Publié par 
I’m going to borrow from some of the buzzwordy language in vogue with the government right now as a metaphor for Budget 2017 – it’s like an automated car that is probably going down the right road, but its electric battery is only partly charged.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau concedes as much in his speech to the Commons: “Now we realize that there is much work ahead of us than behind us. But I remain inspired that we’re on the right path.”
The budget document suggests the government’s policy thinkers are focused on the challenges the country is facing, in terms of the rapidly changing nature of work, the productivity gap, climate change (including its direct consequences on people in Canada), and the fact that some groups do not benefit from economic growth as much as others (for example, newcomers and Indigenous people). There are very loud echoes here from the recommendations made by the Finance Department’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, led by international management consultant Dominic Barton.
But while the thinking outlined in the budget is ambitious, the actions are modest and the details are vague on the bigger projects. For example, while it was billed around town as the innovation budget, the plan for improving Canadian productivity and competitiveness was only partly fleshed out.
In considering this budget, it’s important to think back to Budget 2016, which gets nearly as much space in this year’s document as the fresh material does. Last year, the Liberals stretched spending as far as they thought their political capital would allow, allocating $50 billion over five years, including the successful Canadian Child Benefit. This sent the federal deficit to around $30 billion, and forced the government to promise that, at least, the debt-to-GDP ratio would not be much more than 31 percent.
Given those self-imposed constraints, it’s not surprising that this year’s forecast new spending is only a fraction of what it was a year ago.
Let’s look at just two areas of earnest, yet modest action.
Women in the workforce
The government’s economic growth council recently underlined the importance of encouraging women’s participation in the labour market. This is not just a nice idea — women have been identified as a major driver of growth. But there are major barriers to women’s labour market participation. Chief among them is the lack of affordable child care, particularly at the toddler and infant stage. The number of working women has flatlined in recent years. (The Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders wrote an excellent article about what Germany is doing to get women back to work after having children).
There are two main tools in this year’s budget to address this – changes to the parental leave policy, and a new child-care strategy. These are modest gestures.
Parents will be able to take leave over an 18-month period, rather than 12 months, which should help some moms cover the difficult and expensive child-care period when babies are 12-18 months old. The EI premiums would be spread more thinly out over the 18 months.
But as Carleton University’s Jennifer Robson has noted, lower income families might not be able to afford to live with the lower premiums over 18 months. As well, the new measure doesn’t address the fact that just two-thirds of new moms qualify for benefits, due to the types of jobs they held before giving birth.
New child-care funding of $7 billion over 10 years is welcome, and this is the kind of long-term strategy that advocates have called for. But the amount doesn’t match what Ottawa was prepared to spend more than a decade ago, when the previous Liberal government came up with a national child care plan that would see $5 billion spent over 5 years. (This plan was promptly shelved by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives). The 2017 plan will also include early learning and child care services on and off reserves – we don’t know what proportion of the $7 billion will be earmarked for Indigenous people.
Also, agreements with the provinces on the child-care strategy are only in their infancy, which is why the government is careful to say the money could create 40,000 spaces.
It’s good to see the government’s gender-based analysis included in the budget, for the first time. To make it meaningful, however, the analysis needs to be accompanied by specific goals for improving the status of women in Canada. For example, what is the plan for reducing the gender wage gap, or increasing women’s participation in the workforce?
It needs to be said, however, that it’s encouraging to see issues that are important to women and their agency gaining more traction in the mainstream discussion around the budget, not just relegated to a sidebar. (For a walk down memory lane of how these critical issues are dismissed as business irritants, see the discussion after the budget around parental leave on CBC’s On The Money, at around the minute 34:00 mark.)
Preparing for the changing nature of work
It’s some comfort that the government appears to be focused on the prospect of millions of Canadians finding themselves out of work in the not-so-distant-future because of disruptive new technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation. (On this topic, see the recent Policy Options’ articles by David Ticoll and Sunil Johal and Jordann Thirgood). There’s also the matter of precarious work — more and more workers have to stitch together a living with a bunch of different contracts and projects, without the benefits or protections of stable employment.
The response to the problem of precarious work is in a number of initiatives, such as those that help Canadians keep their EI benefits if they take training courses, or help part-time students and students with dependents access federal grants; the provision of more money for work-integrated learning projects; and support for Pathways to Education Canada, that helps low-income youth complete their studies.
Some of the ideas are only embryonic, such as a pilot project to make adult students eligible for student loans, or a new organization that will supposedly help support skills development.
More ambitious programs or strategies for helping workers in specific sectors that are at risk of job loss (like the trucking industry) are not addressed. And where is the kind of on-the-job, lifetime skills training that is de rigueur in some European countries (where organized labour, the state and the private sector work together)? We’re just not there yet.
And there is no attempt in this budget to broach the complicated issue of the overall state of the social safety net, and whether it is strong enough to cope with the large scale unemployment on the horizon (on this the provinces are further ahead, with their work on minimum basic income).
* * *
A small postscript – Someone in the government appears to be paying attention to the 1 million Canadian children whose parents don’t take advantage of the free dollars the government offers for post-secondary education through the Canada Learning Bond, an issue that Andrew Parkin drew attention to in October 2016. The budget earmarks $12.5 million for a pilot project to figure out how to increase awareness of the bond.
Photo: Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leave the prime minister’s office holding copies of the federal budget in Ottawa, Wednesday, March 22, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it. | Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives.
Le 31 décembre 1966, quand Lester B. Pearson allume la Flamme du centenaire devant la Colline du Parlement, le Canada est sur le point de vivre des changements majeurs. L’écrasante majorité de sa population est blanche (seuls 3,2 % des Canadiens sont d’origine non européenne selon le recensement de 1961), mais on assistera bientôt à une forte hausse de l’immigration. Les femmes se joignent au marché du travail à un rythme soutenu, certaines devenant même députées. Et une crise qui menacera l’unité nationale se profile à l’horizon.
« Ce soir, nous disons au monde entier que le Canada entre dans l’histoire », déclare Pearson à une foule de 2 000 personnes, rapporte le Globe and Mail.
« Ce nouveau chapitre s’écrira sous le signe de la coopération et non du conflit, poursuit-il, de la détermination et non de la division, du service public et non de l’égoïsme, de ce que nous avons à donner plutôt qu’à recevoir. »
Ces changements se révéleront tout aussi énormes que l’avancée des politiques publiques des années 1966-1967.
C’est en effet de cette époque que datent le Régime de pensions du Canada, le Régime d’assistance publique du Canada, le Supplément de revenu garanti et la Loi sur les soins médicaux.
Sans compter d’autres grands tournants que nous avons peut-être oubliés. C’est ainsi peu après le congé de Noël de 1966 que le Comité permanent de la santé et du bien-être social a recommandé de supprimer du Code criminel l’interdiction de la contraception. Ou que Yellowknife est officiellement reconnue comme la capitale des Territoires du Nord-Ouest, à la place d’Ottawa.
