Of all Pierre Poilievre’s familiar slogans, there’s one that stands above the rest: Canada is broken. There’s no shortage of irony there, not least because what little we know of his proposed plans and policies revolve almost exclusively around breaking things, whether it’s the CBC or Canada’s climate change policies. But the most ironic thing of all is that while Poilievre pretends Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are breaking the country, its conservative premiers are busy doing exactly that.
Take the federal government’s childcare agreement, one that provinces like Ontario and Alberta seem determined to undermine with deliberate mismanagement of the money they’ve been given. While Ottawa will send $3.8 billion to the Alberta government over five years to support its childcare ambitions, the provincial government hasn’t put in a single additional dollar of its own.
That’s not all. According to Krystal Churcher, the chair of the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs, the Alberta government is effectively asking childcare providers to lend it money every month. “Asking operators to carry 85 per cent of their revenue and wait 40 to 45 days to get it back is putting them in the position where they can’t pay rent on Feb. 1,” she told the CBC’s Matt Galloway. If you wanted to deliberately undermine the federal government’s goals here, this would be a pretty good way to do it. If you wanted to deliberately undermine the federal government’s goals here, this would be a pretty good way to do it.
But while this might be the most galling example of a provincial government trying to break some key aspect of our country, it’s hardly the only one. There’s also health care, where the Ford government has been consistently underfunding Ontario’s system, which appears to be ever more precariously perched on the brink of total collapse. That might suit the Ford government just fine, given its obvious interest in bringing more private sector activity into the system. Other conservative governments across the country, from Alberta and Saskatchewan to the Maritimes, appear to be following similar playbooks.
On housing, the provinces (outside of British Columbia) keep adding fuel to a fire the federal government is trying to extinguish. In 2023, Ontario saw 85,770 housing starts, a seven per cent decrease from the previous year and just 78 per cent of its stated goal of 110,000 new homes. That’s because, according to a number of Ontario municipal leaders, the province has effectively set them up to fail by not supporting the infrastructure needed to actually enable growth and new construction.
They’re not helping on the demand side of the equation either. By admitting an ever-increasing volume of international students — 240,000 in each of the last two years in Ontario alone — they’re adding another source of demand for housing, one that’s putting even more strain on rental markets that can’t handle much more of it.
So why are they bringing so many of these students into the province? Because they help fill the gap in the budgets of the province’s post-secondary institutions the Ford government has created over the last six years. According to Alex Usher, the president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, the combination of a funding cap and a 10 per cent tuition cut has meant Ontario post-secondary institutions have faced an effective cut of 31 per cent in so-called “government-controlled income” since Ford came to office in 2017.
Not surprisingly, those institutions tried to backfill that with revenue from international students, who can be charged nearly six times as much for tuition as their domestic counterparts. According to the 2022 Ontario auditor general’s report, international students made up 17 per cent of enrolment and 45 per cent of tuition in 2021 — numbers that are certainly higher today. Even then, that hasn’t prevented blue-chip institutions like Queen’s from being forced to make major cuts to faculty and programs, ones that were announced before the federal government decided to chop the province’s allotment of international student approvals in half. Those cuts, in other words, could be about to get a whole lot bigger.
And then, of course, there’s the ongoing effort by Prairie premiers to filibuster any federal policy on climate change, and their willingness to openly defy the law in order to do it. Perhaps they learned from Quebec here, which has openly flouted federal authority on a number of occasions with almost no pushback from anyone at that level, government or opposition. Whether it’s Alberta’s Sovereignty Act, Scott Moe’s attempt to refuse to collect the federal carbon tax on natural gas heating or Quebec’s pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause on its draconian language law legislation, there is a growing willingness on the part of conservative provincial governments to test the strength of our national fabric — and maybe even tear it.
This should be an obvious place for the Trudeau Liberals to mount some sort of counterattack. Liberal governments have done well in the past when they go to bat for Canada. Underscoring the role that conservative provincial governments are playing in trying to break the country could help them use Poilievre’s own narrative against him. By framing the next election as a choice between those who want to keep building our country and those who are trying to break it, the Liberals might just be able to get out from under their own baggage.
A carbon tax rebrand won’t be enough
After many months of me complaining about the utter lack of clarity around the carbon tax rebate, it seems the Trudeau Liberals are going to do something about it. "The government is taking a serious look at how the climate action incentive payment is being branded," a senior government source told the Toronto Star’s Mark Ramzy. According to his reporting, this will apparently involve a “multi-department effort” that will assess whether a name change would
“improve perceptions” and address ongoing inconsistencies with how banks label the payments — an issue I’ve flagged repeatedly since last year.
Better late than never, I guess.
Conservatives responded to this news by accusing the government of being “pathologically obsessed” with the carbon tax, which is about as perfect an example of projection as you’ll ever see. Their own pathological obsession that makes them blame the carbon tax for almost every problem under the sun is part of the federal government’s challenge on this file. But the hole it finds itself in is mostly of its own making, and it has a lot of work to do if it even wants to dig its way back to the political surface.
