(Cartoon by Graeme MacKay in The Hamilton Spectator)
I find it hard to watch Canadian television these days because at some point the program Pierre Poilievre shows up, telling us that “Canada is broken”. I don’t think we really need an election right now, but honestly, I might welcome one if only because it will eventually shut him up. I’ve come to hate even hearing his voice.
It has never been my desire to be a partisan political supporter in these blog articles. I apologize for venturing into political advocacy. I’ve never wanted to be here. But I think Poilievre is following in the traces of Donald Trump and Viktor Orban, and while he may be a long way behind them, his populist approach, his lies, his exaggerations, his misrepresentations are all cut to their template. (See “The Perils of Populism”, April 2022).
I don’t deny that Canada has problems, but I’m proud of this country and I think we are a long, long way from broken. Let’s look at how Canada is really doing on an international scale and then assess how accurate Mr. Poilievre’s assessment of this country really is.
Democracy – The Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit identifies that democracy on a global basis is declining and that threats to democracy are increasing. We are fortunate to be included in the 7.8% of the global population who live in a full democracy. In fact, Canada is ranked 13th out of 167 nations that were included in this democracy evaluation. There are five components to the democracy index. The one that is dragging our score down is “political culture” and the report warns that Canada “increasingly appears to be suffering from some of the same democratic deficits as its southern neighbour.” In other words, the things that most threatens our robust democracy right now are partisanship, divisiveness, and distrust, not the building block processes upon which our democracy is based.
Quality of Life/Happiness – The World Population Review explains that Quality of Life assessment is a basket of a number of metrics like wealth, comfort and availability of necessities and that “Because standard of living and quality of life are broad and slightly ambiguous terms, no universally agreed-upon technique exists for measuring them. So, statisticians invent all manner of interesting equations, systems, and surveys that attempt the unlikely task of boiling down quality of life (or on rarer occasions, standard of living) into a simple number.” In three of these admittedly subjective ranking systems, we get rated 5th, 20th and 29th out of 197 assessed nations, and we’re rated 15th in terms of citizen happiness. That’s not the same as “broken”.
Wealth Inequality – Wealth inequality, and its cousin income inequality, are both a problem. I found numerous articles on the correlations between wealth inequality and various aspects of social well-being. One article summarized thusly: “There is considerable evidence that within nations, health status improves at each step up the income and social hierarchy, and some research showing that higher income inequality corresponds with overall poorer population health and negative social consequences at the national and sub- national levels.” Wealth and income inequality in Canada have generally been on the rise since Ronald Reagan’s presidency instituted the famous trickle-down economics in the US, the result of which was that wealth trickled steadily upwards. By 2018, the top 10% in Canada had 34.6% of the national income vs 17.8% for the bottom 50%. That means that an individual in the top ten percent makes about ten times as much as someone in the bottom 50%. Not good. But how does Canada look on the world stage? World Population Review provides data on the Gini index which is used to measure income inequality on a global scale. Canada ranks 129thout of 176 countries, where a big number is a good thing. I don’t like our income inequality statistics, but we’re better off than three quarters of the world on this metric.
Press Freedom – There is an organization called Reporters Without Borders, and they track the quality of media freedom in countries around the world. Although the quality of our press freedom has declined slightly from 2023 to 2024, Canada is nevertheless ranked as 14th best in the world. The United States, by comparison, is 45th. RSF advises that only 55 of 180 countries surveyed (approximately 30%) achieved good or satisfactory ratings, so we can be grateful to be in a country with a robust free press. We should not take a free press for granted, nor should we underestimate how important it is. The major news sources in Canada ( CBC, CTV, Global News, National Post, Globe and Mail, Charlottetown Guardian) are generally all ranked as no worse than moderately biased, and strong on factuality.
Crime – In a global context, Canada is neither stellar nor awful. In a Crime Index published by Numbeo for mid-2024, Canada ranks 77th worst out of 146 countries, or almost right in the middle. Statistically we’re in a large group of countries in the center of the bell curve. So, things haven’t gotten totally out of control by world standards.
