What’s up with Canada?

Affordability

  • Once a week, the leaders of Canada’s four major political parties do all the talking during Question Period. It may be a bit undemocratic; but it’s definitely entertaining:

    Mr. Speaker 3, 2, 1 … Go!

    Pierre After eight years of Justin’s taxes and deficits, Canadians can’t afford to eat. A record-smashing two million people are now using food banks. Why do Liberals want Canadians to starve?

    Justin I know Canadians are struggling. But this government has lifted half a million kids out of poverty.

    ­Pierre Oh, so you’re saying Canadians have never had it so good?

    Jagmeet Canadians know who’s to blame for food prices: It’s greedy grocery CEOs. So why do you let Galen get away with it?

    Pierre Jagmeet, you’re Team Trudeau – remember? Plus Galen isn’t greedy – it’s you and Justin who are greedy … greedy for hardworking Canadian tax dollars.

    Justin This government established $10-a-day daycare, free dental care for poor kids, bigger child benefit cheques … which program would you cut?

    Pierre How about the ArriveCAN app? It didn’t work; it cost 500 times what it should have; and now it’s under criminal investigation. Why did you shove this horrible app down Canada’s throat?

    Justin OK, ArriveCAN may suck. But the real reason you hate it is your hidden agenda: you’re covertly courting votes from COVID deniers. In other words: your tinfoil hat is showing.

    Jagmeet Enough! Canadians are being forced to live in tents, cars … even apartment lobbies. And seniors are forced to choose between food and heat. How will you keep them safe this winter?

    Justin Let me get back to you on that.

    Pierre Ah! Finally something the Conservatives and the NDP can agree on: Liberals want old people to freeze to death.

    Justin If you care so much about seniors, why did you raise retirement to 67? We brought it back to 65.

    Pierre Fewer seniors used food banks when Conservatives were in charge. Their joints ached less too. And when I was housing minister, average rents were $950 and mortgage fees were $1,400.

    Justin When you were housing minister you only built 99 homes!

    Pierre Not true! I built 200,000 homes in a single year! You’ve been in power for eight years … how many homes have you built? Z to the E to the R to the O.

    Justin We’re getting homes built all over Canada: Ajax, Brampton… you name it. We just invested in a project in Moncton. Hamilton too. Did I mention Brampton?

    Yves You love to talk about food and housing. But you neglect the most important topic on everybody’s mind: Quebec sovereignty. Why are you scared to admit that Quebec could make it on its own?

    Justin If you don’t want to be part of Canada, why are you here?

    Pierre The Bank of Canada said this week that your drunken spending is driving up inflation: True or false?

    Justin If it’s true, why is inflation falling?

    Pierre If it’s false, why is Canada in housing hell?

    Justin Oh, and what’s your housing plan?

    Mr. speaker OK, time’s up!

    This was edited for length and clarity.

    Canada’s leaders debate affordability

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  • Canada’s New Democratic Party decided to keep their leader during a policy convention in Hamilton this weekend.

    I’m not surprised: Jagmeet Singh isn’t just likeable; he’s about to become a founding father of universal pharmacare in Canada.

    Did you know that Canada is the only country with public health care that doesn’t also have a national drug plan? And, not incidentally, did you know that Canadians pay more for prescription drugs than any country besides (you guessed it) the United States?

    The Parliamentary Budget Office (they’re non-partisan nerds) estimates that universal pharmacare would cost the Canadian government an additional $11.2 billion in the first year – but would actually save the Canadian economy $1.4 billion to start, rising to $2.2 billion per year in half a decade.

    This is because Canada already spends more than $36 billion annually on non-hospital prescription drugs – and the government already foots 46% of the bill. What footing the entire bill would do is give the federal government significantly more bargaining power to negotiate for lower drug prices.

    And aside from saving money, it would also save lives. Around 20% of Canadians have inadequate or non-existent coverage – including one in five households with a family member who is rationing their drugs, and one million Canadians who are forced to choose between medication and food.

    The NDP wants to fix that. So Singh struck a “supply and confidence” deal with prime minister Justin Trudeau in March 2022 that would keep the minority Liberal government in power until October 2025 in exchange for legislative action on key NDP policy priorities.

    Most significantly, the deal calls for “progress towards a universal national pharmacare program by passing a Canada Pharmacare Act by the end of 2023” followed by “tasking the National Drug Agency to develop a national formulary of essential medicines and bulk purchasing plan.”