En ce 150e anniversaire du pays, ne serait-il pas intéressant d’imaginer ce que nos décideurs, chercheurs et législateurs jugeront indispensable à la vie de leurs compatriotes en 2067 ? Nous pourrions aussi réfléchir aux occasions manquées d’améliorer leur situation : songeons aux chances ratées depuis 1967 de resserrer nos liens avec les peuples autochtones. Tout au long de 2017, c’est précisément ce que fera Options politiques dans une série d’articles sur la nécessité d’une vision politique à long terme pour relever les défis qui nous attendent.
« Quelque part, ces dernières années, le présent a fusionné avec l’avenir. » Cette phrase de l’auteur et artiste canadien Douglas Coupland pourrait résumer ce que nous ressentons. Face aux changements technologiques notamment, qui se multiplient à un tel rythme qu’il peut sembler dérisoire d’essayer d’imaginer où nous en serons dans un demi-siècle.
Mais les séismes politiques qui viennent de frapper le Royaume-Uni et les États-Unis nous rappellent l’importance de scruter chaque signe d’activité sismique pour prévoir l’évolution de nos sociétés et nous préparer en conséquence. Car le Canada n’est pas à l’abri des inégalités qui ont suscité la montée du populisme à l’étranger, comme l’ont récemment écrit France St-Hilaire, David Green et Craig Riddell.
Bien sûr, nos politiciens préféreront s’en tenir aux quatre ans des cycles électoraux et des prévisions budgétaires, mais c’est à nous de les forcer à préparer l’avenir.
Quelques enjeux sont déjà sur la place publique, comme en témoigne le vif débat sur les moyens de lutter contre les changements climatiques. Il faut dire que la question est inévitable compte tenu des effets du réchauffement planétaire, d’ores et déjà ressentis au Nord du pays et dans le secteur agricole.
De même, il semble avoir chaque semaine une conférence sur l’innovation, les compétences, la productivité ou la compétitivité du Canada, à l’heure où les économies du globe délaissent les produits de base au profit des services et de la propriété intellectuelle.
Certains préconisent en outre d’accroître l’immigration pour assurer notre future prospérité.
À Ottawa, mes enfants et petits-enfants emprunteront un jour le système léger sur rail que l’on y construit actuellement, dans le cadre de la modernisation des transports collectifs à l’échelle du pays.
Même l’identité canadienne fait maintenant l’objet d’interrogations et de pronostics sur fond d’atomisation des médias et d’affaiblissement de nos institutions culturelles.
Mais sur d’autres enjeux majeurs, le débat en est au stade embryonnaire.
On parle ainsi très peu de l’automatisation de l’économie et de la situation des travailleurs qui en subissent les effets.
On ne trouve pas de réflexion nationale sur la modernisation de notre système d’enseignement primaire et secondaire, conçu au siècle dernier, ni sur l’importance d’améliorer la culture numérique et la numératie des jeunes enfants.
Aucun comité de la Chambre des communes ne s’est encore attaqué aux questions de réglementation soulevées par l’intelligence artificielle.
Et comment nous préparons-nous aux vastes mouvements migratoires suscités par les conflits armés et les changements climatiques (les deux étant souvent inextricablement liés), qui continueront de nous toucher ?
Tous ces défis exigent de mener une série de débats judicieux et inclusifs, fondés sur une approche pluridisciplinaire, de solides analyses et des faits probants. Sans parler d’un leadership audacieux pour mettre en œuvre les stratégies qui en découleront et pour appliquer les solutions. Souhaitons simplement qu’on ne tentera pas de bloquer ces grands débats en prétextant qu’ils intéressent uniquement « les élites ».
Cet article fait partie du dossier Les politiques publiques à l’horizon 2067.
Photo : Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press
Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives. | Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it.
L’un des moments les plus poignants d’une semaine forte en émotions fut le message d’Hillary Clinton aux jeunes Américaines à l’air abattu qui avaient soutenu sa candidature.
« C’est vrai, nous n’avons pu briser le plus haut et le plus résistant des plafonds de verre, leur a-t-elle dit. Mais une femme y parviendra, sans doute plus tôt qu’on ne le pense aujourd’hui. »
Même au Canada, on s’est montré déçu qu’une femme accomplie et forte d’un parcours aussi impressionnant n’ait pu triompher d’un Donald Trump sans expérience de service public, sans programme cohérent et affichant en plus une attitude lamentable à l’égard des femmes.
Mais au lieu de poursuivre sur cette note déprimante, signalons plutôt que l’année 2016 a été très fructueuse pour les Canadiennes. Mis à part certains enjeux fondamentaux qui nécessitent encore d’énormes efforts — de l’équité salariale à l’insuffisante proportion de femmes à la direction des entreprises et dans les organes législatifs —, il y quelques raisons de se réjouir.
Le Cabinet
Les ministres les plus en vue du gouvernement canadien sont aujourd’hui des femmes : Catherine McKenna à l’Environnement, Jody Wilson-Raybould à la Justice, Jane Philpott à la Santé et Chrystia Freeland au Commerce international. Quoi qu’on pense des politiques qu’elles défendent, personne ne peut les accuser d’être moins compétentes que leurs homologues masculins ou prétendre qu’elles ont besoin de la « supervision d’un adulte ». (Ajoutons que Chrystia Freeland est entourée d’autres femmes d’expérience comme Christine Hogan, Susan Bincoletto et Kirsten Hillman, respectivement sous-ministre sortante, déléguée commerciale en chef, et sous-ministre adjointe aux politiques et aux négociations commerciales.)
Pour la première fois de notre histoire, des femmes détiennent ainsi les portefeuilles clés du Cabinet, et, hormis Justin Trudeau, ce sont surtout des visages féminins qu’on aperçoit aux nouvelles du soir. Oui, des femmes ont déjà été vice-premières ministres et détenu d’importants portefeuilles (Affaires étrangères, Défense, Justice), mais jamais en nombre suffisant pour constituer une masse critique qui vienne modifier l’image d’ensemble du gouvernement. (Durant les années de Stephen Harper, ses principaux porte-parole à la Chambre des communes étaient presque tous des hommes : Jason Kenney, John Baird, Pierre Poilievre, Paul Calandra et Peter Van Loan.)
Déjà, certains signes témoignent de l’incidence de ce Cabinet paritaire, y compris au chapitre des nominations. Les organisateurs de conférences, par exemple, seraient plus soucieux de la représentativité de leurs panels pour éviter tout déphasage avec la composition du gouvernement. Souhaitons que cette nouvelle réalité, qui confirme que des femmes peuvent occuper les plus hauts échelons du pouvoir, s’étende au secteur privé. Et qu’elle en incite un plus grand nombre à se porter candidates aux prochaines élections.
L’opposition officielle
Rona Ambrose, chef par intérim du Parti conservateur, a brillé à la Chambre des communes par son savoir-faire politique et son approche mesurée pour exiger des comptes de Justin Trudeau. Elle a aussi fait bouger les choses, notamment sur la question des réfugiés yézidis fuyant le groupe armé État islamique. Et elle continue de défendre avec conviction la cause des femmes et des filles (sous le gouvernement Harper, elle avait joué un rôle clé dans la création de la Journée internationale des filles).