Food Security – The Economist ranks Canada as the 7th most secure food program in the world out of 113 countries assessed, and #1 for Quality and Safety. That ranking does not simply imply that Canada has a lot of food available. The report says “Whenever safe and nutritious food is not available at a price affordable to all, it jeopardises people’s welfare. Affordability, the top-scoring pillar of the GFSI, dropped by 4% in 2019-22, from 71.9 to 69.0, dragged down by sharp rises in food costs, declining trade freedom and decreased funding for food safety nets.” Despite the global decline in food affordability, Canadians are ranked seventh best off in the world in our ability to afford quality food and get it to the table.
What the foregoing tells us is that the rest of the world sees us as a strong democracy with a great standard of living, a wonderful food supply and a strong and largely unbiased free press. Our wealth inequality is problematic, but still ranks in the top 25%. Only in the crime statistics, where we’re very close to 50%, are we not in the top quartile of world performers. Be proud Canada – we’re not broken yet.
So now, let me look at some of the things that Mr. Poilievre has been complaining about. We’re all familiar by now with the Poilievre mantra – “Axe the tax, fix the budget, build the houses, stop the crime”.
Carbon Tax – I will spend very little time on the “Axe the (carbon) tax” portion because in April of this year, I devoted a full article to examining the carbon tax. I found evidence that it isn’t contributing greatly to inflation, that it is contributing to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and that it’s largely revenue neutral, and may even be revenue positive for some lower income people.
Inflation – Under fixing the budget, PP has a number of complaints, but chief among them is the government’s failure to control inflation. So, let’s look at that situation. From the moment that Canada began pouring money into the system to keep the economy alive during the early months of the pandemic, it was obvious that we were going to trigger a round of inflation. Most governments around the world reacted in the same way, and produced the same result. And if you want to say that Canada is broken because we’ve experienced an inflationary spiral, I suppose you can do that. But I don’t buy it.
Response to inflation is properly the province of the Bank of Canada. Despite Poilievre’s threat to fire the Governor of the BoC, Mr. Tiff Macklem, for fuelling inflation, it turns out that Canada has responded pretty well to the inflationary spiral when compared to other countries. I am not going to bother you with a whole bunch of comparisons to nations like Turkiye where fiscal policy has left them with 59.5% annual inflation in 2024. But let’s look at a comparison to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD.
Average annual inflation in OECD countries went 0.7%, 2.8%, 8.2%, and 5.7% from 2020 to 2023 inclusive. Canada in those same years went 0.7%, 3.4%, 6.8%, 3.7%, and it is now at 2.6% in 2024. In June the Reuters news agency reported that “The Bank of Canada trimmed its key policy rate on Wednesday, the first G7 country to do so”. The bottom line is that Canada’s integrated financial system out-performed some of the strongest and best economies in the world. And so, I reject the thesis that inflation happened because we are a broken country. Inflation happened because the pandemic (and wars in Ukraine and Gaza) disrupted economies around the world, and Canada handled it all better than most.
Food Insecurity – Although we are considered to have one of the best food supplies in the world, on May 22nd, Mr. Poilievre made a speech in the House of Commons in which he said this: “Mr. Speaker, after nine years of debt, taxes and inflation courtesy of the Prime Minister and the Bloc Québécois, Canadians are hungry, literally. According to a report by Food Banks Canada, 50% of Canadians report that their situation is worse than last year. One-quarter of Canada’s young adults have to rely on food banks.” Are Canadians really hungry?
StatsCan reported, in May 2024 that for 2022, 16.9% of Canadians experienced food insecurity. The Food Bank report for 2023 claims that the number has risen to 18.4%, although I caution you that Statistics Canada survey is likely to be slightly different. Curiously, the food banks report tells us that the number of people living below the poverty line has dropped from 11.2% to 7.4% in the last four years, yet the food insecurity measure has risen from 16.8% to 18.4%. That might mean that the market basket measure (MBM), which determines the poverty line, is out of date. Or it might mean that a survey question like “how often do you worry about running out of food” isn’t a very objective or scientific measure of food availability.
Really, are Canadians hungry? Is our food supply insecure?
