April 20, 2024
HERE'S MY TAKE
Looking beyond the headlines reveals a worrying bit of political messaging from this week’s federal budget announcement. It’s not that the headlines don’t matter. It’s just that Tuesday’s federal budget release was a bit anticlimactic. For the past few weeks almost every day has included announcements of new budget initiatives, delivered in a format and at a pace that resembled an election campaign.
The Globe and Mail captured things well with its article, Price Tag Reveal. Minister Freeland’s budget day performance was simply the government taking the grocery cart through the checkout line. The only drama left for the customer was how much all the extras would cost. As Andrew Coyne points out, the numbers cited in a budget document shift over time. So, while officially the deficit comes in at just under $40 billion, the inaccuracy of recent projections legitimately makes us skeptical.
Compared with the fanfare of the weeks that preceded it, the government’s budget day messaging was also decidedly low-key. The title “Budget 2024: Fairness for Every Generation” was delivered with budget day headlines about various tax measures generating $21.9 billion over the next five years, coming primarily from corporate fat cats and the ultra-rich. The ordinary folk get a renters’ bill of rights, $15 billion in loan guarantees to kickstart the construction of apartments which presumably help provide affordable housing, as well as a smorgasbord of daycare, drug care, and school lunch support.
This seemingly transparent communications strategy reveals a strategic choice on the part of the government. Pundits seem to agree generally that the Liberals are using Budget 2024 to shift from defence to offence in communications. The past 18 months have seen the Conservatives set the agenda, building a narrative that “Canada feels broken and the federal government is to blame.” They argue that part of the solution is “axing the tax” (code for making life more affordable by eliminating the carbon tax) and “fixing the budget" (the federal government is to blame). The government seemed content for a few years to dismiss this as “misinformation” and that things weren’t really as bad as the opposition leader was suggesting.
This budget, however, marks a transition. Now the government concedes that times are tough, but it is responding with a “we hear you and have your back” message. This approach gained the government comparatively high marks during COVID. The Liberals are anticipating objections by the business community and Conservative opposition. In fact, they’re goading them to “take the bait” and allow the Liberals to try to regain a position as the real “champions of the middle class and those working hard to join it,” against self-interested corporations who are not willing to pay their “fair share.”
My guess is that the Liberal comms team viewed it as a victory when every opposition party came out critical of the spending plan on budget day. The Liberals probably hope they can pin a question on the opposition around what part of the budget they’d cut and how they’d replace it, which the Liberals can repeat constantly until the next election.
Pinning the opposition on the budget may not be as easy as it sounds, though. On Friday, a Toronto Star count of the groups opposing the budget suggests that the government faces significant obstacles in selling its message. It couldn’t have helped to see a CBC headline declare, “Bill Morneau slams Freeland’s budget as a threat to investment, economic growth.”
But here is where we need to look beyond the headlines. There is a portion of the electorate that doesn’t follow politics carefully, and are quite unlikely to be reading newsletters like this one, but who still might be persuaded to come out to vote. In the last election, eight of ten voters indicated they voted out of duty first. Close to 10% indicate that they do not follow politics.
Prime Minister Trudeau was first elected in 2015 with a voter turnout of 68.3%, a high crest for recent elections. Contrast that with the recent low turnout of 58.8 percent in the 2008 election. The Liberal strategy for re-election will most likely focus on that subset of sometime-voters who don’t read political headlines regularly.
So, the Liberals are proposing a narrative to that group of voters along these lines:
Budget 2024 is an attempt to change the narrative and reframe the ballot question for an election that I think will likely occur in late spring 2025. The message seems pretty clear. Success won’t be evident in the immediate polls, but rather in whether the budget conditions the environment for some new pitch (probably non-economic) appealing to the disengaged younger voter.
For it to work, it will need to be followed up with messaging that highlights generational injustice and positions the Trudeau government as the defender of the young. Corporations, parents, and other institutions associated with the past become the bad guys while the government wears a superman cape and comes to the rescue.
The budget signals a significant story beyond the headlines. I see a message that is not worth celebrating. Stoking intergenerational divides is unhealthy. However, it would be naive not to pay attention to the powerful energy that resentment can generate. Cynicism and hopelessness do have their own political consequences.
