Craving Certainty

Click the “Listen Now” button below to hear the audio version of Insights.

HERE'S MY TAKE

No one really knows what 2025 will bring, but we do have some reasonable hints. Of the many predictions I read over the holidays, The Economist’s prognosis that “the interplay between Donald Trump, technology, and radical uncertainty” as “the three forces that will shape 2025” seemed the most helpful.

The Donald Trump factor seems obvious. If nothing else, the disruptive nature of the Trump presidency guarantees almost daily headlines. But while the day-to-day headlines on the machinations of politics are consequential, the effect of Mr. Trump is as much about what brought him to office and what he represents than what he will do in 2025.

Our current politics — which is true on either side of the Canada-U.S. border, despite different styles of expression — is shaped by the failure of our institutions. Donald Trump did not create dysfunction in our political system as much as he gave voice to the existing disconnect that few were recognizing. The Humpty Dumpty of our social order was teetering well before Mr. Trump arrived. His arrival on the political scene in 2015 amounted to pushing the “liberal democratic status quo” — for lack of a better label — off of the wall. With his re-election, it is now certain that there is no putting Humpty back together again. U.S. President Trump in 2025 represents a replacement of the liberal democratic assumptions that had dominated American politics for decades with something else.

Canada’s political realignment story is similar, but with at least one important difference: a much smaller economy, which means we’re rarely in the driver’s seat of world affairs. With a population of 1/10th the U.S. and an economic reality that sees each of the ten Canadian provinces rank below every U.S. state in median earnings per worker, Canada doesn’t have the economic heft to make a global impact. But Mr. Trump’s taunts about our being a 51st state notwithstanding, economics doesn’t tell the whole story. Canadian spirit and identity matter, not to mention our country’s rich reserves of natural resources and minerals that have global strategic significance. These things ensure that Canada isn’t just something to be negotiated away, regardless of Kevin O’Leary’s dreams.

While Canada and the United States will each face their challenges with their own national nuances in 2025, there are some uncanny similarities to our circumstances. Looking back at the past decade, we can see that Mr. Trump got where he is in part by replacing the historic Republican Party with a marketing machine focused on his own persona. Mr. Trudeau succeeded by doing something similar with the Liberal Party of Canada, as Professor Lori Turnbull observed in her insightful Policy Magazine essay this week. Most have forgotten — or never really considered significant — Mr. Trudeau’s 2013 decision to kick the Liberal Senators out of the caucus. Prof. Turnbull argues that Mr. Trudeau’s re-shaping of the Liberal Party — of which the expulsion of senators was just one part — remains politically consequential today. When our institutions are stripped of their effectiveness and connection to history, we end up venturing into stormy waters unmoored from our past.

The Economist correctly notes the significance of Mr. Trump as a defining theme for 2025 because of what he represents — a break from the past. Insofar as the institutions of liberal democracy weren’t working, that can be welcomed. But the challenge is to replace what is broken with something that is better. I have yet to be convinced that the “deal-making” model of government, which is measured by short-term scoring and “winning,” is the long-term recipe for social prosperity.

Technology is the second major theme The Economist identified, but is also something different than meets the eye. They point to the possibilities for AI to change everything “from health care to warfare,” pointing with some hope to Elon Musk helping adopt cutting-edge technologies. I don’t doubt the significance of the potential changes, but I wonder if this focus is blinding us to perhaps the even greater impacts of technology. Perhaps we should learn from the lessons of our own lifetimes. I certainly did not anticipate when I got my first smartphone, now close to two decades ago, how that invention would change life. I now use the iPhone 11 and it can do a lot more than the original version I bought. But the changes between the generations of iPhone technology are marginal compared to the influence of technology on human generations. We can’t escape it, but thinking about how technology changes us matters much more than figuring out what exactly technology can do for us. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation rightly raised concerns about how technology is interfering with our neurology as well as our childhood development, with effects measured by social isolation, depression, and anxiety rates as much as by bits and bytes.

“Radical uncertainty” is the third feature that shows up in The Economist’s take on 2025. Certainly, the interplay between politics and technology will contribute to that uncertainty. Even more significant, however, are the cultural and demographic challenges we face. There was some fuss this week about David Coletto’s Abacus Data report that the traditional left-right political spectrum no longer explains voter behaviour. Coletto mapped economic and cultural values to identify five distinct groups. I will get back to this in future as Abacus’s data overlaps with some of the findings of the Spectrum of Spirituality and cultural values data that Cardus has been working on in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute. The details are too nuanced to get into here except to observe that all of these studies point to our present moment as one of cultural shift and upheaval, along with political or economic changes.

