April 13, 2024
HERE'S MY TAKE
“Society is not a house or a hotel. It should be a home.” Those words from the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks were quoted by my colleague Brian Dijkema at a Cardus forum this week exploring the theme of “home” and what it means in the Canadian context. Canadians will grapple with a version of this question in the next federal election, whenever it happens.
Of course, housing and affordability are key issues, but we’ll also be dealing with home in the deeper sense of belonging and identity. We may well see an election campaign that is more about culture than about economics.
The concept of “home” seems to have been everywhere in Ottawa these days. Attending an adjacent conference also happening this week, I heard Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in person deliver his “bring it home” slogan. The structure of his 40-minute speech followed the familiar stump speech pattern: Problem—Solution—Emotional Call to Action.
Poilievre started with the expected partisan jabs to warm up the crowd. Thursday’s headlines about the prime minister admitting to not reading his briefing notes on foreign election interference provided plenty of fodder. It wasn’t long, though, before Poilievre presented the problem as he sees it: Trudeau’s policies on the environment, housing, spending, and crime. And he moved to his solution, framing it with his verbal bumper sticker: “Axe the Tax. Build the Homes. Fix the budget. Stop the crime.”
Mind you, Poilievre still outlined 20 or so policy measures to paint a more complete picture of potential Conservative priorities should the party form a government. He borrowed a lot of “common sense of ordinary Canadians” language, hearkening back to the Ontario governments under the leadership of Mike Harris in the 1990s which campaigned as “the common-sense revolution.”
Poilievre’s emotional call to action came with the description of a mythical family—this time a Saskatoon-based energy worker wife and home-building husband—at their dinner table after having walked us through their day which included children “skipping” to school because of the safety of their neighbourhood, reflecting on the relief of having “powerful paycheques,” and just enjoying being together. “Their home. Your home. My home. Let’s bring it home,” was the now familiar call to action. The sympathetic crowd dutifully rose for the standing ovation.
I’ve delivered a few political speeches and written several for others. Poilievre (and his speechwriters) are better at it than most. He delivered well, read the room, and connected with the crowd. Within the next 18 months, we will learn whether that is enough to make him prime minister. But then the challenge of making Canadians feel more comfortable in their own home begins.
The “home” metaphor brings to mind the contrast of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously beginning his premiership by telling the New York Times: “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada. There are shared values—openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what makes us the first post-national state.” Trudeau’s rhetoric prefers talking about individual “values” and celebrating our diversity, affirming his as “sunny ways” and often framing himself as an alternative to the outdated values he ascribes to his conservative opponents.
I am sure no Trudeau speechwriter will ever use a hotel metaphor to illustrate how welcoming and inclusive Canada is, but I wonder if implicitly it is more representative of how Canadians are coming to view the Trudeau pitch. Canada might have a fancy entrance and some exotic amenities that we weren’t used to where we came from.
It may have an ornate lounge where you can have interesting conversations with people you really don’t know well but, at least for tonight, you’ll be sleeping under the same roof as they are. But it isn’t home. As someone who travels extensively, there is something different about sleeping in your own bed even if the hotel’s furniture is much more expensive.
Jason Kenney, a former Alberta premier and Conservative federal minister, used a speech at Cardus this week to bring the political contest over concepts of home into sharp focus. He argued that Poilievre “is implicitly appealing to something much deeper” in his emphasis on home. “Home, of course, is a beautifully evocative word, an idea that stirs the deeper longings of the human heart for what T.S. Eliot called the permanent things, including family, belonging, security, community, a place of rootedness in an ever more chaotic and uprooted world.” In short, it’s the exact opposite of a post-national Canada united only by values, but little actual commonality.
In conversation with Kenney, we also learned something about “home” from Jean-Christophe Jasmin, an evangelical leader from Quebec, and Karen Restoule, an Ojibwe communications specialist from the Dokis First Nation. They insightfully navigated the story of Canada, each from a different cultural background, leading to quite different views on how the constitution, federalism, and the process of Indigenous reconciliation have unfolded.
None of the panelists incorporated a post-national state frame, but it was clear there was work to be done before they feel fully “at home” in Canada. On a subsequent Cardus panel, Joanna Baron, from the Canadian Constitution Foundation, noted that “détente” between competing conceptions of national identity and social flourishing is possible when times are good, However, it becomes much more difficult in challenging times.
Harrison Lowman, from The Hub, observed that while no one likes paying taxes, good times foster a sense of neighbourliness among fellow citizens, producing less grumpiness about paying money we believe is going to help neighbours. Absent that sense of neighbourliness, resentment against taxes intensifies since the money is just seen as going toward “others.” Howard Anglin, a senior Canadian political strategist and now Oxford scholar, cautioned those crafting housing policy to return to first principles. “We need to build neighborhoods, not just homes and definitely not just atomized units,” he said.
Figuring out how to create that sense of family or neighbourliness where we are comfortable in the same home is difficult. What is a government’s role in this? Poilievre quipped that while the first Prime Minister Trudeau made famous the line “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation,” the current government led by the second Trudeau wants “to be in every room of your house and your business and your wallet and your bank account and your internet account.” Essentially, he’s arguing that feeling “at home” is impossible when there’s an unwelcome guest in every room of your house.