Rona Ambrose a fait un choix significatif en désignant Lisa Raitt (désormais candidate à la direction des conservateurs) comme porte-parole de son parti en matière de finances. Si le plafond de verre subsiste au ministère des Finances, les escarmouches entre Lisa Raitt et Bill Morneau n’ont pas manqué de piquant.
Certes, deux femmes seulement ont déclaré leur candidature à la direction (Lisa Raitt et Kellie Leitch), mais leur crédibilité n’a été attaquée nulle part dans les médias. Contrairement à ce qu’avaient subi Diane Ablonczy en 2002 et Belinda Stronach en 2004, qui briguaient respectivement la direction de l’Alliance canadienne et du Parti conservateur, et même Peggy Nash et Niki Ashton, qui étaient de la course à la direction du Nouveau Parti démocratique, en 2012.
Autres temps forts
Plusieurs autres avancées ont marqué la dernière année au Canada.
Au terme des récentes élections, le Yukon est au deuxième rang, derrière la Colombie-Britannique, pour ce qui est de la proportion de femmes dans les assemblées législatives du pays.
La haute fonctionnaire Christine Hogan a été nommée administratrice du Groupe de la Banque mondiale pour le Canada, l’Irlande, neuf pays des Caraïbes, le Belize et le Guyana. De même, Nancy Horsman a été élue administratrice au Fonds monétaire international.
Janice Charette, ancienne greffière du Conseil privé, est devenue la deuxième femme haut-commissaire du Canada au Royaume-Uni (la première, Jean Casselman Wadds, l’avait été il y plus de 30 ans).
Une enquête a été lancée cette année pour faire la lumière sur la disparition et l’assassinat des nombreuses femmes et filles autochtones.
À l’important réseau de télévision SRC/CBC, Rosemary Barton anime aujourd’hui la grande émission d’affaires publiques, poste traditionnellement réservé aux hommes.
Tatiana Maslany a remporté un Emmy pour son rôle dans la série « Orphan Black », produite au Canada, et l’auteure et dramaturge canado-irlandaise Emma Donoghue a été nommée à l’Oscar du meilleur scénario pour le film Room.
Si vous redoutez un recul des droits des Américaines en matière de procréation et de planification familiale, dites-vous que chez nous, le Nouveau-Brunswick et l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard s’efforcent activement d’améliorer l’accès des femmes aux services d’avortement.
Enfin, rappelons le brillant parcours de nos athlètes féminines aux Jeux de Rio : elles ont récolté 87 % des médailles du Canada !
Il reste évidemment beaucoup à faire, même un siècle après que les Manitobaines sont devenues les premières femmes du pays à obtenir le droit de vote. Mais avant de céder à la déprime en observant ce qui se passe chez nos voisins du Sud, songeons avec réconfort aux exploits des Canadiennes.
Photo : John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail/Canadian Press
Cet article fait partie du dossier L’élection présidentielle aux États-Unis.
Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives. | Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it.
Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch says we need to have “tough conversations” on complex issues such as immigration, and where newcomers stand on “Canadian values.” She defines such values by outlining what they are not: “intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms.”
On one point, Leitch is right: Canada does need to have the tough conversations about what happens when newcomers arrive here with radically different viewpoints, especially when it comes to the place of women in society. In reality, these conversations are already happening in the policy and public service communities. How will our services cope with family units that never envisioned a woman working outside the home? How do we ensure that women newcomers get access to language classes and employment training, while still being able to take care of several children at home? The people who work in our municipal, provincial and federal governments are seized with these issues, they’re not taboo.
Ontario’s new sexual education curriculum can also be seen as part of the integration process. Here’s an opportunity to have children of newcomer families understand the concepts of sexual consent and the existence and rights of their LGBTQ neighbours. What better way to promote women’s rights than to allow girls to recognize the power they have over their own bodies, starting with knowing how to refer to parts of their own anatomy?
But screening out individuals with a values test as Leitch proposes ignores our rich expertise and success with integration. The Environics Institute’s Canadians on Citizenship 2012 survey found that 78 percent of immigrants identify with Canada, rather than their country of birth. Environics’ Survey of Muslims in Canada 2016 also found that 83 percent of Muslim Canadians were proud to be Canadian, versus 73 percent for non-Muslims. Stephen Harper seemed to recognize this in 2007, when he told the Canadian Press that any perceived problems with Muslim integration were marginal. “I know there’s a popularly expressed view that immigrants come here and they should change to suit the country. I think they overwhelmingly do,” Harper said. “But I think the fact is our country also consciously changes somewhat for new immigrants and new cultures, and I think that’s a successful model. I think if you look around the world for issues of immigration and cultural integration, Canada is as successful as any other country in this regard. »
A test like the one being promoted by Leitch assumes that values cannot be learned or adopted over time, even a short period of time. Consider that support in Canada for same-sex marriage went from 35 to 73 percent between 1992 and 2016, again according to the Environics Institute – an astonishing shift in our social views. Author and broadcaster Michael Coren has poignantly described his own personal journey in this regard. Meanwhile, other marginalized Canadians such as the transgender community have found it harder to win acceptance – in 2013, only 16 Conservative MPs voted to support a Bill that would have made it illegal to discriminate against them.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, and the momentum around them in our public institutions and public discourse, is cause for us to hope that Canadians with long-entrenched racist attitudes towards Indigenous people will begin to change their stripes. Maclean’s magazine certainly wasn’t hiding from a complex debate with its headline earlier this year, “Welcome to Winnipeg: Where Canada’s Racism Problem Is at its Worst.” The death of 22-year-old Indigenous man Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan this summer, and the vile responses to the tragedy by some Canadians, demonstrated there are pockets of our society that are still stubbornly intolerant. It’s another area deserving of a tough conversation, as Métis scholar Brenda Macdougall wrote in a Globe and Mail op ed in August.
The misogyny seen every day online (Kellie Leitch herself is likely a victim of this) is a sign that a stubborn segment of “old stock” Canadians hasn’t quite adopted the Canadian value of women’s equality. It wasn’t all that long ago (2005) that MP Belinda Stronach was being called a “dipstick” who “whored herself out of power” when she switched parties. Luckily, such outbursts by people in power are rarer now. When Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean joked about not being able physically to hurt Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, his apology came swiftly.
Our values are not static; they are constantly evolving. It would be a regressive step to exclude individuals from certain cultures, under the conceit that they are somehow fundamentally incapable of joining our collective journey towards greater tolerance.
Photo: DD Images / Shutterstock.com
Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it. | Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives.
Remember the commercial for the Cadillac ELR Coupe a few years back, the one with the smarmy rich guy who makes fun of the French for taking so much vacation? “As for all the stuff, that’s the upside to only taking two weeks off in August, n’est ce pas?” he says to the camera, getting into the US$75,000 car, while the wife and kids lounge in the mansion.
The spot was cringeworthy, oh so American, we sniffed. But are we really about work-life balance, or does vacation still make us slightly guilty? You’ve got to wonder, after all the commentary around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family vacation.