So, the interaction of “Trump, technology, and uncertainty” is how The Economist chose to frame the challenges we are likely to face in 2025. They aren’t wrong although I would add a different nuance to these issues. The trends we are dealing with today have been decades in the making and, to a significant extent, we have avoided facing the difficult questions they raise because we lived off of the economic, political, and cultural capital of the generations that preceded us. Most of that capital has now been exhausted.

2025 will force us to face difficult questions most would rather avoid. We will have to make choices in which no alternative seems overly appealing. I expect we will find ourselves looking for virtue, prudence, and hope more than government, technology, and optimism (which is how I would retitle The Economist’s triad). Not that either framing provides immediate clarity on the events and the decisions we need to face, but then again, for that we need something more than forecasts.

For confessing Christians, that “something more” is the broader framework of hope and confidence that the world exists for a God-glorifying purpose which He will accomplish, even as we struggle to understand how current events contribute to that achievement. Living with faith, hope, and love provides a means to cope with that uncertainty, but it does not eliminate it.

WHAT I’M READING

Tariff Threats

The U.S. presidential inauguration is just over two weeks away, which means we could be very close to seeing President Trump make good on this threat to implement a 25% tariff on Canadian goods imported to the U.S. The Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations — whose membership includes prominent former business and political leaders — described the challenge as “the most serious threat to (Canada’s) sovereignty and economic prosperity since the Second World War” and urged the implementation of a strategy “to put Canada’s interests first.” Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has emerged as the most prominent Canadian voice in U.S. media, although the federal political uncertainty in Canada leaves a vacuum in which various voices are seeking “to speak for Canada.”

But We Do Need People

Much of the debate regarding appropriate immigration levels skips a foundational underlying issue. Canada’s fertility rate of 1.26 children per woman is among the world’s lowest, creating a demand for immigrants to meet workforce needs. The Globe and Mail editorial board wrote on Thursday about the issues surrounding fertility. They set the table by citing the good work done by Cardus colleagues regarding why Canadian women are not having as many babies as they desire.

Atheists Finding God

This Peter Savodnik essay provides insight into the recent trend of high-profile atheists, known for showing contempt for religion, changing their stance to show appreciation for religion and, in some cases, converting to Christianity. Given the article’s attention to detail and the subtleties it highlights, I couldn’t very well provide a pithy summary here. But I would heartily recommend reading it.

The Paradox of Faith

MEANINGFUL METRICS

For Whom the Polls Toll

This week’s Angus Reid poll regarding Canadians' federal political support is in line with all of the recent major polls showing Liberal support sinking to record lows. Depending on how the vote splits work, 16% Liberal support can translate into the loss of almost every Liberal seat. The potential scenario brings to mind the 1993 election in which the Progressive Conservative Party was reduced to two seats following two majority governments under Brian Mulroney. What is significant in this poll is that the Liberals are trailing the NDP. It would appear that those who voted Liberal in 2021 are now leaning in approximately equal numbers towards the NDP and the Conservatives. Notably, 10% of voters who supported the NDP in 2021 are also now leaning Conservative. It would appear that even if the NDP retained a similar number of seats after the next election, there’s likely to be some significant turnover as more rural NDP-held seats go Conservative while Liberal-held urban seats go New Democrat. The likelihood of individual NDP members losing their own seats (possibly ending their political career ambitions) is a factor in how NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh holds his caucus together. It also provides context for the news that some NDP caucus members might not follow Mr. Singh’s lead in voting non-confidence in the Liberal government at the earliest opportunity.

TAKE IT TO-GO

Go Take a Bike

The increase in crime has most of us wishing the thieves would just go and take a hike, but over the holidays, it was a bike that was at the centre of a Hamilton crime story. The police report indicates that a would-be bank robber biked to a Hamilton bank branch, passing a note demanding cash and threatening the teller. After other bank employees confronted the suspect, he ran out only to discover that his bike had been stolen. Both suspects remain on the loose.

One of my social media friends who also enjoys puns encouraged me to “take this to the bank” for Insights use, “as long as there are no re-cycled puns.” Another social media friend responded that this might even result in social good, suggesting that Pennings’ pen-nings might contribute to the thieves being penned. So I figured I would just roll with it, being two-tired from the vacation to come up with anything more original. Ideally, when the thieves are caught, they’ll be brought to the courthouse on a bicycle built for two, but short of that, you can count on me trying to pedal a different theme for next week’s takeaway.

Have a good week and see you next Saturday.