‘Reality will continue to swamp the Liberal regime’: How FP columnists saw it in 2024

Read excerpts from columns that appeared in January, February and March 2024 in FP Comment

Published Dec 24, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  8 minute read

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives at a cabinet swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, on Friday, Dec.20, 2024. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

Read excerpts from columns that appeared in January, February and March 2024 in FP Comment. First instalment in a series.

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January

Reality will continue to swamp the Liberal regime through 2024 and beyond. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine bring new economic and political troubles, but they are overshadowed as causes of Canadian decline by deep and fundamental flaws in the Liberal ideological agenda. It is that agenda, based on a persistent belief in centralized government control to shape economic and social activity, that is systematically putting Canada’s economic future at risk. The 2023 year-end commentaries in media and elsewhere produced a catalogue of Ottawa’s interventionist policy blunders. While the Liberal planning regime is not up to Stalin’s disastrous five-year plans for the now deceased Soviet Union, the scale and scope of King Trudeau’s economic interventions are unprecedented for Canada in peacetime. — Terence Corcoran, Jan. 10

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How does a sector (Ontario university education) awash in public funds get in such bad financial shape? It is the same story as always. Massive government spending artificially inflates demand as students only pay a fraction of the cost. Then, with government money comes government control, including bureaucracy and overhead, operational interference, political decision-making and the further distortion of prices — in this case, a government-mandated tuition cut and freeze five years ago. This is an economic calamity, though a completely unsurprising one. — Matthew Lau, Jan. 17

Protestors are privatizing public spaces for their own use. Roads and overpasses are public thoroughfares. They belong to all of us. Groups and individuals don’t have a right to set up shop in the middle of them, deciding on all our behalves that the cause they want to draw attention to is more important than any inconvenience their appropriation of the public space imposes on the rest of us. To coin a phrase, who elected them? — William Watson, Jan. 18

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are arguing they are indispensable: only their re-election will save American democracy. It must be an awful responsibility, feeling yourself indispensable. But so many people do. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader for 25 years now, clearly believes he is. Xi Jinping, China’s president for life, does too: President Xi Thought has now been officially interwoven into China’s constitution. “Madison, Franklin and me, Xi,” the president must think: “constitution-writers all.” What’s wrong with us? Russians, Chinese and citizens of the world’s many other despotisms must wonder. “Why can’t we govern ourselves, the way Canadians, Americans and people in the world’s other democracies do? Why can’t we, not even after decades of the same person in charge, peacefully decide someone else should lead us?” — William Watson, Jan. 23

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Argentina’s Javier Milei seems to be running into what Milton Friedman called “the Iron Triangle,” a power triad of politicians, bureaucrats and beneficiaries (corporate and individual) who enjoy being part of the planned economy. Friedman called it The Tyranny of the Status Quo, a force so powerful that it stalled free-market reforms planned by U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s. But even Friedman, who said that new governments have 100 days after an election to bring major policy reforms forward, failed to lay out a political plan on how to break the Iron Triangle. — Terence Corcoran, Jan. 24

Though it’s strange to recall, immediately after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the hope was Justin Trudeau would be the “Trump Whisperer,” establishing Canada as an “indispensable nation,” to quote Maclean’s Scott Gilmore. Instead, we have reverted to our traditional sense of moral superiority over Americans and now parrot the global chorus condemning the direction of U.S. politics. We have a plan for dealing with Trump, the prime minister assures us. Good luck to us with that. — Philip Cross, Jan. 31

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&LTh2?February

The federal government’s handling of the grocery sector is an excellent illustration of why investment is fleeing. In 2022, it launched a series of show trials in which MPs interrogated grocery industry executives and slammed grocery companies for raising prices too high, paying workers too little and earning too much profit. In fact, net profit margins in the grocery business are in the low single digits and have been stable over time, but that was of no concern to the MPs, who were there for no reason other than to score political points by denouncing industry as rapacious. — Matthew Lau, Feb. 6

I have no reason to think the 5,677 people employed at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the 73 at the Canadian Dairy Commission and the 453 at the Canadian Grain Commission are anything but very nice people and very competent employees. But that only means all these people are very nicely and very competently causing central planning trouble that distorts the food market, creates inefficiencies in the food industry and imposes administrative and regulatory burdens on Canadians. Releasing the 6,000 to do useful and productive work of their own instead of obstructing markets would be a great economic benefit to all Canadians. — Matthew Lau, Feb. 13