Two photos snapped of Trudeau without his shirt set off a flood of commentary about his love of publicity, about his lack of decorum. Would your next-door neighbour button up to go exploring a cave filled with water with his kids? One shudders to think what would happen if the PM was a woman: maybe we’d be reading about how her tankini at the cottage was really all just a marketing ploy.
The anger around Trudeau’s time off didn’t stop there. Bad jobs numbers came out. The Conservative Party responded with a social media campaign that featured his face on a milk carton, and the label “Last seen shirtless in the BC wilderness looking for photo opportunities.”
A man who had been preparing to set off a bomb off in a major Canadian city was killed by police in Strathroy, Ontario. Why wasn’t the PM back in his office to reassure the nation, some grumbled?
Anyone who has worked in or around politics knows what the life is like. There isn’t any real time off, the BlackBerry is always on, someone is always asking for something. Keeping marriages together is tough. The travelling over the course of a year is gruelling — the Prime Minister is set to travel to China for more than a week in late August and early September.
When he delivered his acceptance speech last October, Trudeau directed one comment (in French) to his kids: “We’re embarking on a new adventure together, and I can tell you that there will be difficult moments for you as the children of a prime minister, but you know Dad will be there for you.”
The politicians know what they sign up for, but then the politicians also try to carve out time where they can. Stephen Harper apparently hated travelling so much, he would forgo more sleep in foreign hotels so he could take the plane home sooner. (St. Petersburg and back in 18 hours, anyone?) Harper also would regularly go to his kids’ sporting events. Jean Chrétien went home for lunch with his wife most days when he was in Ottawa. Broadcaster Ben Mulroney recalled in a sweet column directed at Trudeau that he used to steal time with his father, PM Brian Mulroney, by watching the evening news with him.
Politicians aren’t alone in being desperate for some rest. Canada ranks very poorly for the amount of guaranteed vacation time given to workers: two weeks everywhere but in Saskatchewan, where it’s three. At the Canadian Bar Association’s legal conference last weekend, the crowd of notorious workaholics sat in on a session entitled “Tips for Happier, Healthier Lawyers,” where they were advised to schedule leisure time. Modern workplaces are having to adjust to millennials apparently wanting more time off.
The great irony of the criticism around Trudeau’s family vacation is that politicians keep talking about work-life balance, and specifically about how to attract more women to Parliament and to high-placed corporate jobs and boards. Jurisdictions around the world have changed the sitting hours of their legislatures to align with the school calendar and to eliminate night sittings.
One wonders what message women interested in federal politics drew from the coverage of the Trudeau family vacation: maybe “Don’t even think about taking time off with your kids.”
Photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld
Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it. | Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives.
The word “disruption” pops up just about everywhere these days, suddenly transformed into something companies and governments actually want. Uber is an example of a disruptor — shaking an age-old industry to its core, with an innovation that the marketplace suddenly realizes it desperately needs.
The Conservative Party of Canada needs a disruptive leadership candidate.
You mean, like Donald Trump, some might naturally ask. The short answer is, yes.
Donald Trump has disrupted politics in the United States. This week, he become the presidential nominee for a party that didn’t even want him. He has risen to the top against the predictions and warnings of pundits on both the left and the right.
Michael Lind, co-founder of the New America Foundation, told NPR late last year that part of Trump’s success can be explained by the fact that so many voters aren’t seeing their issues addressed by either of the parties. He pointed to the substantial percentage of Democrats who want to curb immigration, and the large numbers of Republicans who don’t want to see social security cut.
“When you get large groups in the population whose combinations of particular policies do not fit the combinations on offer by our two parties, you get a substantial part of the electorate turning to outsiders because of a lack of any other choices,” Lind told the On the Media program.
Lind wondered aloud why elitist Democrats would ignore potential support from religious Americans, who can simultaneously support progressive policies such as child care and Wall Street reform.
The point isn’t that the Conservatives need a candidate with Trump’s bombast or policies, but that they need a leader who can help identify and build a different coalition of support. Stephen Harper certainly did that, successfully pursuing ethnic groups that had traditionally backed the Liberals. He understood that socially conservative Canadians within those populations would be natural supporters. (Of course, that support withered away with the Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline and the revocation of citizenship campaign in the 2015 election).
A bold Conservative leadership candidate would take another look at the Canadian population and see different configurations of support. She or he would take Tom Flanagan’s advice in the book Winning Power and not rely on the intuitions of party strategists alone, “because they themselves are not typical of the people they are trying to attract.”
Such a Conservative candidate might decide to usher in an entirely new chapter of Canadian conservatism, one that is not based on constantly “cracking down” on people and things, but on building and innovating — in a fiscally responsible way, of course.
A bold Conservative candidate might aggressively go after women voters by focusing on them as drivers of economic growth, rather than just as two-dimensional “soccer moms” who want a tax break. David Cameron went this route by making pay equity and access to child care a major promise. He didn’t achieve what he said he would, but perhaps a determined Canadian Conservative could. Justin Trudeau’s child care approach appears (so far) to be the same as Harper’s – mail out cheques. How does that help a working woman living in a small town who has limited daycare options, or who needs to get to an industrial park but has no reliable source of transportation?
(And incidentally, all Conservative candidates should be promising to do something about their party’s dismal record on the recruitment of women candidates – inexcusable.)
A savvy Conservative candidate might recognize the folly in demonizing carbon taxes, and embrace the long-term economic possibilities that moving away from fossil fuels hold for the economy — including in the agriculture and forest-product sectors. Angela Merkel, another conservative, has done just that with her country’s Energiewende policy of transitioning into renewable energy and cutting carbon emissions. Over the decade of Conservative government, Canada lost 39 percent of its market share in manufactured environmental goods, and it continues to be overtaken by other countries.
That disruptive Conservative candidate could tap into the concerns that Canadians have about elementary-level education (especially math) and about care for the aging. She or he could promise to do away with supply management as well as foreign-investment limits, could make consumer protection a cornerstone of their platform.
The policy possibilities are endless, and it would be silly for any Ottawa pundit to claim they know what Canadians want — that’s what public opinion researchers are for.
But listen up, potential and existing Conservative contenders: you don’t need to read the previous guy’s script. There isn’t one mold for a Conservative today.
By the end of Stephen Harper’s time in office, the party’s policies and rhetoric seemed so…2000-and-late, to borrow a phrase from the Black Eyed Peas. It’s high time someone shook things up, and perhaps a new universe of support would shake out in the process.
Photo: IBL/REX/CP Photo
Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it. | Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives.
Cast your mind back nine months to the vigorous public policy discussion over the Syrian refugee crisis that suddenly dominated the Canadian election campaign. That heartbreaking photo of little Alan Kurdi on the beach crystallized the question in our minds: what can we do? The ensuing debate was framed around security – Canada had to be careful not to inadvertently bring in terrorists as it provided safe haven to Syrians fleeing the conflict.
But it turns out we were debating the wrong thing.
To be clear, the Liberal government did the right thing, by stepping up to respond to one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time. As Naomi Alboim and Leslie Seidle explore in their Policy Options pieces, Canada has experience with this type of massive movement. We have a history of generous private sponsorship that should make us proud.
Budget 2016 committed $678 million over six years to help with the Syrian refugee movement, but are the foundations of the existing system solid enough?
