What’s up with Canada?

Winter Break ’24

  • Canadian Parliament is still off for winter break until next week… so let’s talk about American politics.

    In the United States, former president and aspiring authoritarian Donald Trump is ahead in the polls. Meanwhile in Canada, two thirds of Canadians say they would re-elect President Joe Biden if they could.

    Not only would Biden sweep every province; he’d also dominate every demographic – except one: Gen Z and Millennial men. Slightly more than half of Canadian males under 45 say they’d rather vote for Trump.

    Trump’s relative appeal among men is not a surprise: In general, men are more conservative than women; and in particular, Trump’s brand of misogyny is bound to be a deal-breaker for more women than men.

    But why young men in particular? In a word: Affordability. In the last year, credit card balances rose by nearly $400 to more than $4,100 for the average Canadian while three in five Canadians fell deeper into debt.

    And that doesn’t take into account most Canadians’ biggest expense: Housing. In the last decade, Canada’s average monthly rents and mortgage payments have more than doubled – and there’s still no relief in sight.

    Young people are turning to Trump because they can’t afford the quality of life their parents were afforded – and because Trump says he can make America great again. And that’s the same reason why young people are pivoting to Poilievre: He says he can make Canada affordable again.

    So when was this bygone golden age of affordability in Canada, anyway? According to Poilievre: 2008 – back when the Conservatives were in charge, Poilievre was Stephen Harper’s housing minister, and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was still just getting into federal politics.

    But the truth is that housing wasn’t affordable back then, either. When adjusted for inflation, the median income in Toronto has flatlined at around $54,000 since 1990 – while the average Toronto home price has increased from under $500,000 to over $1.1 million.

    So if we can’t blame Trudeau for Canada’s housing crisis, whose fault is it? I’m sorry to say: It’s all the Boomers and Gen Xers who bought homes when they were affordable, and who treated Canada’s housing market like a get-rich-quick scheme or a retirement plan.

    And let’s also not forget the three decades of municipal and provincial governments – largely voted in by and comprised of home-owning Boomers and Gen Xers – that blocked new home construction as they watched their own property values soar into the realm of absolute obscenity.

    Despite what Poilievre says – and despite Trudeau getting flamed for pointing out the obvious – housing has never primarily been a federal responsibility because residential zoning, project approvals and building regulations are all managed by lower levels of government.

    Not that Poilievre has ever let something as trivial as a pesky fact get in the way of pinning all of the blame for everything on Trudeau. Like Trump, Poilievre personifies righteous indignation… but points it at all the wrong people.

    That’s not to suggest that Trump and Poilievre are one and the same. Poilievre doesn’t muse about locking up his political opponents or purging law enforcement of the civil servants investigating his alleged crimes, for example. Nor does he lie about winning an election that he knows he lost.

    In fact, aside from his outrageous contempt for journalists, Poilievre doesn’t seem to have much of an authoritarian streak. Nonetheless, the folk wisdom seems to suggest that he’d handle Trump better than Trudeau because they’re fellow populists, and because Trump once called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.”

    But everybody seems to forget the context: Once upon a time, Trump had nothing but nice things to say about Trudeau. It wasn’t until it was time to renegotiate the North American free-trade agreement that Trump lashed out at him – and it was because Trump was furious about getting out-negotiated by Canada in spite of his self-proclaimed reputation for being a master deal-maker.

    If Trump wins the next U.S. election and Poilievre becomes Canada’s next prime minister, Poilievre will almost certainly face a similar fate sooner or later (unless his plan is to capitulate to Trump at every turn). And once that happens, you can bet that Trump will turn on him, just as he turned on Trudeau… and everybody else who dared to defy him.

    And that’s by no means Poilievre’s biggest Trump-related challenge: While Canada is broadly anti-Trump, half of Canadian Conservatives say they would vote for Trump if they could – while the other half not only wouldn’t vote for the guy, but in large part believes that Trump’s politics are absurd, abhorrent, and apocalyptic.