Well, is there objective evidence that Canadians are under-nourished? The Global Nutrition Report, a product of stakeholders like the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other like organizations, says that we have a lot more of a problem with obesity than we do with under-nourishment. “The prevalence of overweight children under 5 years of age is 10.4%…32.3% of adult (aged 18 years and over) women and 32.6% of adult men are living with obesity.” Trading Economics, a highly rated business data source, has a chart reporting Canada’s prevalence of under-nourishment as 2.5% every year since 2014, but the chart is accompanied by a note that says “Data showing as 2.5 may signify a prevalence of undernourishment below 2.5%.” In other words, undernourishment in Canada is always below a level that they would even bother to report.
I respect the Food Bank people and their charitable efforts to share food and minimize the effects of poverty. Also, I understand that the recent history of rising food prices and short-term inflation has caused concern about the food budget in lower income families, and I don’t mean to minimize those problems. But no, Mr. Poilievre’s rhetoric to the contrary, Canadians are not hungry.
In terms of things that you can measure (like obesity, food availability, and prevalence of malnutrition), Canadians do not have a problem with undernourishment.
(I remind you that they’re eating the cats and the dogs in Springfield, Ohio, but we have 28 million pets in Canada, and nobody’s eating ‘em. ‘Cause we just ain’t that hungry!)
Crime – Mr. Poilievre assures in his barrage of three-word imperatives that he will “stop the crime.” In a House of Commons speech and in countless other public forums he has assured us that “crime is rampant”. Is he correct?
In November of 2023, Global News reported that “For the fourth year in a row, the national homicide rate went up in 2022, according to Statistics Canada data released Wednesday. The homicide rate, which is considered a key indicator of the state of violence in society, increased by nearly eight percent to 2.25 homicides per 100,000 population. This was the highest homicide rate since 1992, according to the agency.” Well, that sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it?
However, you know those old Mark Twain sayings – “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure” and also “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The John Howard Society, in an article published in September 2023, did a deep dive into the data. They report that crime in this country rose steadily through the 60’s, 70’s, ‘80’s and peaked about 1992. Crime stats then declined steadily for 20 years, led primarily by a decrease in property crimes. Starting about 2015 there has been a slow increase in total crime number, led again by property crimes (think auto thefts). And violent crime? It has been almost a flat line for the last 30 or 35 years, since the early 90’s. The article reports that “the Crime Severity Index has been approximately stable over the last 8 to 10 years, and actually went down in 2020 and 2021, so it does not tell the story that the Globe or the Post want….Gun crimes were up by 128 in Quebec and by 78 in Manitoba – large increases – but down by 71 in Ontario. Looking at these kinds of details, It is very hard to see any overall pattern….And on a very positive note, youth crime in Canada has been declining steadily for more than 20 years, and is now at historically low rates. But this important fact also does not fit the ‘rising crime’ narrative some want to create.
The John Howard Society article echoes concerns identified by a publication called The Maple. (Full disclosure – The Maple is a pretty left-leaning news source, but with good ratings for fact checking) The Maple’s article quotes a Toronto Metropolitan University professor Anne-Marie Singh in her rebuttal to a National Post Article which said that Canada was experiencing “ a crime wave that is unlike anything in … recent history,”). She called out the Post’s piece as an “inane article which defies logic and any common sense…Historical data puts the current situation in context. Canada recorded 8,132 crimes per 100,000 people in 2003, compared to 5,668 crimes per 100,000 people in 2022. The current number of recorded crimes is closer to a low of 5,046 in 2014.”
I think that truth is likely what the international crime statistics told us. Canada is an absolutely average country for prevalence of crime. I think the JHS is right in pointing out that random short-term fluctuations don’t yet indicate a significant trend. Crime is a concern, but we’re not facing an historical crime wave, regardless of what Poilievre tells you.
Canadian Journalism – World-wide trends in misinformation, AI generated deep fakes, and state-sponsored propaganda (think Russia) are threatening the quality of information available to information consumers. In Canada specifically, RSF notes “Print newspaper sales have been declining in Canada for over a decade… revenues have eroded, leading to the shutdown of small outlets and loss of good-paying jobs in the journalism industry….Although Canadians say they still have some confidence in journalism, their overall trust in the media has declined….While journalists are typically safe to do their jobs in Canada, reporters covering the 2022 Freedom Convoy to protest vaccine mandates received death threats, were spat on, and were verbally and physically harassed.”