But what we should have been talking about at the same time was whether our institutions had the capacity to integrate tens of thousands of refugees into our marvellous, diverse national fabric. We should have been asking whether enough money was being spent in the right places. We should have been demanding an analysis of the immigration department’s programs and staffing levels, and asking questions about who was going to coordinate this massive project at the local level.
Budget 2016 committed $678 million over six years to help with the Syrian refugee movement, but are the foundations of the existing system solid enough? Naomi Alboim points out that the type of elaborate network in place during the Indochinese movement 35 years ago is gone, with areas like sponsor support, monitoring and community development having “fallen through the cracks or not consistent.”
There are serious areas of concern for policy-makers. A large proportion of the government-assisted refugees (GARS) speak neither English nor French, and many of them are even illiterate in their mother tongue. Many children haven’t been to school in years. Most of the women have not worked, and many of the men have experience in only manual labour.
Behind the scenes, there are stories of school boards unprepared financially to deal mid-year with a massive influx of students who need special help (See Michèle Vatz Laaroussi’s piece on the importance of school for integration). Where is the child care for mothers who need to take language courses? Are kids under school age getting any sort of language help? Where are the mental health resources? Why is there a waiting period for receiving federal child care benefits?
Those in the settlement sector worry about what happens at the notorious “month 13,” when government assistance for the refugees Ottawa is responsible for dries up. Those refugees can turn to provincial social assistance, and they have to make sure they can hold on to their rental leases. The outcomes for privately sponsored refugees (PSRs) are different from those for GARs, as Laura Eggertson, and Michaela Hynie and Jennifer Hyndman, explore. At least PSRs have an enthusiastic network of Canadians to lean on, who have invested their time and money to make sure that the newcomers become friends and neighbours.
The Senate Human Rights Committee is currently looking at the Syrian refugee moment, and the timing is right for the analysis. They heard from Refugee 613, a grassroots coalition that sprang up just to help channel the outpouring of energy from average citizens, companies and groups in the City of Ottawa. Its indomitable director, Louisa Taylor, explained the frustrations involved in having to act as information clearing house and coordinator of services, where neither the federal nor the provincial governments fulfill such a function. She recounted how difficult it is to get information from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, how little coordination there is among official agencies, how some refugees are leaning on the help of only a single overworked settlement officer.
She said diverse groups who really want to help, like the local police force and the Boys and Girls Club, call up her group and ask, “what the heck is going on here?”
“Are we going to be able to take advantage of all this goodwill?” Taylor asked the senators. “If we didn’t grab this opportunity, it would be very sad.”
Gerry Mills of the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia told the committee that there are 200 people on the waiting list for services in the province. She said the mental-health needs are real, and yet she was told by the government that it wouldn’t be funding anything new.
And she echoed Taylor’s concerns about squandered goodwill – she said Nova Scotians anxious to sponsor families have asked whether they can just take over the care of GARs.
Canadians have raised somewhere in the order of $110 million to help refugees through private sponsorship. But the government decided to handle most of the cases itself, meaning that millions of dollars in private money and countless hours of invaluable volunteer time has been left on the table. Jim Estill, the CEO of Guelph-based appliance manufacturer Danby, generously committed last fall to bringing in 50 families, but so far only 10 have arrived.
The government will have to take a closer look the resources it has on the ground, and consider taking a bigger coordination role inside Canadian communities. The burden of bringing the right people and services together shouldn’t rest solely on the shoulders of overworked volunteers and settlement workers. as Aamna Ashraf describes in her Policy Options article, Ontario’s Peel region has recommended the government provide funding especially to help get the most out of the community networks that exist.
Finally, there should be some serious reflection on whether we should continue classifying and dividing up refugees as we have been. If the evidence points to better outcomes for refugees who have private sponsors and at least some sort of links to people in the community, then should we shift the focus away from absolute government sponsorship?
Canada has done an amazing thing by bringing in large numbers of Syrian refugees, but we should make sure we see this national project through properly.
Photo: Jazzmany / Shutterstock.com
This article is part of the Refugee Integration special feature.
Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the Policy Options discussion, and send in your own submission. Here is a link on how to do it. | Souhaitez-vous réagir à cet article ? Joignez-vous aux débats d’Options politiques et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces directives.
It was completely by accident that Policy Options planned for a special feature on the Federal Accountability Act in the same week as the verdict in the Mike Duffy trial came down. On the surface, they might seem like two distinct issues. The FAA was a broad piece of legislation meant to cover everything from public service accountability (see Donald Savoie’s analysis), to lobbying (see Scott Thurlow), to the employment of political staff (see Michele Austin), and access to information (see Suzanne Legault) – not exactly criminal territory. The charges on which Senator Duffy was acquitted involved fraud and breach of trust around his Senate office, travel and living expenses, and the more explosive charge of bribery.
But Ontario Justice Charles Vaillancourt’s lengthy verdict on Thursday carries more than few lessons on ethics and accountability. He uses the words mindboggling, shocking, unacceptable, deceit, manipulations, clandestine when referring to the PMO’s “plotting” around how to make the Duffy problem go away in 2013.
What really stands out for me is this paragraph:
It is interesting that no one ever suggested doing “the legal thing.” The message was always to “do the right thing.” I find that the “do the right thing” message had only one meaning. Senator Duffy was to do the politically right thing by admitting “his mistake” and repaying back the accrued living expenses.[citation]
On this, Vaillancourt and I are on the same page. I always wondered, in those years I spent reporting on the scandal for the Canadian Press, why more didn’t stop to say, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.” The only person who appeared to speak up was a Senate staffer by the name of Christopher Montgomery, who tried in vain to stop the PMO from whitewashing a Senate committee report on Duffy.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper held fast to the line that only one person was to blame for the scandal, and that was his former chief of staff Nigel Wright. But no, Harper was to blame for the culture apparently fostered inside the PMO that was all about the political thing.
What does this have to do with the Federal Accountability Act, the main 2006 campaign promise that helped bring Harper to power in the first place? The scandal demonstrates the limits of legislation when one’s objective is to build an ethical workplace, a workplace with integrity. Building such a workplace means having good role models with rigid standards on what is acceptable. It means having seasoned staff members who have been around the block a few times – something that Accountability Act discouraged through its onerous post-employment rules (as Michele Austin explored in her piece). Those experienced people can help people see the larger picture – a few months’ worth of political embarrassment isn’t worth sacrificing probity.
The scandal demonstrates the limits of legislation when trying to build an ethical workplace.
Strangely enough, there seemed to be a sense that the Accountability Act was about restraining the nefarious actions of others, such as public servants and lobbyists, rather than anyone in the centre. I recall having a heated conversation on the Sparks Street mall in 2007 with one of Harper’s staffers. I had written articles about Harper spending taxpayer dollars on the services of a makeup artist, and the PMO was refusing to divulge any information about the arrangement. I raised the Accountability Act’s promise of transparency, and the staffer said something along the lines of “the Accountability Act is for criminals.” Essentially, it’s not meant to apply to us.
