What’s up with Canada?

  • After more than nine years in power and lifting more than two million people out of poverty, Justin Trudeau has decided that it’s time to thank Canadian taxpayers.

    The Liberals have proposed a two-month break from the federal sales tax on prepared foods, restaurant meals, snacks, beer, wine, kids’ clothes, diapers, toys and books; as well as a one-time $250 rebate for anybody who worked in 2023 and made less than $150,000.

    NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who has advocated for removing the federal sales tax on daily essentials, responded by saying, “You know what’s cruel? That $250 cheque that’s going out in spring — this Liberal government is excluding seniors, people living with disabilities, and people who just started working. What a slap in the face!”

    And Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who has advocated for temporary tax breaks, called the proposal “a tiny tax trick.”

    Poilievre opposing Trudeau should surprise no one — that’s kind of his thing. But Singh’s opposition doesn’t even make sense.

    Seniors, disabled people and people who “just started working” wouldn’t be excluded from the rebate – only those who didn’t work in 2023 would. And more than one million seniors and nearly half of adults with disabilities worked.

    Singh’s opposition to the one-time rebate for workers, if not the two-month tax break for everybody, is ostensibly about fairness. But it’s based on the belief that people who make $150,000 are rich – and that rich people don’t deserve to get $250 back from the government.

    Yes, if those people have no dependents and have paid off their home, then they probably haven’t been hurting financially. But then again, those people would have paid more than $40,000 in personal income tax last year — not to mention all the other taxes they paid.

    And those people wouldn’t have benefited from many of the programs they paid for: the child benefit; the young child supplement; the child with a disability supplement; subsidized daycare; the lowered retirement age; the increased income supplement for seniors; and the increased Old Age Security benefit for older seniors.

    And those are just Trudeau’s signature programs. The taxes those people paid also helped fund Canada’s public education, healthcare, and plenty of other services that those people didn’t use or wouldn’t qualify for.

    To be clear: These government programs are what make Canada good — not just because we can provide them to people who can’t afford it; but because we actually do.

    Or at least that’s something Canadian progressives used to believe. I don’t know when that changed – but it must have been before they decided to oppose a one-time $250 “thank you” to the Canadians who pay for Canada.

    Progressives like Singh aren’t just being silly and self-righteous; they’re also being seriously self-destructive. They’re the reason why Poilievre is poised to win a massive majority in the next federal election – because, until now, the Conservatives have been the only party that seemed to get that middle-class Canadians have gotten poorer – and that it’s unrealistic to expect them to be cool with that simply due to the fact that there are other people who are struggling more.

    Canadian progressives should be relieved that the federal government has finally recognized the reality that middle-class workers have been living for years. Instead, they’re calling a $250 tax rebate “cruel.” Because they would rather that Poilievre win than work with Trudeau. Even though they know that the Conservatives would cut the government programs that help the people they claim to care about.

    Tell me, how is this progress?

    Do progressive Canadians want to lose?

    was published

    Subscribe

  • If Canadian celebrities have taught us anything, it’s that if you want to make it big in Canada, you need to make it big in America first.

    Perhaps that’s what Justin Trudeau was thinking when he decided to do The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

    The decision would’ve been a no-brainer back in his Trudeaumania days. But Trudeau’s no longer a popular new politician offering change; he’s an unpopular old one opposing it.

    Trudeau may still be revered by American progressives who think he’s making Canada a fairer society. But now, thanks to Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, he’s also reviled by American conservatives who think he’s making Canada a “communist shithole.”

    Granted, Colbert probably doesn’t get his Canadian news from red-pill podcasts. On the other hand, the last time Colbert talked about Trudeau on his show was in a segment called “Oh, Canada” featuring that photo of the prime minister in brownface at a party when he was 29.

    And even in the best-case scenario, Trudeau would certainly get criticized for doing it. The Conservatives call him “Jet-Setting Justin” and “high-carbon hypocrite” whenever he leaves Ottawa – let alone when it’s to go on TV after speaking at the UN in New York.

    And in the worst-case scenario, he could totally bomb.

    Nevertheless, in an act of either supreme confidence or supreme desperation, the Canadian prime minister made his debut on American late-night.

    So, how did he do? Well, considering he’s down by around 20% in national polls and facing the threat of a snap election: shockingly well.

    He explained Canada to Americans: our culture is a “tapestry,” not a “melting pot”; our foreign policy is about collaboration, not conquest; our leader is called “Prime Minister,” not “Mr. President”; et cetera. While it wasn’t a novel pitch, his salesmanship was charismatic and convincing – assuming, of course, you don’t already think he’s full of shit and can’t stand his face.

    Setting aside the question of likeability, Trudeau did well on questions about foreign policy.

    When Colbert asked about the most boring disagreement between two countries in the history of the world – the softwood-lumber dispute – Trudeau answered diplomatically, “You guys are paying too much for your lumber because you’ve got tariffs on it – and that doesn’t make any sense, so we keep trying to point that out for you.”

    When Colbert asked about Americans coming over the border to buy cheaper drugs, Trudeau answered diplomatically, “We’re happy to try and help you out – but it would be really easier if you guys had universal healthcare.”

    When Colbert asked about tensions between Canada and Russia over control over the Arctic, Trudeau answered diplomatically, “It’s a bit of a challenge” – to which Colbert remarked, “You just called Vladimir Putin ‘a bit of a challenge’; that is a Canadian understatement if I’ve ever heard it.”

    But perhaps most surprisingly, Trudeau even did well on questions about domestic affairs.