    So how will Poilievre handle his Trump problem? Will he try to hew as closely as possible to the MAGA zeitgeist to keep the crazies happy – and risk alienating more reasonable Conservatives? Or will he distance himself from Trump – and risk alienating his Trumpy base?

    People say Trudeau is in for a tough year. But if I had to choose, I’d take Trudeau’s underdog status over Poilievre’s Faustian choice any day of the week.

    Pierre Poilievre’s Donald Trump problem

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  • Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Earlier this week a Jewish grocery store in suburban Toronto was set on fire, had its windows smashed and was defaced with “Free Palestine” graffiti.

    I hate to give any weight to a single incident – especially one perpetrated by a handful of losers. But the arson follows a series of antisemitic incidents in the city since October 7.

    There’s disagreement over whether or not this first incident was in fact antisemitic: An Indigo bookstore in downtown Toronto was vandalized with red paint and posters pasted up accusing the chain’s founder, Heather Reisman, of “funding genocide.”

    To some, the antisemitism was obvious. To others, Reisman is totally fair game because she doesn’t just happen to be Jewish; she also funds an international scholarship for former Israeli army volunteers.

    Then came the vandalism of a Starbucks in a Jewish neighbourhood in midtown Toronto. It was covered with graffitied slogans ranging from “Free Palestine” to “Stop killing babies” and “Blood on your hands.”

    Sorry, but when did we decide that going to Starbucks makes you a baby killer?

    And then there was the incident at the Zara in Toronto’s Eaton Centre. More than 100 demonstrators blocked the entrance to the clothing store at the height of the holiday shopping season to protest an ad campaign that you’d need to be delusional or dishonest to describe as insensitive.

    That one turned a lot of people off – especially the part where a protester threatened to kill someone in front of police in the middle of Canada’s busiest shopping mall – and then was allowed to hang around and continue to taunt people as if that’s a completely normal thing to do.

    Sorry, but when did we decide that it’s no longer a crime to threaten to kill people?

    Then came the daily protests in a Jewish neighbourhood in uptown Toronto. For the past week, demonstrators have taken to periodically blockading the Avenue Road bridge over Highway 401.

    Sorry, but what the hell do Jewish Canadians have to do with the Israel Defense Forces?

    It’s important to remember that there’s nothing unique about demonstrators blockading traffic. Lest we forget the Freedom Convoy of 2022, when hundreds of truck drivers shut down streets outside Parliament Hill for nearly three weeks.

    But there’s a categorical difference between blockading traffic in front of a downtown government building, or a foreign consulate, and blockading traffic in a residential neighbourhood for no conceivable reason except that Jewish people are known to live there. One is illegal and annoying. The other is illegal and creepy.

    Which brings me back to the arson: The Jewish grocery store, International Delicatessen Foods, happens to share an acronym with Israel’s army: IDF. But that’s where the similarities end! I’m sure the irony was lost on the arsonists. But their hateful message wasn’t lost on Canadians.

    This might be one of those historical moments when Canada has to decide what kind of country it wants to be. Or maybe this has been the worst of it. Maybe cooler heads will prevail. Maybe Canadian winter will finally kick in. That’s my hope.

    But if these incidents continue, and continue to escalate, Justin Trudeau will have to address what’s going on. Compared to the rest of the world, Canada is a tolerant place – but we can’t tolerate intolerance. Making that clear may make the prime minister unpopular. But he’s already unpopular, and people need to hear it.

    Toronto has an antisemitism problem

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  • New Year’s prediction: Pierre Poilievre’s crusade against the carbon tax won’t work out very well for the Conservatives in 2024.

    Why? Because, as The Canadian Press reports: “The Parliamentary Budget Office says when the carbon price hits $170 per tonne in 2030, the average Canadian household will get $388 more from the rebate than they pay for carbon pricing. Lower-income households that pay less in fuel will benefit even more.”