The Accountability Act did have an overall positive impact, and that was to set out a pervasive standard around conduct in Ottawa. When the Conservatives came to power, there was a discernible change in how expenses, fundraising and interaction with lobbyists were viewed. Most Conservative politicians took this very seriously, and there was a ripple effect across the political spectrum. Journalists picked up on this ethos too, and there was an uptick in “ethics” stories. The Liberals would do well to pay heed to the bar that the Conservatives set back in 2006 – there seems to be some slippage going on when it comes to the lines between lobbyists, fundraisers and government.
The Liberals would do well to pay heed to the ethics bar that the Conservatives set back in 2006.
There’s an obvious irony in this entire tale, that after setting the ethics bar so high with the Accountability Act, the same government failed to meet it in the Duffy case. They also failed to meet it on nonpoliticized government advertising and communications, and especially failed on access to information.
The silver lining in the whole Duffy saga is that it did create change. Just as the sponsorship scandal was the catalyst for the Accountability Act and a new focus on ethics in Ottawa, so too was the Duffy/Brazeau/Wallin/Harb debacle the spark for a rethinking of the Senate.
Hopefully, it will also act as a reminder for all who have the honour of serving in the Prime Minister’s Office that their actions should always be able to stand up to public scrutiny, whether there’s a law to cover them or not.
This article is part of The Federal Accountability Act: Ten Years Later special feature.
If on a future visit to the City of Lights you wind up visiting the restored “Petite Ceinture” railway in the heart of the metropolis (a project vaguely reminiscent of New York’s High Line park), you’ll have average Parisians to thank for the project. Ditto for the conveniently located public water fountains that may be installed in the years to come.
Through the city’s Budget Participatif citizens engage in a public process where they can propose and vote for €100 million in funding for projects that make their city better, and also encourage the participation of youth. In 2015, 66,867 Parisians voted in this open government exercise.
To hear the high-profile figures who spoke at this year’s Canadian Open Dialogue Forum in Ottawa, this kind of citizen-driven process is where policy-making is headed. Voices from organizations such as the OECD, Facebook, Open Text, and a handful of speakers from Europe evangelized about the benefits of not just asking people what they think of a proposal, but getting them to participate in the formulation of it in the first place, and sometimes even involving them in the delivery of solutions.
Part and parcel of this is making sure government data is made available for the public and the private sectors to use freely. Bernard Rudny and James McKinney wrote about this in a Policy Options magazine article last week.
If you had any doubt that there is some momentum behind the open government push, consider that the conference featured Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and federal Treasury Board President Scott Brison, and it was chaired by Ontario Deputy Premier Deb Matthews and former federal Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters.
Wynne insisted that open government is the right thing to do – it’s what the public expects. Antipoverty activist Paul Born of Tamarack recounted how a neighbourhood in Northern Ireland flourished with the power of citizen mobilization. Born recounts that a local priest told him, “We listened and we gained a corner on the obvious.”
But it’s hard not to see two major drivers of the open government movement domestically. One is economic, and the other is political.
OpenText chairman Tom Jenkins, who led a landmark federal study on research and innovation, delivered a compelling presentation on how opening up information and encouraging digitization is key to making Canada more competitive. Rodney MacDonald, a senior executive at Intuit, the firm that brings you the TurboTax software, talked about how their business was built on the fact the Canada Revenue Agency opened up its process data to the private sector. The Trudeau Liberals are also making the argument that more openness and consultation will help ease the way to major natural resource project approvals.
Meanwhile, politics can never be far behind when cabinets decide a particular project is a priority. One only has to look at the mass repudiation of the political class in countries such as Brazil, Guatemala, Spain, and even in the United States (see Donald Trump) to understand that people feel increasingly distant from decision-makers.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was part of that political class, yes, but he seemed to overcome that knock by making transparency, openness and engagement part of his daily mantra.
As for Wynne, not to diminish her commitment to open government, but she’s also still dealing with the aftermath of the Ontario gas plant scandal, in which potentially damaging public documents were destroyed.
Politics will ultimately (and naturally) be the biggest hurdle in the push for open government.
Interestingly, public servants who attended the forum repeatedly expressed doubts that the bureaucracy would be able to embrace the idea – the cover-your-ass culture of the public service didn’t inspire risk-taking or openness.
“How can we be innovative and open when you feel if you’re doing something innovative you’re breaking a rule?” Wouters exclaimed during one panel.
Wouters pointedly noted that nothing much will happen “without political leadership” – the room was too polite to say that 10 years of the Harper Conservatives had also inculcated a generation of public servants in the ways of secrecy. The Government of Canada’s communications policy became a joke.
There are compelling recent examples of how government institutions close their doors by default – on Friday, the CBC reported that Ottawa’s Police Services Board has been meeting secretly, even to discuss issues such as racial profiling. Correctional investigator Howard Sapers is currently studying why distraught families cannot get information about why their loved ones died in prison.
The culture problem is real, but it’s politicians and their party apparatuses that will ultimately be the speedbumps in the road to open government. Matthews pointed out that governments work in a “very toxic work environment…open information, open data, gives opposition parties ammunition to ask questions,” and she also mentioned the gotcha tendency among journalists.
The reflex to conceal becomes strong the bigger the political scandal. Parliamentary committees, which are supposed to be an important consultative tool and source of information, close in on themselves the stickier the subject. This is where increasing the powers of information commissioners and supporting quality journalism will be key.
Potentially more difficult, though, will be overcoming the impetus of electoral politics. Political marketing (see Susan Delacourt’s book Shopping for Votes for an excellent overview) favours developing policy that will appeal to the parts of the electorate that will help a party form a minimum winning coalition. Polling, focus groups and other consultative tools can help the parties devise policies and communications plans that will have strategic appeal.
At the same time, lobbyists have identified the benefit of creating “communities of interest” around particular policy issues that are important to their clients. Those communities can be leveraged for the powerful pressure they can put on decision-makers.
Those types of consultations don’t necessarily have the public interest at heart. They don’t necessarily have to include all voices.
That is why it might be easier to engage with citizens on something like laws to protect condo owners, as Ontario did, but harder to open up the floor to citizens and experts on something that was a key platform promise or that is tied up with the party’s fortunes.
In the next few years, if this open dialogue momentum holds, it will be interesting to see which areas of the policy-making process are opened up to the public. It’s impossible not to want to see the promise of more openness and transparency succeed.
C’était il y a 12 ans, en Australie, et cela m’avait semblé très original. L’employée d’une boutique de Huskisson m’a dit qu’elle n’avait pas de sacs en plastique. La ville côtière, connue pour ses dauphins batifolant au large, les avait bannis. Partout, ses habitants portaient en bandoulière le type de sacs en toile qu’on voit aujourd’hui suspendus dans les vestibules du monde industrialisé.
Il est ainsi révélateur qu’en 2016, la promesse du maire de Montréal de bannir les sacs en plastique d’ici à 2018 suscite la controverse.
