Dashing the False Hopes of the Canadian Electorate:
[I thought I'd publish this now, two says before the election, just so I can say "I tried to warn you!" after the election.]
This election is expected to have unprecedented turnout. There are multiple crises that Canadians need the next government to resolve. Urgently. The two major parties –Poilievre’s Conservatives and Carney’s Liberals– claim to have solutions. They don’t.
The main crises are acknowledged by both parties: Trump’s threat to Canadian sovereignty; Trump’s tariffs and their implications for the Canadian economy; the housing crisis; the cost of living crisis; and inadequate defence spending. The NDP also share these concerns, but doesn’t expect to be in a position to implement solutions, if they have any. Instead they hope to win enough seats to mitigate the worst impacts on the most vulnerable Canadians. The Green Party has pretty much been written out of the script altogether, so we’ll focus on how the Liberals and Conservatives propose to address these crises, and the viability of their proposed solutions.
The viability of preventing annexation:
Let’s begin with Trump’s oft-repeated intention to make Canada the 51st state. It was probably this issue that caused the Conservatives, who had hitherto enjoyed a significant lead in the opinion polls, to lose popularity and Carney’s Liberals to become the forerunners. It was probably also this issue that caused the NDP, Green Party, and People’s Party to lose much of what little support they had. Canadians decided that we need a PM able to “stand up to Donald Trump”, and Carney was deemed to be that person. He may not have the political experience that Poiliever has, but he was more savvy about the power dynamics at play. He was the adult in the room and played this card to the max. Furthermore, he recognized that the main planks in Poilievre’s platform were to “axe the tax” and to prevent Trudeau and the Liberals from continuing the ten years of mismanaging the economy. Carney wasted no time by “axing the tax” himself, and distancing himself from the Trudeau government by repeatedly pointing out to Poilievre that “Trudeau isn't in the room [son]”. This left Poilievre with nothing to set him apart from the Liberals, and he’s been scrambling ever since. His divisive adversarial, confrontational approach, his populist Trumpian rhetoric, and his failure to cast Carney as a continuation of the unpopular Trudeau have not enabled him to recapture the ground he lost to Carney. While many Canadians may still prefer the economic and social priorities of Poilievre’s Conservatives, they consider Carney best able to “stand up to Donald Trump”.
However, while Carney may indeed be more savvy about international economic dynamics, he is not in a position to be able to change them; he’s not in a position to protect Canadians from Trump's using his superior economic clout to bully Canadians. If Trump so chooses, and he probably will, he will use his economic clout to cause major economic hardship for Canadian businesses, workers, and the general population. He is already doing that, but a prolonged trade war will bankrupt many businesses, especially small ones. Over time, more and more Canadians will be forced to choose between feeding their families and retaining Canadian sovereignty. Even as PM Carney does not have the means of preventing that outcome. Nor does any other candidate. I wish it weren’t so.
The viability of strategies to survive the Tariff War:
The obstacles to preventing annexation apply to the tariff war as well, which is, amongst other things, a tool to force annexation. Both the Conservatives and Liberals agree that the solution is to bolster Canada’s economic strength. They aren’t very explicit about how a stronger economy will strengthen Canada’s resilience, but both agree that stimulating the private sector is key. To that end, they plan to implement the same solution they have to each and every crisis: encourage corporate investment by lowering taxes, reducing regulations and red tape, along with other incentives such as subsidies. This solution is packaged in slightly different ways so that it appears to address each crisis. Once properly stimulated, it is assumed that prospective investors will suddenly overcome their reticence to invest due to the extreme market volatility and uncertainty. They will suddenly start building houses, pipelines, mines, and a west-east energy corridor, etc., employing more and more workers, thereby turning Canada into such a self-sufficient economic powerhouse that it will be impervious to US tariffs and threats of annexation. That is what our primary candidates would have us believe, and most of us will. These solutions will be considered viable because the alternative-no solutions at all–is unthinkable. And neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives are going to miss the opportunity to ingratiate themselves with their corporate sponsors by passing up this newest opportunity to once again apply the Shock Doctrine. People in crisis, they know, are usually willing to believe and accept things that they otherwise would not.
The viability of plans to solve the housing crisis:
Solutions to the housing crisis are an excellent example. In addition to the aforementioned stimuli, another proposal is to subsidize new home buyers. Carney’s Liberals proposed removing the GST on new homes valued at $1,000,000 or less. Not to be outdone, the Conservatives said they would remove the GST on homes valued at $1,250,000 or less. At first glance this seems to make sense, but upon closer examination, both are cynical attempts to trick and defraud Canadian taxpayers into subsidizing home sellers, not home buyers. Homes that sold for $1,000,000 plus $50,000 GST prior to the subsidies would sell for $1,000,000 plus $50,000 after the subsidies went into effect. The appraisal of $1,000,000 was based on what buyers would pay; If buyers had paid $1,000,000 plus $50,000 GST = $1,050,000 before the subsidies, they would pay the same amount after the subsidies. Sellers will simply take the opportunity to jack up the price by $50,000.