In February of 2022, I wrote the following in a blog piece entitled “Information Sources in the Age of Trump”:
“Of all the disgusting, infuriating, perplexing and dangerous things that Donald Trump has done since he became a political powerhouse, probably none is as dangerous as the destruction of confidence in the mainstream media.”
A CBC article from March of this year exploring Poilievre’s relationship with the media reported “The next month (June 2022) he reported that “the corporate media and established interests are spending a lot of time trying to stop me”… That fall, after a contentious exchange with a reporter on the Hill, Poilievre wrote that “the media” were “no longer interested in even pretending to be unbiased. They want us to lose.” Poilievre’s attack on Canadian media continued last week when he unleashed a savage attack on CTV News for a mistake they had made and for which they had acknowledged error and apologized.
Poilievre tells you that our journalism is broken, like everything else in Canada, and he mimics Trumps war cry – “fake news!” But RSF tells us that our news organizations are among the best in the world.
Mr. Poilievre is right. Canada does indeed have problems. The problem I have with him is that he is following the populist agenda:
- lie about and exaggerate problems to create a crisis mentality. (Canada is broken)
- Find a simple slogan that promises a solution without actually articulating real policy. (Axe the tax, fix the budget, build the houses, stop the crime)
- Demonize the opposition (Trudeau is whacko, Singh is a sell-out and a liar, “woke liberals” degrade our values and threaten our freedoms.)
- Discredit journalists so that you can yell fake news whenever you are criticized. (CBC and CTV are biased against me.)
- Take over institutions and move towards autocracy (I’ll use the notwithstanding clause to implement my anti-crime program).
The problem is that it’s working. People are starting to believe the repeated lies and accept them as their reality. A lot of Canadians don’t understand the carbon tax issue, don’t trust some of the best mainstream media in the world, have lost faith in the justice system and the school system, are embracing anti-vax conspiracy theories, don’t trust Parliament, are convinced that we’re in the middle of a major crime wave and believe that many Canadians are going hungry.
. We do have problems that deserve objective and fact-based discussions, like climate policy and national defence and improving health care and improving the tax system and immigration and housing. If you want to vote for Poilievre, I can’t stop you. But at least ask yourself how factual his assessment of Canada’s problems really is. Do you really think, deep in your gut, that “Canada is Broken”?
15 responses to “My Unbroken Canada”
Bang on Dennis. Although Canada has problems and can always improve, we are one of the best countries. If one does the same analysis on America, you would see we are head and shoulders above. However, half the population seem to want to be more like States and follow a populist leader providing no solutions to our problems. Boggles the mind. Thanks for analysis
Thanks for the comment, Harland. I agree with you. Looking at the United States and thinking that any Canadian leadership candidate is trying to take us in that direction is a scary thought.
Comment received by private email: I don’t follow politics, Dennis… but it seems to me that Pierre Polievere stands against everything he is and has come from. Someone else already did that, to great detriment to the world…
My Response: Thanks for the comment. I assume that probably you’re referring to Adolf Hitler. Comparing Poilievre to Hitler might be just a bit of a stretch. I think the comparisons to Trump and to Viktor Orban are quite apt. In fact, right wing intolerance is becoming an growth industry. And they all features the same kinds of things they are part of a harsher, unkind world… anti-immigration policies, religious intolerance, anti-feminism, Isolationism. We need to stop it.
Good evening Dennis…
Always interesting to read your commentaries and I hope you are doing well these days…your name comes up at hockey from time to time…
While I tend to agree with your reaction to PP and his sometimes snarly and arrogant approach, he is coping with incompetent counterparts across the floor of the House on a regular basis.What do you expect
You have pulled together select statistical data ( and correctly quoted the ” lies,broody lies and statistics” line) which only re- inforce Canada’s mediocre performance across the measures.
I would argue strongly that Canada has major problems to fix relative to excessive and uncontrolled immigration,excessive cumulative taxation,declining innovation and productivity,erratic fiscal policies and my fave,blind support of the Woke and DEI agenda.
While we are nowhere near as devisive as the US, it should not surprise anyone that the populist approach is being broadly supported.The reality of the punitive effects of the current cost of living is real,income inequality is abrasive and the general malaise with the liberal lemmings has seriously damaged our country over the last 8 to 10 years…so we have real problems to fix…unfortunately PP is the conservative standard bearer who needs to lead the change we need.
