After nearly eight years as prime minister, freshly separated from his wife and badly trailing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in the polls, Justin Trudeau has finally revealed his three-step plan to fix Canada’s affordability crisis.
Step one: Fix Canada’s housing affordability crisis by making good on a 2015 election promise that he forgot about until recently. Starting immediately, federal sales tax will be waived for the construction of new purpose-built rentals for families, seniors and students.
The policy is expected to make a big difference – especially because Ontario Progressive Conservative premier Doug Ford has vowed to also waive the provincial sales tax. But it takes years for new homes to be built, and we’re in a crisis now, so fuck.
OK, step two: Fix Canada’s food affordability crisis by summoning to Ottawa the leaders of Canada’s five biggest grocery store chains (Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, Costco and Walmart) and issuing an ultimatum: Get food prices under control, or prepare for an update to the Competition Act that you really won’t like.
For their part, the grocery chains have insisted for years that they’re simply passing along the rising costs of food, and that the real villains are climate change, the war in Ukraine, and other terrible things for which nobody could blame Galen Weston.
That explanation is proving a tough sell to Canadians, however – especially when groceries cost 8.5% more now than they did a year ago and the grocery chains keep posting amazing profits. Metro’s earnings were up 28% last quarter – even though employees at 37 Toronto-area stores were on strike for a month.
Step three? OK, Trudeau hasn’t quite articulated one yet. But I think it’s something like: Hope that Poilievre’s coalition of supporters – including religious zealots, vaccine deniers, unisex-bathroom doomsayers and his sect, small-government utopians – devours itself before the next election… so that he can eek out one more win.