Au Canada, les politiques environnementales visant à modifier les comportements des consommateurs relèvent encore d’une amicale suggestion plutôt que d’une réelle incitation. Comme si elles s’excusaient de nous déranger : « Hum, désolé, ça vous ennuierait de consommer un tout petit moins ? » Qu’on pense aux publicités écoénergétiques de David Suzuki, à l’éphémère crédit d’impôt à la rénovation pour améliorer l’efficience de nos maisons, ou à certains programmes encourageant l’achat de meilleurs frigos et cuisinières.
Beaucoup de Canadiens se croient très écolos parce qu’ils évitent d’utiliser leur sèche-linge en milieu de journée, ne jettent aucun détritus à la rue et savent remplir leurs bacs de recyclage.
Mais nous le savons bien, au fond : nous gaspillons des masses d’énergie et achetons des monceaux de camelote.
L’été dernier, mon voisin de camping s’était muni d’un minifrigo tout neuf pour tenir au frais ses bières Heineken.
Dans un article publié l’an dernier par le Journal of Industrial Ecology, des chercheurs de l’Université norvégienne de sciences et de technologie ont établi que la consommation des ménages comptait en 2007 pour 65 % de l’empreinte carbone mondiale. Sans surprise, ceux des pays riches produisaient la plus forte quantité de GES étant donné leurs modes de transport, d’habitation et d’alimentation. Au Canada, c’était 14,6 tonnes de CO2 par habitant contre 3,4 tonnes en moyenne à l’échelle planétaire.
Pourtant, depuis la Conférence de Paris sur le climat, le débat public reste centré sur les grands émetteurs et le rôle des pipelines. Dans ce dossier spécial, nos collaborateurs décryptent une série de données et analysent les possibilités d’action d’Ottawa en ces lendemains de Paris.
Chose certaine, nos décideurs tardent à rassembler les Canadiens autour d’un débat sur leurs habitudes de consommation. Par exemple, quelles mesures peuvent prendre les ménages pour combattre à leur niveau les changements climatiques et favoriser le développement durable ?
Sur tous les sujets qui fâchent – surutilisation de nos voitures, types de véhicules que nous achetons, efficacité énergétique de nos immeubles, aliments emballés ou insouciante addiction à l’air conditionné pour deux maigres mois d’été –, personne ne semble prêt à monter au créneau.
La classe politique se montre ainsi peu pressée de promouvoir clairement l’achat de voitures électriques pour réduire le nombre de véhicules énergivores. Comme s’il était socialement plus acceptable de rouler en VUS que d’oublier son sac en toile à la maison. En témoigne la gentille taxe d’accise sur les véhicules énergivores : à peine devrez-vous ajouter 4 000 dollars au prix délirant d’une Lamborghini Aventador Roadster (22,7 litres aux 100 kilomètres en conduite urbaine).
Selon le rapport Greendex 2014 du National Geographic, qui retrace « les progrès accomplis vers une consommation écologiquement durable », les Canadiens sont « les plus nombreux à conduire seuls leurs voitures et camions et les plus faibles usagers des transports en commun parmi 18 groupes interrogés ».
Aucune pression sociale ou réglementaire n’incite non plus à réduire la fabrication de produits inutiles. On assisterait plutôt à leur prolifération : tyranniques « sacs à surprises » d’anniversaire, jouets « Happy Meal » (vite oubliés dans le bric-à-brac des tiroirs), microbilles de dentifrice, lingettes jetables (fléau des réseaux d’égout municipaux) ou dosettes de café (ici, je plaide coupable !).
C’est surtout à la base, dans nos collectivités, que les gens s’efforcent de transformer notre culture de consommation : écoles faisant la promotion de la marche, citoyens réclamant des pistes cyclables, détaillants qui cessent d’eux-mêmes de distribuer des sacs en plastique, agriculteurs qui nous sensibilisent à l’alimentation locale.
Les Canadiens sont-ils prêts à quelques sacrifices pour aider leur pays (et le monde) à combattre les changements climatiques ? Sans poser directement la question, un récent sondage Ekos Politics réalisé pour la SRC en donne un aperçu. Sur 2 000 répondants, 76 % se sont dits « d’accord » ou « plutôt d’accord » avec cette affirmation : « Le Canada devrait soutenir le développement du secteur des énergies propres, même si cet appui fait augmenter les coûts énergétiques. »
Ottawa mène actuellement des consultations sur sa nouvelle Stratégie fédérale de développement durable, qui veut inciter « les Canadiens et les entreprises à prendre des mesures volontaires pour réduire les émissions de GES ».
Nos décideurs et législateurs pourraient bien découvrir que nous sommes réceptifs à cette idée, mais que nous attendons simplement un coup de pouce de leur part pour passer à l’action.
Cet article fait partie du dossier L’après-Paris : les prochaines étapes en matière de changements climatiques.
Introducing the Sharpie marker and eraser budget: The Sharpie part is the bold, exceedingly liberal social policy planning that the new government is introducing into the fiscal plan (a direction the NDP will find very hard to pick apart). Not all of it is well spelled out. The big red Liberal eraser rubs out segments of the Conservative policy legacy.
Like the Speech from the Throne in December 2015, this budget document is a direct repudiation of the way Stephen Harper’s team did things. Style and tone are central: there’s a picture on the cover of a woman and her daughter walking in the sun (sunny ways!), and the word “hope” is sprinkled liberally throughout Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget speech.
But the budget document also puts flesh on the bones of what was a very thin December roadmap. What we end up with is a gamble that the spending will boost growth over the long term by focusing on innovation and raising the economic prospects of Canadians at the lower end of the ladder. It’s politically risky, because the media and opposition don’t generally have the patience to wait around to see how things pan out. Other than the fiscal prudence that is liberally worked into the budget ($6 billion annually), it’s hard to draw comparisons with the previous Liberal government, which spent many years cutting social programs.
The fact that the government is showing a $4.3 billion surplus for the first 10 months of the last fiscal year is an asterisk that will make it more difficult for Trudeau team to justify diving back into deficits without a firm date for re-emerging. The promise to keep the federal debt-to-GDP ratio falling every year has also morphed into a decrease only in 2020-21.
Let’s drill down a bit on what’s inside.
The Sharpie markers. You can imagine the folks at Finance Canada and the new crop of policy wonks inside the Prime Minister’s Office in front of a big whiteboard with big fat Sharpie markers, plotting out programs and measures they theorize will transform the way that wealth is shared and created.
Yup, this is an unabashedly social policy budget. There are echoes of the IRPP’s recently released volume on income inequality, which has been growing over the years, particularly when you look closely at what Canadians have in their pockets from paycheques and investments before the tax system does its job redistributing wealth. Andrew Heisz of Statistics Canada provides a great overview of the trends here.
The marquee measure directed at attacking inequality is the Canada Child Benefit, at a cost of about $5 billion annually. There are other measures in this vein, notably an increase in the Guaranteed Income Supplement for single seniors, and $500 million for a National Framework on Early Learning and Child Care, together with the provinces and territories.
Gone are the “boutique” tax credits such as the children’s fitness tax credit, the textbook credit and the arts tax credit. I just did my taxes, and claimed the maximum for both of these – and that’s a bit weird when you stop to think about it. My household is a fortunate one. When I look around the demographic of fellow parents in hockey, ringette, and music lessons, I have a strong suspicion that lower income Canadians aren’t the ones benefitting from the credits. The University of Alberta reached this conclusion a few years ago.