So maybe hold your nose, ignore his rhertoric and hope we get the next federal election sooner than later
Hi there Gord. I always appreciate your comments, and I’m happy to debate this subject with you. Please be aware that I’m not trying to carry water for the “incompetent counterparts across the floor of the house”. There are enough examples of wasteful spending in the 10 years of Liberal government to argue persuasively that they should be turfed. My problem is that PP is arguing even more persuasively that he would be a terrible choice to replace them.
We will agree to disagree on whether my data re-inforces Canada’s mediocre performance. With one exception we are solidly inside the top quartile , often top decile in performance measures. I’m not sure what world you’re living in where that equates to mediocre performance.
I have no problems agreeing that Canada has problems to fix. All countries do. That doesn’t mean that all countries are broken. But if we’re going to discuss those problems in an intelligent way for voters to appreciate the nuance of differing approaches to solve the problem, wouldn’t it be a good idea to define the problem in a factual way first? Little PP (and I insist on using that nickname advisedly) doesn’t do that. And neither, sadly, do you. You say we need to address “excessive and uncontrolled immigration”. From 2001 to 2021, Canada averaged around 250000 immigrants a year. And yes, that number has increased in recent years – 471000 in 2023. But Europe has had 29 million immigrants in the past 10 years. My perspective (see my article from November 2021) is that the world’s population is growing by another 3 billion people or so in the next 80 years and the habitable parts of the world’s surface are likely shrinking owing to climate change, so we’d better get used to immigration. So, is our immigration excessive in light of a realistic view of how the world is changing?
And is it really uncontrolled in any sort of a global context? A Federal government report in November 2022 says “There are no accurate figures representing the number or composition of undocumented immigrants residing in Canada. Estimates from academic sources range between 20,000 and 500,000 persons, although there may be more.” By contrast, Wikipedia tells us that “Studies have shown that 40 million foreign born residents live in the U.S. 11.7 million of that population is illegal.”. So, when you say “uncontrolled” what is the data that would support that claim? Little PP is great with dramatic claims and statements, but short on data and evidence, in my opinion.
I don’t disagree with your comments about taxation and income inequality. Or if I do disagree, it’s not strongly enough to make me want to dig up data and formulate a rebuttal. Declining innovation is a serious problem, and I believe that I’ve traced that back to the Stephen Harper government which initiated a long slow decline in funding for the National Research Council.
I do however, want to respond to your objection to “blind support of the Woke and DEI agenda.” My articles “The Anti-Woke Pierre”, “Competition in a Non-Binary World” and especially “The Changing Shape of Conservatism” all touch on this theme. In the latter article, I wrote “We have all, every one of us, grown up with people who were “different” – effeminate boys or masculine seeming girls. Isn’t it time that we acknowledge those differences and grow some tolerance and accommodation of their needs? Well, the Conservative Party of Canada says no, it’s not time for that yet.” I consider the adoption of fundamentalist Christian-influenced hard right wing MAGA intolerance to be one of the most disturbing aspects of the Conservative Party of Canada under Pierre Poilievre.
I’m afraid I cannot ignore his rhetoric because every time I turn on the TV he’s preaching his gospel of division. And I can hold my nose all I want, but his campaign still stinks.
It’s all such a waste. The Trudeau government is burdened by nine years in office, which include the SNC Lavalin affair,
The WE charity scandal, the Phoenix pay system, the ArriveCan debacle, the disgraceful appointment of Julie Payette to the office of Governor General, and the horrendous failure to sustain our military capability. If Poilievre cannot defeat this government based on their record of inefficiencies and lack of oversight, he’s an idiot. But no, instead of simply arguing facts and performance, he insists on following this divisive, nasty and largely inaccurate populist approach which appeals, not to our reason and logic, but to anger and doubt and confusion which are being fomented by Poilievre and his followers.