If this week’s messaging is an accurate foreshadowing of what is to come, the “sunny ways” party will fight for re-election on a “dark days” message, positioning itself as the only one that can be counted on to have the backs of young Canadians.
WHAT I’M READING
In-Depth with Trudeau
“Trudeau’s problem, I’ve found, has not been his bluntness. It’s his bunker mentality. Most Canadians no longer believe he’s following through on the solutions he’s stumping for.” That blunt assessment comes from Justin Ling, writing in The Walrus. Based on an exclusive hour-long interview with the prime minister, Ling’s essay includes many reflections on how both the Trudeau government and politics in general have evolved over the past decade. Ling is an interesting journalist who leans left but is more willing than most to go where the evidence takes him. For those who prefer podcast format, Paul Wells' interview with Justin Ling (which contains substantial clips of the original Trudeau interview) is worth a listen.
Americans Debate Canada
Bill Maher, an on-the-record Obama supporter whose politics probably are best described as left-libertarian, spent 10 minutes on his HBO show citing Canada as a case study on “extreme wokeness” that Americans should avoid. Podcaster Tyler Cowen, an economics professor who might be a bit more conservative on economic issues, used his Bloomberg column to talk about Canada. He suggests that Canadians are being too hard on themselves and things north of the 49th parallel are not as bad as others are making them out to be. While an outside perspective sometimes provides clarity, it would appear that Canada’s image abroad can be as confusing from the outside as it is from the inside.
Right-Wing Progressives
In response to last week’s essay on whether Canada more resembles a home or hotel, one reader forwarded a link to a January essay entitled "The Rise of the Right-Wing Progressives." It provides an innovative take on old debates about what exactly are the first principles to which conservatives are appealing when they evoke “home images” as Pierre Poilievre is doing.
Where to Look for Health Care Reform
Josh Dehaas writes about the need for Canada to look to Norway as a healthcare reform model, rather than having the debate continually derailed by “the American-style boogeyman.” It reminded me of the just-published book by former Health Minister Jane Philpott, Health for All: A Doctor's Prescription for a Healthier Canada, that I picked up and mostly read this week. Philpott is refreshingly candid in discussing the things she did not do but wishes she had as health minister (which includes restructuring the way family doctors function and ensuring there are enough of them, since they are the “gateway” to the system without which the other parts cannot operate efficiently). She also is quite open about holistic medicine and the importance of making room for spiritual considerations and discussions of religion, not just as a nice thing to have, but as having negative consequences when we don’t have them.
MEANINGFUL METRICS
EdChoice released some very interesting polling this week on the perspectives and experiences of teenagers in the United States (ages 13-18). EdChoice’s data are a fascinating insight into the minds of American teenagers. Note teens’ relative conservatism on social media access below.
Parents know that it seems you blink and your teens have become young adults or even young professionals. So, this is a timely reminder of the upcoming deadline for applications to our NextGEN program. This is a unique opportunity for young Christians aged 25-34 to create a network that will last a lifetime, and to benefit from expenses-paid travel across Canada.
You can apply here or nominate a Fellow here. Please mind the deadline for the next round of applications.
TAKE IT TO-GO
An Optical Spectacle
You didn’t really need to be far-sighted to anticipate the sudden supply of gently used solar eclipse glasses now on the resale market. Recycling is “in,” although in my own immigrant upbringing where every penny counted, it never really was "out". As best I can remember, apart from the new bike I got for my tenth birthday, my entire youth was a recycling ride. When computers replaced bikes as the necessity of the moment, I looked for used computers that were in im-MAC-ulate condition.
(OK, I’ll admit that’s one I’m trying to RAM into this narrative, since in the past I’ve accessed my computer software typically through gates and windows, not apples.)
Back to the glasses market, I would point out that getting rid of your solar glasses might be short-sighted and blind to a market opportunity. There may be a significant demand for eclipse glasses in Spain on August 12, 2026. But you come here for a lens on current events, not market advice. Ray’s pennings (hat tip to a colleague for this one) will be back with some first-hand commentary, supplemented by second-hand puns in your inbox next Saturday morning.
'Til then.