And you’ll recall that the Auditor General wasn’t too thrilled about how some of these credits were being assessed.
Overall, the Sharpie marker also splits from the Conservative budget model by going broad-tip rather than fine-tip, which is also how they ran their campaign. In Jim Flaherty budgets, there were pages of line items – small measures directed at slices of Canadian society.
The Liberals are going big, but in several cases they haven’t provided much detail as to what those big plans entail. One of the biggest examples is the $2 billion over two years to establish the Low Carbon Economic Fund to support the provinces in reducing greenhouse emissions.
The eraser. If you thought the Speech from the Throne was repudiation of the Conservative decade, take a look at the budget plan.
The document is littered with old Liberal programs that are being introduced again, years after they were axed, and Conservative measures that are being deleted.
Here are some names making a comeback: the Court Challenges Program, the Kitsilano coast guard facility, research funding for Status of Women Canada, sick leave changes for federal public servants, funding for the CBC, funding for promoting the arts abroad, the experimental lakes project in northwestern Ontario. I could go on.
In some cases, there’s a real philosophical difference at play, it’s not just about more spending versus less spending, or about pure politics. The Conservatives very specifically cut funding for advocacy and research in several areas; Status of Women was one such place. They didn’t think that the government should be helping to fund groups that lobbied or challenged the government, such as the Court Challenges Program.
And the way the budget document is laid out is also a sharp contrast with the Conservative plans. There is an entire chapter on Indigenous Affairs, and another entitled “A Clean Growth Economy.” Three years ago, the budget speech didn’t include a single mention of the word “environment.”
So there’s a lot of erasing, but the Liberals aren’t throwing away everything the Conservatives did. There’s no indication, for example, that they are going to change programs and measures like the Northern Projects Management Office, the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit, the Canadian Technology Accelerator Initiative, and the trade agreements that were already in play. As others have already pointed out, there is no immediate change to the Canadian Health Transfer. There are likely dozens and dozens of individual Tory initiatives that are living on, but then, why would the Liberals mention them?
We’ve grown accustomed to more incremental budgets for so long, it’s little wonder that the reactions to this one have been so animated. Conservatives are naturally incensed.
Without praising or condemning the Liberals’ approach right out of the gate, it’s a good thing we’re seeing a vigorous debate over fiscal policy that involves a variety of voices (including social policy researchers) and doesn’t revolve entirely around tax cuts. To give one small example, when was the last time there was a discussion around how investing in the country’s cultural industries can actually produce a healthy return?
In the past year, we’ve suddenly gone from an environment (which includes the media) where carbon taxes and deficits were two taboo words, to one where people are engaged in a no-holds barred conversation. The result can only be good when all the ideas are on the table.
This special Policy Options feature on leaders’ debates, which stemmed from an IRPP colloquium last year in Ottawa, is a good opportunity to look at the subject without the noise and partisanerie of a federal election.
As Paul Adams and Elly Alboim eloquently argue, the public interest should come before that of the broadcasters and the political parties when deciding the correct policy path to take.
I come at the issue from a slightly different angle.
The leaders’ debates are the kind of program on TV that naturally inspire some living room heckling. The TVA “Face à Face 2015” program, the fifth and final one in the last election, had me yelling at the screen even before the leaders took the stage.
The pre-debate show featured four men, all well-known commentators in the province. But come on (ben coudon, as one of my favourite Twitter feeds likes to say about these sorts of all male panels, or “manels”) — Quebec’s largest private television network couldn’t locate a single French-speaking woman in the entire country to wax on about the election?
The debate proceeded with the four male party leaders and a male moderator.
The gender issue was a symptom of a larger problem. The TVA show was a really great example of the insularity of the entire debate process, which doesn’t reach out to include all Canadians, and it certainly doesn’t always reflect Canada’s wonderful diversity.
The debates have the same essential flaws that plague media coverage of federal elections. The whole exercise is a top-down affair — instead of being driven by citizens, political and newsroom leaders decide on the election issues. Meanwhile, fine newspapers and networks publish polls on which party is apparently winning or losing, but don’t have the bucks to pay for research to determine what voters care most about.
The debates we get are conceived by the same small group of individuals that cover and comment on politics, who generally hail from Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, are usually white, and are predominantly male. Yes, I count myself as part of this general circle. We’re all well-intentioned, and we’re not too shabby at analysis, formulating incisive questions and injecting context, but do we really know what questions people in Selkirk, the Nipissing First Nation and Trois-Rivières want asked during a debate?
A good argument could be made that the CBC, which was a central player in the debate consortium, would be well placed to organize a debate that takes into consideration regional issues and questions important to indigenous people, women, and the elderly. The CBC’s mandate under the Broadcasting Act requires it to “reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada” and to “reflect Canada and its regions.”
Past consortium debates have featured carefully selected questions from the public, aimed at representing Canadian diversity. CBC senior producer Bob Weiers wrote a valuable column about how a consortium arrived at questions for one Ontario debate. The CBC’s broadcast experiment during the 2015 election in which average Canadians got to interview Justin Trudeau, “Face to Face with the Prime Minister,” was perhaps the most interesting recent attempt at having voters drive the discussion. It was fascinating to watch, and the CBC should do it again.
But the consortium, by definition, was not inclusive. It was an opaque operation that issued the occasional press release but generally kept discussions inside a closed room. If the process foreseen in 2015 did include a way for the masses to provide input on consortium debate questions, I have no idea what it was.
An independent body dedicated to setting rules and organizing debates could ensure there is a rich consultation beforehand that includes a broader swath of Canadians. It could engage in extensive social media outreach, notably with young people (as Vincent Raynauld has suggested in these pages). Simultaneous translation into other languages could be negotiated with ethnic media.
Such an arms-length institution could force a rethink of how viewers and listeners are engaged in such an important moment during the election, while stopping short of dictating questions or the choice of moderator on debates hosted by networks or other organizations.
With such a body setting the tone of inclusiveness, it’s highly unlikely that we would end up with five debates and only one female moderator. (In 2015, it was Radio-Canada’s Anne-Marie Dussault, although she didn’t actually ask questions, her two male colleagues did). It is also highly unlikely that something like closed captioning would be an afterthought – as it appeared to be at the beginning of last year’s campaign.
And if you’re wondering whether ensuring diversity in the development of debates will produce marginal, dull programming, take a gander at the coverage in the US of Univision’s Democratic debate. Guatemalan immigrant Lucia Quiej’s question to Sanders and Clinton was not only poignant, it also elicited responses from the candidates that informed all voters, not just interested Latinos.
In the next election, who will be waiting to ask questions out in the audience? We can afford a little extra bureaucracy to find out.
On a personal note, this is my first column since taking over as editor-in-chief of Policy Options. As a wise friend said to me recently, the magazine has a role to play in “nourishing” the public policy debate in Canada. I look forward to hearing from readers about the issues you would like to see us explore in these pages.
This article is part of the Future of Leaders’ Debates special feature.