    When Colbert asked about Pierre Poilievre, saying that he’s heard him called “Canada’s Trump,” Trudeau didn’t endorse the comparison but replied, “My opponent is gaslighting us.”

    When Colbert asked why “nativism or far-right xenophobia might grow even in a country as polite as Canada,” Trudeau replied, “It’s a really tough time in Canada right now. People are hurting. People are having trouble paying for groceries, paying for rent.”

    When Colbert asked if the situation in Canada is similar to the one in America, Trudeau replied, “The housing crisis is a little sharper. Our economic outlook is slightly more positive than the United States right now. But people don’t feel it.”

    And when Colbert asked why the prime minister is so unpopular at home, Trudeau replied, “People are taking a lot out on me. For understandable reasons: I’ve been here, and I’ve been steering us through all these things. And people are sometimes looking at change.”

    But he wasn’t done: “The reality is, I deeply believe in continuing to fight climate change, and continuing to invest in people, and continuing to support people. And I’m going to keep fighting.”

    Trudeau claiming that the reason so many people hate him is because they’re in pain and need someone to blame – as opposed to claiming responsibility for Canada’s affordability crisis – will almost certainly make those people hate him even more.

    But there’s no denying that Canada has made a scapegoat of Justin Trudeau. Don’t believe me? Listen to the episode of The Daily about the American housing crisis that came out the morning after Trudeau’s Colbert appearance called How the Cost of Housing Became So Crushing.

    Spoiler: it wasn’t Trudeau’s fault.

    Trudeau tries to make it in New York

    was published

    Subscribe

  • Justin Trudeau has been getting his brains beaten out by Pierre Poilievre for more than a year.

    If an election were held today, polls indicate that the Conservatives would win about two-thirds of the seats in Canada’s House of Commons while the Liberals would be reduced to around one-fifth.

    But Trudeau won’t throw in the towel because “there is a lot more fighting to do.”

    Sure. But can he actually win?

    Probably not – but perhaps he doesn’t need to. Perhaps he just needs to lose by a small enough margin to prevent a Conservative majority – and then survive the Liberal Party’s mandatory leadership review after the next federal election.

    If Trudeau could pull that off – and that’s a big if – he and Poilievre would swap jobs. And Trudeau could continue his fight from the opposite side of the aisle.

    I have a feeling that Trudeau would come off quite differently on the offensive. And I have a feeling that Poilievre would come off quite differently on the defensive. In any case, the dynamic between the two of them would certainly be quite different.

    And once Poilievre finally laid out his actual plan to “fix” Canada – in the form of a federal budget – Trudeau could team up with another party to take down the Conservatives, trigger another election and, maybe, just maybe, deliver a second-round knockout.

    Canadians might hate the idea of heading to the polls again. But Canadians might hate Poilievre’s federal budget more – because he’s selling a dream that won’t come true.

    For example, consider half of Poilievre’s four-part slogan: “axe the tax” and “balance the budget.”

    The federal government currently spends around $40 billion more than it collects in taxes each year. And Poilievre has pledged to reduce income taxes for working people. So he would need to come up with, let’s say, around $50 billion in savings.

    Yes, he’d almost certainly axe the carbon tax. But the price on pollution is actually revenue neutral – the money is returned to Canadians in a quarterly rebate. So that wouldn’t balance the budget.

    Yes, he’d almost certainly defund the CBC. But only the English version – for outrageously political reasons – so he’d probably only save around $1 billion. That wouldn’t balance the budget, either.

    Yes, he’d almost certainly cut yet-to-be-defined “government waste.” But cutting tens of billions of dollars from the public service would mean cutting tens of thousands of Canadian jobs. And that doesn’t seem like a winning move in the midst of an affordability crisis.

    It would be one thing if Poilievre were singularly committed to the small-government utopia he preaches. But he has also promised to make several parts of the government bigger.

    He’s promising to increase military spending to 2% of GDP by cutting “wasteful foreign aid.” But the federal government spends billions of dollars less on foreign aid than it would need to spend on national defence to meet that target. So where’s he going to find that extra money?

    He’s promising to “stop the crime” by ensuring that repeat violent offenders and car thieves get “jail not bail.” But the federal government already spends tens of billions of dollars on police, courts and correctional services. So where’s he going to find that extra money?

    He’s promising to end the drug overdose epidemic by providing addicts access to “recovery programs” instead of “legalizing drugs.” But the federal government already spends tens of billions of dollars on healthcare transfers to the provinces. So where’s he going to find that extra money?

    An obvious place for Poilievre to start would be to eliminate Trudeau’s new social programs: the increased child benefit, the new disability benefit, subsidized daycare, subsidized dentalcare for low-income children and seniors, free diabetes medication and free female contraceptives.

    But there would be at least two problems with that strategy. First, the total cost of these programs is much less than the total federal deficit. Second, despite Trudeau’s unpopularity, these programs are popular among the tens of millions of Canadians who directly benefit from them.

    Right now, Canadians are being asked to choose between the status quo and change – and change sounds great right now. But if the choice were between the status quo and staggering cuts, Canadians might see things differently.

    Poilievre, wearing a big white cowboy hat and a small white t-shirt, mused to a crowd at this summer’s Calgary Stampede that “Justin’s in a lot of trouble now, eh?” He’s not wrong. But Poilievre’s in a lot of trouble too. He just doesn’t know it yet.

    What happens after Trudeau loses?

    was published

    Subscribe

Canadian politics but interesting.

What’s up with Cody Gault?

Contact

Privacy