Pierre Poilievre — take note of Liz Truss’s ensnarement: How FP columnists saw it in 2024

Read excerpts from columns that appeared in July, August and September 2024 in FP Comment. This in the third instalment in a series

Published Dec 27, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  8 minute read

Pierre Poilievre is the leader of the federal Conservative party. Photo by David Kawai /Bloomberg

Read excerpts from columns that appeared in July, August and September 2024 in FP Comment. Third in a series.

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July

During their debate Joe Biden and Donald Trump engaged in silly finger-wagging about who had expanded the deficit most. But neither had any sort of plan to deal with mounting deficits and mountainous debt. Consolidated government gross debt has reached 123 per cent of U.S. GDP, heading for 134 per cent in 2030. With rising interest rates, Democrats’ devotion to more spending and Republicans’ to tax cuts means the debt can only rise, and with it the likelihood of financial stress. That incumbent governments are floundering should surprise no one. This week it’s happening in the U.K. and France. This fall and next year it may happen in the U.S. and Canada. You mess up economically and voters punish you. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: “It’s almost always the economy, stupid.” — Jack Mintz, July 5

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Taxpayers need to question whether every new government intervention in the economy generates net benefits to society. Too often what Oscar Wilde once remarked seems to be true: “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.” With so many bureaucrats milling about, decisions slow down as files are passed from one to another. Accountability is lost. Departments point fingers at each other, as we have seen in the ArrriveCan debacle. New programs are hatched and more employees hired whether they are needed or not. With work-from-home, less gets done as unsupervised employees walk the dog or do the shopping. — Jack Mintz, July 9

Where is Ottawa’s climate commissar Stephen Guilbeault on cheap Chinese EVs? You’d think Minister World-on-Fire would be delighted to see even conservative enviro-skeptics such as myself being tempted by an attractive but cheap and apparently safe and efficient EV like China’s Seagull. At last, an EV that ordinary middle-class Canadians, not just preening upper-middle class ones, could actually afford. What better way to effect the transition to EVs — deadline less than 11 years from now, remember — than with market incentives? — William Watson, July 11

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Conservative Partly leader Pierre Poilievre recently said that if elected he would appoint a task force to examine tax reform. He said the panel would be composed of “entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers and workers” and would be given the mandate of simplifying and lowering taxes. It is notable that Poilievre would avoid a task force of experts or a Royal Commission, such as the 1966 report headed by Kenneth Carter, to examine the tax system. Taxation is too important to be based on a John Rawlsian thought-experiment as to what an ideal tax regime would look like. Poilievre has the political savvy and grasp of history to avoid asking the opinions of academics and economists, who inevitably would recommend shifting from income to consumption taxes, such as the GST or carbon taxes. Tax reform has to be based on changes Canadians are willing to tolerate, given that millions of households and firms have made long-term plans about their work and investments shaped by expectations of the taxes they will be compelled to pay. — Philip Cross, July 12

The Mike Harris Conservatives’ failure to tackle the LCBO privatization deserves a capital ‘F’ for failure. Not only did it allow a consumer-gouging monopoly to survive as a cash machine for government, preventing the benefits of competition and market freedom. It also helped establish a state corporate control model that to this day influences policy making. One can only imagine how the continuing debate over the provision of other government services such as health care would have evolved if only the Harris “revolutionaries” had been willing to force the conversion of the LCBO into another competitor in a free-market-driven wholesale and retail sector. — Terence Corcoran, July 13

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In his first remarks as British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer said his government would “tread more lightly” on people’s lives. That does seem unlikely, coming from the head of the traditionally interventionist Labour Party, but it is badly needed now. What inflames people more than anything is the idea that others intend to outlaw their accustomed way of living, speaking or even thinking. The less we try do by force with law and the more we let social change take place organically and spontaneously, the less angry with each other we all are likely to be. — William Watson, July 16

How refreshing it is in this era of the New Protectionist/Interventionist State to read a full-throated defence of the grand, old liberal ideas of open markets, free competition, private ownership and level playing-fields. True, it’s a little surprising that this defence comes from the Chinese Communist Party in the form of its 28-page statement responding to the World Trade Organization’s 173-page triennial review of China’s economic policies and practices. But in these days of worldwide cancellation of “Adam Smith Thought” you take whatever support is offered wherever by whomever. It’s good that at least one of the world’s major governments still seems to know the words to the great old hymns. — William Watson, July 25

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A government that is diverted away from its basic functions by engaging in the nationalization of daycare, dental care, pharmacare and the automobile sector, and undertaking all sorts of other preposterous activities, like forcing all major grocery chains to sign a Grocery Code of Conduct, will neglect the basic functions of national defence and crime prevention. It is therefore not surprising that in Canada today, the military is a shambles and violent crime is rising alarmingly. — Matthew Lau, July 31