    As you may have noticed, the end of 2023 is neigh. And to their credit, the Liberals shared a first draft of the legislation with the NDP last week. But less to their credit, Singh rejected the draft because it failed to commit to a single-payer system. He also reiterated his party-backed threat to bail on the deal if Trudeau bails on the terms.

    Singh has taken considerable shit from all sides for working with Trudeau. To the left, he’s a Liberal sellout; and to the right, he’s a Liberal stooge. But what are his options? The NDP has only 19% of the popular vote, putting them in a distant third behind Trudeau’s extremely unpopular Liberals.

    Yes, the NDP would beat the Liberals if only people born after 1980 were allowed to vote. And yes, the NDP has had some historic victories this year with electoral wins for Manitoba premier Wab Kinew and Toronto mayor Olivia Chow.

    But if an election were held tomorrow, the Conservatives would almost certainly win – perhaps by enough to form a majority government. And even if it were only a minority government, the likelihood of Pierre Poilievre striking a similarly advantageous deal with Singh is… extremely unlikely, to put it lightly.

    In contrast, the deal Singh struck with Trudeau has resulted in, among other things, a public dental care program. Yes, it’s far from universal. And yes, it’s far from perfect. But it has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of kids going to the dentist for the first time. That’s not nothing.

    And universal pharmacare? That would definitely not be nothing.

    For what it’s worth, I doubt Singh had to twist Trudeau’s arm too hard to get him on board. I imagine Trudeau would be thrilled to have such a significant social program be part of his legacy. He even ran on the promise of establishing a national drug plan in 2019.

    So, if I had to guess, I think it’s gonna happen. Yes, the NDP will have to share credit with the Liberals. And yes, Trudeau will be a founding father too. But so what? That just means universal pharmacare will have two dads… and in Canada that’s not a bad thing.

    Nor is it a bad thing in Canada for politicians from different parties to work together to solve common problems. In fact, that’s often how politics is really done – at least when it’s done really well.

    The NDP still loves Jagmeet Singh

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  • This will surprise nobody: If an election were held today, Pierre Poilievre would clobber Justin Trudeau. According to the latest poll, 38% of Canadians now support the Conservatives and only 26% support the Liberals.

    But this may surprise you: If only Millennials could vote, the clobbering would be worse. Forty percent of Millennials now say they’d vote for Poilievre’s Conservatives and just 21% say they’d vote for Trudeau’s Liberals – putting them in third behind Jagmeet Singh’s NDP.

    OK, maybe that isn’t actually surprising: Millennials have endured an unrelenting economic grind since entering the workforce in the fallout of the financial crisis, and they’ve undeniably borne the brunt of Canada’s affordability crisis. Plus Millennials are old and grumpy now.

    But still: This is definitely new. As recently as February 2022, before Poilievre became party leader, only 24% of young Canadians supported the Conservatives and 32% supported the Liberals. But by July 2023, in the middle of Poilievre’s “Canada is broken” summer tour, Conservative support among young Canadians had soared to 31% while Liberal support had sunken to 29%.

    So how did Poilievre overtake Trudeau and double Millennial support for the Conservative party in under two years? By relentlessly blaming Trudeau for something that genuinely is broken: Housing.

    Historically, owning a home in Canada cost an average of 41% of household income. But now Canadians are spending an average of 60% of their incomes on their homes. In Toronto, it’s up to 80%. Who can afford that?

    The issue is particularly acute for newer homeowners who took on huge, long-term, variable-rate mortgages when interest rates were at historical lows – and who’ve since seen their monthly payments increase by an average of 49% in 2023. Who can afford that?

    And the situation is no better for renters. The average rent in Canada is up nearly 10% from 2022 and has been rising by around $100 per month since May. In August, the average asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Toronto was more than $3,400. Who can afford that?

    Fewer and fewer people, it turns out: A survey published this week found that a staggering 63% of Canadians are now living pay cheque to pay cheque – including 30% who are spending their savings or going into debt just to cover their monthly expenses.

    This is an extremely serious problem. Things are looking genuinely grim for a lot of Canadians right now. And a lot of people are understandably angry about it. And it is this despair-fueled rage that Poilievre has become such an effective spokesperson for.

    It’s worth noting that Poilievre isn’t offering any serious solutions. He’d cancel the carbon tax, which would make gas a bit less expensive; he’d defund the CBC, which would make Canada a lot less informed; and he’d cut TBD government waste, which would mean public sector layoffs and social service cuts.

    That won’t fix anything – let alone the housing crisis. But Poilievre isn’t interested in fixing Canada. He’s just trying to convince Canadians that Trudeau broke it. And he’s doing a great job.

    Millennials are Conservative now

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