I think you effectively demonstrate that our country needs work but is in no way “broken.” Notice how the current crop of Tory campaign ads seek to soften Poilevre’s grim, humourless, attack-dog image by depicting him, especially in his wife’s narration, as a loving family man in the traditional white Canadian mode? This calculating approach is not aimed at winning over non-Conservative voters, I expect, but at the remaining swing vote, and, perhaps, to reassure card-carrying Conservatives’ consciences that they are not voting for some sort of neo-fascist. As I recall, a similar attempt was made to warm up Harper’s coldness. Contemporary trends make him look almost moderate. Seems to me, too, that the current “commonsense” mantra of the TV spots deliberately invoke Mike Harris’ populist appeal in the key battleground province of Ontario. We will see how fuzzy and warm Poilievre is once he’s elected — and how much his flirtation with the hard right was opportunistic and how much of it was principled. Apparently, there is no such thing any more as a “Red Tory.”
Thanks for the comments Ed. Yes, we’re seeing an attempt to re-package this candidate, aren’t we? He’s not really the nasty little guttersnipe that you can watch in Question Period, but a warm loving family man with an Horatio Alger background.
When I wrote “the Changing Shape of Conservatism”(October 2023) I noted that “stories at the time noted that Pierre Polievre wasn’t bound by these resolutions and that he would have to walk a fine line to capture the socially conservative right wing vote without scaring off fiscally conservative moderates whose votes are also important”. I’ve noticed a new ad in the last week or two in which he moves on from his “tax, crime, budget, houses” mantra to include some of the socially conservative aspects that were adopted by the Conservative convention last fall – opposing woke agenda and the degrading of family values, if I remember correctly. So he appears to be aligning with the MAGA inspired socially conservative movement.
Thank you for your thorough analysis of how we are faring as Canadians. I can go to bed happier, and more assured that our governments are mostly on solid ground. It is puzzling, in the face of the positives, it appears that the Liberals are poised to lose the next election. Granted, government is not at the levers for all the measures you’ve covered. However, if you want to blame someone, blame goernment (think Trudeau). I am surprised that your sources indicate that food insecurity is not increasing. Perhaps school breakfast and lunch programs are skewing the statistics. Also, food insecurity can be a factor in obesit Low income families buy what’s affordable, and that may exclude fresh fruits and vegetables, and leaner, high quality meats. Enough from me. Polieve be gone!
To be fair, Isabelle, I didn’t say that food insecurity hasn’t increased. What I said is that I don’t find the metric compelling. It’s a survey. It deals with whether people are concerned and in the light of food price inflation over the last three years, I’m not surprised that people are a bit more concerned about being able to afford all the food they would like. But it is not evidence that people are actually hungry, as PP asserts. In what I am afraid is an adoption of the American right wing way, he’s using the data to tell a lie to create an enemy. The Trading Data information, which shows that malnourishment in Canada never rises to their threshold reporting value, gives him the lie.
Great job, Dennis. Can we make this required reading for the Cdn electorate?
I agree that PP is long on slogans and very short on plans and policy. He’s not doing the hard work to solve real problems. Energy – what’s a good and achievable mix of solar, wind, nuclear (especially SMRs), hydro, and petroleum products? Housing – how much, who should build it, ownership or rentals, affordability? Transportation- trains and ships vs roads and trucks, public transit, EVs vs ICE, hydrogen vs batteries? Immigration – how to make immigration palatable to every Cdn, how to integrate immigrants quickly rather than having PhDs driving cabs, how to target immigration better? If PP could tackle and solve just one of these problems, I could vote for him (while holding my nose!). But PP can’t spell most of those words so I have little hope that he’s going to tackle those problems. And I don’t think that PP and all the others don’t appreciate that having a strong economy helps to solve all the other problems – even if we have to sell some demon OIL& GAS!
In the end, I am left with a sense of despair.
Your comment that PP isn’t presenting us with policy alternatives is only somewhat true. I just read the CPC Policy Declaration arising from their September 9th 2023 convention. It’s an interesting document. There is much in there that I could support, along with several items I can’t support. As with any such political document, one has to wonder sometimes what’s really contained in the policy statement. But with respect to the “Axe the Tax” mantra, the policy declaration is firm. There will be no Federal policy on climate change!The policy says:
“We believe that there should be no federally imposed carbon taxes or cap and trade systems on either the provinces and territories or on the citizens of Canada. The provinces and territories should be free to develop their own climate change policies, without federal interference or federal penalties or incentives.” So the provinces can have their own policy, but there would be no federal government requirement that they do so.