    I doubt Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party’s ride-or-die haters will concede to reality. But as Canada’s yet-to-be-called next federal election draws nearer, and more and more Canadians tune back into federal politics, Poilievre’s position is going to make him look ridiculous.

    Once the facts are well known, the only Canadians who will actually want Poilievre to “axe the tax” are people with an ideological axe to grind – either because they think climate change is a hoax, or because they believe Canada has no obligation to do anything about it, since we only produce 1.5% of global emissions (never mind that we only account for 0.5% of the population, right?).

    There will always be people who choose to bury their heads in the oil sands, so to speak. But according to a Ledger poll conducted after last summer’s wildfires, 72% of Canadians are worried or very worried about climate change compared to 21% who aren’t very worried and only 7% who aren’t worried at all.

    The corporate carbon tax is another matter entirely. But Poilievre’s opposition to it is similarly silly. That’s because most economists and business lobbyists agree that a carbon tax is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, if Canada didn’t have corporate carbon pricing, then Canadian exporters would be forced to pay fines to trading partners that do.

    That’s why Canada’s new trade deal with Ukraine includes a pledge to promote carbon pricing – because Ukraine is required to have such policies in place to join the European Union, and because joining the European Union is central to Ukraine’s plan to prevent another Russian invasion.

    But the Conservatives voted against that agreement – despite the fact that Ukraine already has carbon pricing and had already signed it. And that was when the tide began to turn against Poilievre: Columnists and commentators who had been all-but cheering Trudeau’s plummet in the polls suddenly began to wonder and worry about the guy running to replace him.

    Mind you, it didn’t help matters that around the same time Poilievre referenced a false Fox News report of a terrorist attack at the Canadian border during Question Period – and then lied and lashed out at a reporter for questioning his conduct the following day.

    That petulant performance by the would-be prime minister stood in stark contrast to his infamous kicking-ass-while-eating-an-apple exchange, when another reporter accused Poilievre of “taking a page out of the Donald Trump book” but then failed to provide any evidence to support the claim.

    However, now the MAGA Republican comparison seems like less of a stretch. That’s because far-right American politicians have all but forsaken Ukraine – because they don’t think the United States has any responsibility to save a democracy from being destroyed by an authoritarian state, or because they admire Vladimir Putin’s brutality and wish he would cradle them to sleep in his manly embrace.

    For what it’s worth, I don’t think Poilievre admires Putin or would turn his back on Ukraine. Quite the opposite: I think Poilievre despises Putin and would stand firmly with Ukraine. I think that a better explanation for his bewildering behaviour is simply that he was so blinded by his hatred of carbon taxes that he honestly believed he was somehow doing Ukraine a favour.

    It will be interesting to see how this debate plays out in 2024. While we’re likely to see and hear a lot from Poilievre in the coming days on social media and through his handful of hand-picked right-wing media outlets, he still has four more weeks of winter vacation left (wouldn’t that be nice?).

    But when the House of Commons resumes in February, will Poilievre pivot? Or will he continue to blow most of his precious speaking time in Question Period railing against the carbon tax – especially as it relates to a single mushroom farm located in his Ottawa-area riding?

    In the final weeks of the fall session, Poilievre repeatedly insisted that it’s obscene for that farm to be charged more than $100,000 in carbon tax  – evidently without caring that anybody willing to do some back-of-the-envelope math would quickly conclude that the farm is in fact a significant commercial operation… not some struggling mom-and-pop mushroom shop.

    I don’t think that standing up for the big guy will end up playing particularly well with the “everyday Canadians” Poilievre is always talking about. If Poilievre does stick to his promise to roll back the carbon tax, he’s likely going to find himself on the defensive in 2024.

    So, as we leave the season of giving behind us and begin a new year, I’d like to offer Poilievre some totally unsolicited advice: Give up your pointless war on carbon pricing, and instead get serious about providing workable solutions for Canada’s housing crisis. Canadians would be grateful — and it might just give you a fighting chance in the next election.

    Why Poilievre should love the carbon tax

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