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If I have a serious health problem, like a chest pain, who do I reach out to? A physician? A clinic? A hospital emergency department? Or do I take my chest pain to a consulting firm that has no medical expertise? It’s not a trick question: with your life on the line, you go to the best as quickly as possible. The most shameful aspect of “ArriveScam” was that lives were on the line. That was the entire reason for having the app. Although major software companies were already developing similar apps in the U.S. and elsewhere at far less cost our federal government turned to a two-person consultancy to orchestrate numerous third-party suppliers. OK, if the two people were named Musk and Bezos, maybe that would have made sense. But they weren’t. — Jack Mintz, Feb. 16

These days politicians everywhere are desperate to improve housing affordability. They may levy Vacant Property Taxes with the best of intentions but if, as seems likely, such taxes discourage long-run residential development, their effect will be the exact opposite of what their proponents intended. — Jack Mintz, Feb. 23

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March

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, dressed like a T-shirted pop star on a raised stage at the centre of the Toronto Congress Centre, told a few thousand boisterous fans that he intended to end the Trudeau government’s carbon tax set to increase April 1. No surprise to the crowd, since just about everybody held up a sign that carried the message printed on Poilievre’s T-shirt: “Axe the tax.” All very populist, as they say, but the Conservative approach to climate change policy needs something more than a rhyming slogan. If they can muster some courage, the Conservatives should take on the much bigger debate over climate change itself. How real a threat is it to Canada? And how plausible and attainable are the extreme net-zero carbon policies now being pursued by the Liberals? — Terence Corcoran, March 6

I’ve always seen Mulroney as being a little like Lyndon Johnson. Humble background. Compulsive ambition. Lifelong devotion to politics. Unprecedented electoral success, for Johnson in 1964 and Mulroney in 1984. Constant self-measuring against a glittering predecessor, John Kennedy in Johnson’s case, Pierre Trudeau in Mulroney’s. Commanding personal warmth and presence that transmitted poorly on television, in fact often gave the impression of insincerity on television. And, of course, an important and impressive list of accomplishments in a relatively short time: Johnson just five years, Mulroney nine. — William Watson, March 7

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No one knows exactly why investors are so turned off Canada but, with real per capita GDP essentially flat for eight years, our economy seems to be as stuck “as a painted ship upon a painted ocean” (to borrow Coleridge’s phrase from the Ancient Mariner). This week, however, an old guard of Canada’s business community says it knows what’s wrong: too much pension money is invested internationally. In a full-page newspaper ad, they pressed governments “to amend the rules governing pension funds to encourage them to invest in Canada.” This policy prescription is as smart as a bag of hammers. Canada will not improve its business environment by going back to an old form of capital controls. After years of debate, in 2005 we finally abolished foreign property rules for pension and RRSP funds. We abolished them for a simple reason: to enable employees to get better returns on their retirement assets by diversifying internationally. — Jack Mintz, March 8

For decades now, the Ottawa minuet has involved politicians seeming to listen to whatever questions the press ask, then completely ignoring these questions and repeating the talking points they had come to the presser to get into a clip — back and forth for as long as the cameras and cell phones are recording and the press are willing to keep asking. It’s a form of human interaction, yes, but what it’s most like is a conversation between people who don’t speak the same language — albeit with less use of the hands. Poilievre, by contrast, actually seems to listen to what’s being asked and responds in the way a regular human being would. What do you mean by that? Why do you say that? Can you defend your premise? If politicians ignore what’s asked, what’s asked doesn’t really matter. But if politicians actually listen to your questions and maybe even come back at you, you have to be better prepared. — William Watson, March 12

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If he does stay on, Justin Trudeau’s eventual legacy may be to have made us poorer than the poorest U.S. state — Mississippi at US$47,000. Continuing with the same anti-growth framework of the past nine years will eventually achieve that. — Jack Mintz, March 22

Lagging growth in Canada really is a national crisis. As incomes here fall further behind those in the U.S., the temptation rises for our most productive and ambitious people to emigrate. Michael Bliss, Canada’s leading historian of business, once warned that “the one sure prescription for the eventual failure of the Canadian experiment in nationality would be to create an ever-widening gap in standards of living between the two North American democracies.” Achieving sustained economic growth will require more business investment. Without it, expanding the supply of labour will only put more downward pressure on per capita incomes in Canada. — Philip Cross, March 25

Recommended from Editorial

1. 

   Jack Mintz: Canada can no longer afford a peace dividend

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   Philip Cross: Ottawa proves it again: Human is as stupid does

3. 

   Matthew Lau: It’s looking like our own Winter of Discontent

Compassion is good but ignoring Economics 101 is calamitous. Canada’s April 1 escalations in the minimum wage are foolish policy. — Matthew Lau, March 27

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