According to a new poll from Abacus Research, only one in three Canadians in eligible jurisdictions (that is, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and the Maritimes) thinks they received a carbon tax rebate, and only half of people in Ontario think they’re eligible for one (spoiler: everyone there is). When asked what these rebates are for, less than half correctly linked it to the carbon tax.
This is in part because conservative politicians and proxies have spent the last five years treating their constituents like mushrooms by keeping them in the dark about the tax and rebate’s actual impact and feeding them intellectual manure at every available opportunity. But the federal government has made this far more difficult than it ever needed to be.
By calling it the “Climate Action Incentive,” it created confusion rather than clarity. By failing to ensure it was delivered to people in a way they couldn’t miss (and no, having then claim it as a deduction on their income taxes, as was the case for the first few years, doesn’t meet that standard), it allowed misinformation about the program to thrive. And by failing to force the banks to label the payments accurately and consistently once they eventually moved to a direct deposit system, it introduced even more confusion — and more opportunities for bad-faith actors to mislead the public.
Ironically, the Liberals may have tied their own hands here back in 2016 when they changed the rules around how the federal government could advertise its own policies. "We just want to make it absolutely clear that we are ending the ability for any government, current or future, to use tax dollars to fund what are partisan or quasi-partisan ads,” then-Treasury Board President Scott Brison said. Mission accomplished, I suppose, even if they won’t ever be rewarded politically for it.
I’m not optimistic this program can be salvaged at this point. A better play might be to scrap the consumer portion entirely and focus the carbon tax on large industrial emitters, who continue to contribute disproportionately to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. That would obviously invite more conflict with Alberta, where most of Canada’s excess emissions are coming from. But that’s a fight that looks a lot better for the Trudeau Liberals right now than the one on a broader carbon tax.
A lament for David Lametti
David Lametti is an esteemed lawyer, a talented professor and one of Canada’s longest-serving justice ministers. That’s why, when he was removed entirely from cabinet last fall, it surprised almost everyone. His recent announcement that he’s stepping down as a member of Parliament and vacating his Montreal seat is significantly less surprising. But the response from Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre is telling — and instructive.
It used to be that political rivals had the decency to show some respect to their colleagues when they announced they were stepping back from public life. Even Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was able to find some kind words to share when Rachel Notley resigned recently as the leader of the Alberta NDP.
Not Poilievre, though.
On social media, he said, “He leaves behind him a record of Charter violations, censoring free speech, illegal use of the Emergencies Act & crime policies that have unleashed waves of violence. More proof Trudeau is not worth the cost and crime.”
As I’ve written repeatedly, the petulance is the point for Poilievre, so this is entirely on-brand for him. So, too, is the recent incident in Parliament during a moment of silence for the late Ed Broadbent, one that the Toronto Star’s Althia Raj describes in a recent column. “Poilievre, who had left the confines of the chamber but was still in the atrium, could be heard laughing with a group on the other side of the curtains,” she writes. Poilievre’s long-standing reputation for being one of the most widely disliked MPs on Parliament Hill, even within his own caucus, is well-deserved.
But his comments about Lametti speak to a broader issue, and it’s one everyone who cares about democracy and the quality of our representation has a stake in. Poilievre and his version of the Conservative Party of Canada have no interest in making Parliament less partisan, less toxic or less draining for the people elected to serve in it. If anything, they want to raise the price of participating in politics, so that decent men and women think twice about putting their names forward for it.
After all, if you’re a political lifer like Poilievre and many of his chief lieutenants, this sort of stuff is standard operating procedure. This is the water they’ve learned to swim in, and they like the temperature just fine. But if you’re a doctor, a law professor, a teacher or a business executive, why would you want to stick your head in this particular blender? Why would you subject yourself to all manner of nasty personal attacks only to win the privilege of going to work in an increasingly toxic environment with colleagues who will spit on your name and reputation as you walk out the door?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that most sane and reasonable people won’t want to do that. The personal cost of public service has become too high for all but the most dedicated (or masochistic), and that will continue to shrink the pool of people who are willing to run for office. That’s bad for democracy. That’s bad for society. We’d do well to think about ways to address this problem. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for Poilievre and his fellow travellers to either get religion here or get sent packing by voters. Based on the recent polls and his recent behaviour, neither seems nearly imminent enough.
Calgary’s progressive council loses the battle over single-use plastics
As my questionable social media habits make clear, I understand the temptation to pick every available battle on issues that are close to your heart. But please, take my word for it: there are only so many hills you can die on, and some are better chosen than others.
I wish the progressive councillors on my local city council would learn this lesson. The entirely predictable blowback against a new bylaw that bans single-use plastics and charging a minimum fee for alternative products seems to have caught them entirely off-guard — and forced them into a humiliating retreat. On Tuesday, council voted to begin the process of repealing the single-use items bylaw and gave the province’s conservative pundits and politicians — including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith — an opportunity to take a victory lap.