There are several purposeful declarations of their support for the oil and gas industry such as “We continue to support hydrocarbon exploration, pipeline construction… and “In pursuit of a purposeful, gradual transition to a lower carbon-use future, a Conservative government will support the continued use of oil and gas while encouraging research and development aimed at creating safe, dependable and economical options, including carbon capture technology, battery-based storage, small modular reactors and hydrogen-based generation.”
So the policy is basically a policy of delay. We’ll continue burning all the oil and gas we need while we support innovations that might eventually reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Hi Dennis,
Quite a few people are hungry on PEI Including students at UPEI. Maybe Canada is low on the hunger index, but there are indeed people who are hungry, and this is trending upward according to food banks. ( More people seeking help each week). No-one has died of starvation as in middle east countries, so that might be the bottom line, but empty stomachs are likely occurring regularly- Food insecurity is high on PEI. I can’t reduce that to “no-one is hungry”.
OK, let me tackle this one without offending anyone. (Perhaps not possible.)
First of all, I expect that Canada has never been and will never be without citizens who are hungry for a large variety of reasons. When I hear Poilievre declaring that Canadians are hungry, he is stepping past that reality and creating a new reality which is declaring that hunger is prevalent. I understand his statement to have some fairly general application to a significant slice of the population. And I don’t think that case is made and I don’t think his declaration is honest.
I don’t disagree that food bank visits have ticked up. But I would argue that a food bank visit is a budget decision. Inflation has cut into disposable family income and so families must decide whether to ask for help from the food bank, or buy the kids new shoes, and we might understand and accept their decision to seek help with the food issue. There are a whole lot of other choices with which we might take issue – like tobacco products, alcohol, veterinary bills and food for a pet menagerie, going to cinema… I’m not about to ask food bank visitors to justify their budget decisions. I do think that food bank visits are an important metric that reveals inflation pressures on low income families. But I don’t think it’s a metric that shows, with some implied generality, that “Canadians are hungry, Mr Speaker.”
Two general comments. First, the political debate as to whether Canada is broken will focus on the things that matter to people on a day to day basis – the economy, inflation, health, housing, government services, immigration. Tough to feel bullish on Canada’s recent overall performance on these. Second, I think it’s the perceived trend that troubles people, not just the actual numbers at a particular time. Perhaps you are right when you say, “Be proud Canada – we’re not broken yet”, but are we getting there?
In your response to Gord White, you say that the “Trudeau government is burdened by nine years in office, which include the SNC Lavalin affair,
The WE charity scandal, the Phoenix pay system, the ArriveCan debacle, the disgraceful appointment of Julie Payette to the office of Governor General, and the horrendous failure to sustain our military capability. If Poilievre cannot defeat this government based on their record of inefficiencies and lack of oversight, he’s an idiot.” Agree completely. As an aside, add to the above list the fact that, according to a July 16, 2024 National Post article, “(T)he size of Canada’s public service has ballooned by 42 per cent since the 2015 election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while Canada’s population increased by around 14 per cent … Personnel spending rose steadily since the 2016-17 fiscal year, when payroll costs amounted to $40.2 billion. That’s a 68 per cent increase in payroll spending since the Trudeau Liberals came to power in 2015.”
Another similarity to the U.S. is that it looks like that in the next federal election voters are going to be holding their noses and be more voting against someone, rather than for someone. PP is an ideologue, but then so is Trudeau. As one of the other comments noted, there’s is no place for Red Tories any more. Am I going to have to vote for either the woke guy or the guy that supported the convoy? To quote Heart of Darkness, ”The horror!… The horror!”
P.S. I particularly liked “since Ronald Reagan’s presidency instituted the famous trickle-down economics in the US, the result of which was that wealth trickled steadily upwards”.
Thanks for your comments, Peter. That was very interesting data about the growth in the civil service versus growth in population since Trudeau came to power. And I agree with you about the difficulty of having to choose either Trudeau or Poilievre. It has occurred to me that, having entered into partisan politics, I should spend a column ripping the Trudeau government record apart. Maybe I’ll go there next.