes that a grand national strategy, followed by a grand national spending program, is the solution to all problems great and small. Indeed in a scrum here, Liberal Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne rhapsodized at length, first about her affinity with Trudeau’s vision, then about the very grand national child care program — shepherded by Ken Dryden, back in the day — that Canadians rejected in the 2006 election, and again implicitly in 2008 and 2011. How is that, in any way, new?
Trudeau pledged when he became leader to reinvent and renew his father’s party. He has certainly done the latter. Signs of the former are scanty indeed.