It didn’t have to be this way, for any number of reasons. The bylaw, which charged $1 for a reusable bag and 15 cents for a paper one, also required vendors to only provide
“foodware accessories” like condiments, cutlery and napkins if the customer specifically requested them. This should be common sense by now, not the content of a bylaw. But in covering so many items, including the bags people use at drive-thrus, it invited an even bigger populist backlash. Heck, it practically begged for it.
Don’t get me wrong: the issue of plastic waste is very real and very problematic. The amount of unnecessary waste we create, which ends up in our waterways and oceans, deserves to be addressed. The fact that so many people can’t be bothered to embrace reusable bags or treat the elimination of single-use plastics like it’s an affront to their basic liberties and freedoms does not exactly fill me with optimism about the fight ahead. If we can’t do the smallest things, after all, how are we supposed to tackle the big ones?
That said, part of your job as an elected official is understanding what the public will and won’t tolerate and not trying to push too far ahead of that — not, at least, without the political capital needed to pay the ensuing cost. Yes, as I wrote earlier this week, divisive decisions can often look better with time and hindsight. But that presumes those decisions survive their initial contact with voters. This one didn’t.
There are climate battles worth picking for city councillors. But when the federal government is already taking heat for its own single-use plastics ban, why try to jump in front of it? And why try to put a belt around an already unpopular pair of political suspenders in Calgary when you’re part of a council that’s already massively unpopular with the public? These are questions the councillors defending the bylaw should have probably thought harder about than they did. Instead, they’re left with even less capital to work with going forward — and they’ve handed a win to their opponents in the process.
Quick Hits
Remember how I said that everything in American politics eventually makes its way up here? Well, we’re now dealing with the same nonsense around voter fraud that defined the 2020 U.S. election. A recent announcement that the federal Liberals and New Democrats are partnering on potential changes that would make it easier for Canadians to vote has sent conservatives into a tailspin.
In reality, the changes being mooted are decidedly modest: allowing an expanded three-day voting period during general elections, allowing voters to cast a ballot at any polling location in their riding and improving the mail-in balloting process. There is nothing even remotely nefarious at work here, unless you think more Canadians being able to vote is a problem.
But as Conservative Party of BC candidate Bryan Breguet discovered, trying to tamp down fears about Trudeau “stealing” the next election aren’t well received by many of his fellow travellers. “The Canadian right has mostly avoided this conspiracy,” he said on social media, “but I see quite a few tweets going that way today because of the few changes Trudeau and Singh are planning.”
Alas, his entirely reasonable comments attracted the very energy he was trying to repel. But it wasn’t just online kooks who were bringing it. Vitor Marciano, the chief of staff to Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean, tweeted that “Trudeau’s in trouble so here comes the electoral cheating. Canada’s very secure elections are about to come under threat.”
I wish I could tell you that this sort of thing will go away, that more rational voices like Breguet’s will prevail and that Canadian conservatives won’t follow their American cousins down this rabbit hole. Everything I’ve seen over the last few years tells me otherwise. And if the Liberals somehow manage to pull out a win — or even a smaller loss — in the next election? Well, we know where that can lead.
For years now, the oilsands industry has been trying to convince Canadians it is serious about cleaning up its act. That job just got a lot more difficult if a recent study published in Science is any indication. It found that aerial samples of organic carbon emissions were far, far higher than the ones taken at ground level — between 20 and 64 times higher depending on the oilsands facility in question. "Work over the last 15 years or so has continually shown that there's more going into the air from the oilsands than is being officially recorded," said Jeffrey Brook, air quality expert and associate professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
It would be nice if the Alberta government took this research seriously and redoubled its efforts on decarbonization. I’m willing to bet it will instead try to muddy the waters here and focus on where the research is coming from, and specifically Environment and Climate Change Canada’s involvement in it. But this is a hill that is, in fact, worth dying on. The federal government should insist on improving the measurement standards being used here and it should dare the Alberta government to push back against that.
If it’s smart, the oil and gas industry won’t go along for that ride. Its long-term viability depends on both decarbonizing operations and having the world be able to trust that it has actually done that work. For an industry and its various PR appendages that insist on telling the world that their product is “clean” and “ethical,” they need to start bringing much better receipts. This study is just the latest reminder of how much work they have to do there.
And finally, I regret to inform you that young men are in a very, very lousy place right now. This may not come as a surprise to anyone who knows a few of them, but a recent chart shows just how far and fast they’re diverging from women when it comes to their political values and beliefs. In a really interesting thread, Vox’s David Roberts breaks down what he thinks is behind this phenomenon.
His concluding message to men is simple and succinct: “You're going to have to quit whining, quit lashing out, quit electing fascists, quit trying to drag the world back to pre-modernity. Pull up your pants, get over yourself, & learn how to be a decent human being. If you need guidance, look to the women around you.”
I will happily co-sign that message, even if I don’t think it’s going to resonate with the people who need to hear it most.
That’s all for this week’s edition of the newsletter. Until then, please remember to share it on your socials and encourage friends and frenemies alike to subscribe.