There is little doubt that there is power in “home” as a political slogan and it has multiple layers of policy implications. It sparks debates about the size and role of government; identity politics; our shared story as a nation; and the very practical issues of affording a roof over our heads and a bed to sleep in. It raises questions of belonging and family that go back to Cain’s question to God after killing his brother Abel, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” After all, who is my brother? How do we live together in peace and harmony? Who cooks dinner and who cleans the toilets?
I didn’t expect to leave this week with definite answers regarding the power of the home metaphor and whether the next Canadian election will be defined by competing visions of “Canada as home.” I do get the sense, however, that there is something more salient and compelling about a multi-institutional sense of home—one that provides place for the functioning of other aspects of life that include family, faith, and neighbour. The togetherness of home has a greater appeal than the proximity of hotel accommodations in which there is stock art instead of family photos.
It may very well be that the trajectory of current polls continues based entirely on Canadians’ assessment of the current prime minister. As the previous elections remind us, there are times the electorate is just determined to “throw the bums out” and it is usually personified by the leader whose surname effectively becomes a dirty word. But it is also possible that a comparison of leaders and vision will determine the next election. If that is the case, the home versus hotel contrast may have more relevance and impact that polls are unlikely to fully capture.
WHAT I’M READING
This Old House
Spending on official residences is a political hot potato for everyone. The embarrassing Canadian result is that we have an official residence for the prime minister that is now abandoned and rat-infested. Decades-long neglect has brought us to this point and the current prime minister has avoided the issue. It was encouraging to read about former prime ministers Chretien and Harper, of different political stripes, teaming up in hopes of resolving the matter outside of politics or even public dollars. Stories of this sort seem rare and should be celebrated when they do appear.
Gender and Remote Work
This Economist piece reports that men have about 10% more opportunity to work remotely than women do. Although aware of the different occupational tendencies of men and women, I hadn’t previously considered the extent to which the tech and engineering jobs (skewing toward male workers) are inherently more adaptable to remote work than the “caring professions” of medicine and professional services (skewing toward female workers) which tend to require more personalised engagement.
Org. Charts and Government Efficiency
Neither organisational charts nor government are usually identified with efficiency but as Andrew Evans and Sean Speer convincingly write this week, government “needs a more institutional and systematic capacity to carry out policy development and implementation on key initiatives. It doesn’t need an internal think tank. It requires a ‘do-tank’ that’s capable of in-house policy ideation, development, and coordination.”
The Politics of Classical Education
It’s already a few months old but I came across this exchange regarding classical education this week. A professor writes a book on classical schools. The New York Times reviews it, accurately according to the author, but nonetheless critically based on the professor’s “presumed political beliefs.” It turns out that framing the motives for classical education as “one part of the culture wars that have riven American education” focused on “dismant(ling) the public school system and teachers’ unions” may not be entirely fair or balanced.
NPR Losing its Way
Uri Berliner, a 25-year senior editor at National Public Radio, suggests the ethos of NPR has changed and is now focused on “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” Combining data and observation, Berliner traces the shift both from an outsider’s and insider’s perspective on making diversity in race and identity “the overriding mission” of NPR.
MEANINGFUL METRICS
Spending Isn't Always Investment
Last week I opined about Canada’s productivity challenges which prompted several Insights readers to provide feedback about what they saw in their own sectors. Tuesday’s Ottawa playbook from Politico contained an interview with economist Carolyn Wilkins that offered various worthwhile perspectives. She cited the data shown in this graph, namely that Canadians invest “as much in renovations and ownership transfer costs in housing as we do in machinery and equipment and IP.” It was the first time I had heard that data point and the chart shows this has been trending in the wrong direction for almost two decades now, suggesting it isn’t a particularly partisan problem, but rather a broader cultural one.
TAKE IT TO-GO
Going for Green
Even those of us who follow golf casually know about the Green Jacket and the annual Masters Golf tournament held in Augusta, Georgia. The 2024 edition is this weekend and one of the 89 competitors who do golf for a living will be feted as a major champion. But there is a hole in one part of that story. Stewart Hagestad may have qualified but he has a day job as a merchant banker chasing a different sort of green.
I have a handicap in telling you more about the story since I don’t really follow golf closely. However, after a birdie mentioned his uniqueness to me, my eagle eyes caught a Wall Street Journal article telling his story. It sounds like he is acing it in the boardroom as he is on the course and it seems he’s managed to stay out of the rough. His golfing game is on par with the pros – he is the current U.S. Mid-Amateur champ and prior to this week, he had competed in six major tournaments.
I’ve now told you everything I know about Stewart and I want to avoid driving this paragraph into a trap. If Stewart wins, there will be a bunch of gimme headlines and we will all get to know lots more about him, no ifs, ands, or putts. In the more likely scenario, his name will be in the box score but not the headlines. At least now you know the rest of the story. Meanwhile, we’re on par to deliver another Insights to your inbox again next Saturday morning, teeing off once more with another round of observations regarding the news of the week that was.
'Til then.