Bread & circuses, Liberal-style
Aping the opposition won't make food or housing any cheaper. Tough choices will.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s the case, then no one’s doing obsequiousness better than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This week he shape-shifted into not one, but two opposition politicians, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.
First, Trudeau did his best imitation of Poilievre, getting hot and heavy about housing. The occasion was an announcement of an affordable housing deal between the federal government and the City of London:
"We're facing a shortage of housing right now, and that's why prices of homes have become far too high… Housing is a solvable problem, and we're all going to solve it if we work together."
The announcement wasn’t actually new, mind you: it was simply the first outlay of cash from the $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund unveiled in March, designed to cut red tape and fast-track the building of 100,000 homes. And guess who is on the priority list for these new abodes? According to Housing Minister Sean Fraser, the dynamic has "fundamentally shifted" from a need for publicly-funded social housing for low-income families, to homes for middle-class Canadians.
“People who are going to school deserve to have a place near their classes. People who are going to work deserve to have a home near where they go to work, and everybody deserves to be able to have a home they can afford near the services they need to access.”
Next, Trudeau out-shouted Singh on the grocery file:
“Large grocery chains are making record profits. Those profits should not be made on the backs of people who are struggling to feed their families… If their plan doesn't provide real relief for the middle class and people working hard to join it, then we will take further action and we are not ruling anything out including tax measures."
There’s that middle-class line again! From 2015, no less! Advice to PMO: come up with a new one. People aren’t working to join the middle these days, they’re just trying to get three square meals on the table.
In case grocery CEOs missed the memo, Innovation Minister Philippe Champagne tag-teamed his boss on this one:
"We're going to start with the five largest grocers in Canada [who] represent about 80 per cent of the market, and we're going to be in solution mode with very clear deadlines and very clear outcomes for Canadians. And together we're going to look also at large food processors…We're going to bring them in Ottawa, talk to them around meaningful action and if they fail to do so there'll be consequences."
Consequences? What consequences? Will Champagne fine Loblaws for selling overpriced olives? Or for fixing the price of bread? (Oh wait, the Competition Bureau already did that one.) We don’t know what those consequences are, but they sure make the Liberals sound tough.
Why are Trudeau and company spouting this stuff, and why now? Quite simply because the polls are terrible. Really terrible. The latest Abacus Data poll has the Conservatives leading by 15 points “as federal government disapproval jumps 4 points.” Not the headline you want to read over breakfast at your caucus retreat.
But these are mid-mandate polls. As noted in last week’s post, assuming the NDP doesn’t pull the plug and topple the government, there are two years left on the Liberals’ dance card. That is an eternity in politics. They figure there is time to turn things around – or, at least, appear to be doing so.
So, in classic fashion, the government is cribbing the opposition’s agenda, not only from the left but from the right, hoping to take credit for it at voting time. Ironically, they are addressing problems they promised to tackle two years ago. And four years ago. And in 2015, when Trudeau first proclaimed, “We have a plan to make housing more affordable for those who need it most – seniors, persons with disabilities, lower-income families, and Canadians working hard to join the middle class.”
Unfortunately, though, the Liberals are determined not to do what would really help: make some hard choices that would both curb housing demand and tackle the root causes of unaffordability. In fairness, the Conservatives aren’t either: their housing proposal is best described as a pile of carrots and sticks, with heavy emphasis on the sticks. And neither will address the elephant in the room when it comes to grocery prices. Maybe they figure shouting at cities and businesses is an easier sell. But it won’t stop sticker shock at the checkout counter, or put a roof over the heads that sorely need one.
So, what else could both parties be offering? Here are seven options to tackle the housing shortage and bring down grocery prices– and the reasons why our politicians will probably leave them on the shelf:
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