August

Our tax system is pockmarked with so many preferences that the elimination of many tax credits could result in a substantial reduction of tax rates. Given our falling per capita GDP and lacklustre investment, tax reform could spur economic growth without affecting revenues or redistribution. With more revenues pouring in, maybe beleaguered taxpayers would benefit from tax reductions of the sort we saw two decades ago. — Jack Mintz, Aug. 16

Liz Truss’ account of her experience as prime minister should be required reading for Poilievre’s inner circle as they make plans to take power in Canada. They will face resistance to their agenda from a left-leaning civil service, special interest groups and the mainstream media. The speed at which major reforms are implemented should be carefully calibrated; former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, for example, knew she would need to win a second mandate before taking on Britain’s powerful trade unions, and so devoted her first term to fiscal reform and confronting the Soviet Union. Managed properly, however, and supported by a united caucus, a Poilievre government should be able to avoid the crisis that ensnared Liz Truss. — Philip Cross, Aug. 20

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Genuinely agreeing to disagree on important matters means exercising legislative and regulatory forbearance. There are things you keep discussing but decline to legislate on. And you certainly don’t ram things through 51-49. There are other things you leave to local legislatures — which is where in the U.S., after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the law of abortion is now written. As a general matter, you refrain from using the nuclear option of absolutist “rights talk.” If people insist their favoured policy involves “a basic human right,” where does that leave democratic compromise? Who can compromise on “rights,” after all? They’re rights! We need to accept, grudgingly if necessary, that grudging acceptance is the democratic way. — William Watson, Aug. 22

In addressing productivity, we don’t need a productivity minister, department, consultants or policy analysts. More than likely all their person-hours wouldn’t add to output, they might even subtract from it. What we do need is for everyone working in an organization to ask: “Is this person or activity really necessary to what we’re trying to do here?” And when the answer is no, act on it. — William Watson, Aug. 29

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China’s growth spurt after 1978 increasingly looks like similar episodes for the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1950s, Japan in the 1950s and 1960s and Brazil in the 1970s. Each was hailed at the time as having discovered a new elixir for economic growth. Instead, after an upswing based on adopting western technology and shifting resources from farms to industry, growth petered out, revealing these models as incapable of sustaining long-term expansion. China’s faltering economic prospects mean that refocusing our trade on the U.S., not China, will be to Canada’s advantage.
— Philip Cross, Aug. 30

September

When you have two cabinet ministers giving an average of $300,000 in taxpayer funding to 17 different organizations so they can be part of an “ecosystem” to organize awareness-raising, more-cohesive networks and still more ecosystems based on sexual orientation, this is not an entrepreneurship policy. It is a policy to give away $5.2 million of taxpayers’ money to bureaucrats, activists, consultants, and lobbyists who specialize in writing, reviewing, and approving grants for public funds, and then spending those funds on things that will sound marketable in a government announcement. — Matthew Lau: Sept. 4

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In 2021, Statcan asked “Has the COVID-19 pandemic changed commuting patterns for good?” The answer is clearly yes: it has reinforced our aversion to public transit. Which means the billions of dollars governments are pouring into mass transit, bike lanes and foot paths risk becoming stranded assets. — Philip Cross, Sept. 5

Kamala Harris doesn’t say much about her Canadian years, but it’s hard to believe her time here did not have some impact on her “values.” To an almost eerie degree, the Harris campaign echoes Justin Trudeau’s winning 2015 campaign. Trudeau favoured “sunny ways,” referring back to Wilfred Laurier’s quip that “the sun’s warm rays are better than winter’s bluster.” Harris is pushing “joy.” As both Trudeau and Harris talk a lot about fighting for the middle class it’s not surprising their policy prescriptions are uncannily similar. — Jack Mintz, Sept. 13

Making it to the NHL requires significant athletic skill and investments in time; similarly, opening and successfully running a business requires operational ability and investments of capital (which can be borrowed or raised by aspiring entrepreneurs who have ability but lack financing). People should no more receive taxpayer handouts because they dream of owning a business than receive taxpayer handouts to pursue their dream of making the NHL. That people have dreams is not a reason for the federal government to give them other people’s money. — Matthew Lau, Sept. 18

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According to the Toronto District School Board website, at the ALPHA Alternative School “social/emotional learning, democratic decision-making, and social justice are foundations of our program,” and “students have considerable freedom to choose what, how and when they learn. We give individual feedback instead of grades or tests.” So this is a school where instead of taking tests, students learn about “social justice” by going on field trips to protest Israel. Is any real education taking place here, or just indoctrination? — Matthew Lau, Sept. 29

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