This is particularly beneficial to large corporate landlords like Brookfield, which Carney used to manage and still has shares in–a blatant conflict of interest. Brookfield played a large role in creating the housing crisis that Carney and Poilievre now say they’re going to fix by removing the GST. Furthermore, as a corporate landlord engaged in renovictions–evicting tenants so that they could renovate the premises and rent it out again at much higher rates. To add insult to injury, and taxpayer fraud to taxpayer fraud, Carney is allocating $25B in federal financing for prefab/modular homes. It is not likely coincidental, given that Brookfield, in 2021, while Mark Carney was chair, acquired Modulaire Group, a major manufacturer of modular and prefabricated buildings. Even in the role of Prime Minister, Carney can never do as much to solve the housing crisis as he has already done to create it.
Ostensibly, Carney and Poilievre may be political opponents, but they are perfectly in sync when it comes to benefiting corporations like Brookfield at taxpayers expense.
The viability of solutions to the cost of living crisis:
The cost of living crisis, which preexisted the crises listed above, is exacerbated by all of them, and will only be further exacerbated when the proposed solutions are implemented. For the reasons we’ve already discussed, the proposed solutions will benefit corporations, not those negatively impacted by these crises.
The viability of solutions to inadequate defence capabilities:
Given the nature of the threats facing Canada, the level of defence spending shouldn’t even be part of political discourse. The North is threatened, but you can't fight melting icecaps militarily. To be sure, there are very real threats facing us, including existential threats to our sovereignty and integrity, but no amount of defence spending is going to remove them. The primary threat to our sovereignty lies to the south of us, not to the north. It is not Russia. It is not China. It is the USA.
Likewise, the primary threat to our democracy is not Russian interference. It is not Chinese interference. It is corporate influence over policy and decision-making, both in our own and in the US governments. That is not to say that there has been no interference whatsoever by foreign states, but these have primarily been efforts to influence government representatives and/or the public through misinformation via social media. Those threats are dwarfed by the threat of outsized corporate influence.
The military threat posed by Russia is grossly exaggerated. After three years of warfare and thousands of casualties, Russia has yet to gain full control of even a small fraction of Ukraine. It is absurd to think it will successfully invade and occupy another European country in the near or medium term, much less a North American country.
China is indeed a threat, but not a military one. China’s use of its military has been entirely defensive, whereas the US has launched hundreds of military actions, most to expand and protect its hegemony over the world’s resources. These actions include the installation and propping up of dictators, the overthrow and assassination of political opponents, and resource-grabs, as was the case in Iraq in 2003 and Iran in 1953. The threat posed by China is that it is on track to replace the US as the world’s dominant economic power. Some middle powers, such as India, Indonesea, Brazil aren’t entirely reliant on the US, China or Russia, but most Western countries have their wagons hitched to the US economy; their economic welfare is largely contingent on the US retaining global economic supremacy. A threat to economic supremacy is construed as a threat to US sovereignty, hegemony, exceptionalism, and entitlement, and therefore inherently unjust. China’s economic success is construed as undeserved and therefore a form of belligerence. It must be demonized and resisted, militarily if necessary.
All this requires a massive increase in defence spending, to the delight of the military industrial arms complex. The already obscene amount of resources allocated to defence will become even more obscene, preventing the allocation of funds to combat global warming, world hunger, a climate change loss-and-damage fund, affordable housing, and a host of other things. This misallocation of scarce resources is even more deadly than most wars and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the Liberals, Conservatives, and even the New Democrats are in favour of a massive increase in arms spending.
The back-burner crises that are now being removed from the stove altogether:
Even more reprehensible are the ways in which other crises are being ignored. The refugee crisis has morphed from concern for the refugees to concern about how to prevent them from coming here. According to Poilievre the needs of indigenous people will be met if they welcome extractive and other industries into their territory. Climate change is not being ignored. Green technology will be promoted by inviting extractive industries to extract “critical” minerals from the peat lands in Ontario’s Ring of Fire. There is purportedly something green (I can’t quite remember what) about NORAD expansion in the north.
And so forth.
In conclusion:
Canadians would do well to reexamine the choices before them in this election, and act accordingly. I won’t presume to tell you how you should act. Just act. Urgent action is called for.
