When I was elected in October of 2015, one of the key messages from our campaign was that the Liberals would be working for the “middle class, and those working hard to join it”. It is a message that did not resonate in objectively poor areas like my home riding, and one I was reluctant to use. We compounded the problem with tone-deaf urban messages that meant nothing in rural Canada.
We lowered “middle class” taxes, slightly reduced the time needed to work to get EI benefits when working in seasonal industries, and implemented the Canada Child Benefit providing income-tested funds to assist young parents, all of which were well-intentioned and some of which made a real difference to many people.
We then advertised it with messages like “Through our Canada Child Benefit, a typical family of four, earning $90,000, will get a tax-free payment of $490 every month.” The key takeaway for rural communities was that the government thought a typical family of four earned $90,000. In the county of Antoine-Labelle, which represented the geographic bulk of my electoral district, the average pre-tax family income was $50,361 that year, barely over half of what the government claimed a “typical family” was making, and at that it was an average, meaning a significant portion of the population made considerably less than that.
Worse, the middle class tax cut only kicked in at individual income levels over $44,700, which benefited very few people in rural Canada. Far from presenting a vision for how to give rural residents a path to equity with their urban counterparts, it suggested that “middle class” was simply a euphemism for “urban Canadians” and meant our message would be more accurately about benefitting “the middle class and those working hard to move there.” There wasn’t much progress for me to sell to my community.
In 2016, shortly after my election, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders offered competing visions for the future of the United States. Clinton offered the status quo. Sanders offered reform. Will to stay the course and fear of rocking the boat handed the primary to Clinton, creating an election where the ballot question for American voters was simple: status quo or reform?
Trump offered reform. What he wanted to change didn’t matter; change was needed and he was going to deliver that. Had Sanders been nominated, the ballot question would have put change in the preamble and asked American voters what change they wanted. But Clinton doubled down on the status quo with the phenomenal non-entity of Tim Kaine as her running mate.
It isn’t to say that Sanders would necessarily have won, but it would have shown that Democrats at least understood the question. Eight years later, Biden’s underwhelming performance in office and in this year’s election campaign showed that the Democrat establishment had not learned a lot from that experience, requiring the near-death experience of the presidential debate to finally try something new. Harris’s last-minute ascension to Democratic candidate so far is looking positive, but it remains to be seen if she addresses the angst at the core of support for the American right once the present honeymoon wears off, and delivers the genuine reform needed.
Biden and before him Obama were lauded for the ever-increasing value of the stock market and how it is a demonstration of the strength of the economy. We hear how 58% of Americans now had some exposure in the market in 2022. That the median value of stocks directly held by Americans is about $14,000 per family, which isn’t enough to buy a used car, is ignored; the apparent success of the market is pyrrhic and does not directly benefit the average person.
Back in Canada, Trudeau has done a pretty good job of maintaining the status quo, and implementing some modest changes that help some segments of society that needed it. He portrays himself as a transformative rather than transactional Prime Minister, but Canada is not overwhelmingly different from when he took office nine years ago, and is suffering severely from wider global trends on inflation and housing that have off-set improvements like the child benefit. Much of what he hoped to change has been stymied by right-wing provincial governments taking federal money and misallocating it, and the transformative changes like dental care and child care are coming as end-of-mandate legacy agenda items, rather than profound social changes. Even simple, low-hanging fruit that would make a real difference to the people like eliminating the obligation to file individual tax returns when the CRA already has the bulk of the information isn’t being meaningfully considered.
Hanging on in the hope and expectation that Canadians will re-elect him because he flattened the feudalist trend of Conservative policy is not showing a profound understanding of electors’ tone. His motives are largely pure, genuinely wanting to improve Canada, but he hasn’t convinced Canadians that he is going to succeed at the significant work needed to restore the respect and role of the federal government in Canadian society, especially outside core urban centres.
Worse, by not understanding the electorate, objectively good policy like the recent announcement to increase taxes on capital gains are misunderstood by a public who for the most part will never even encounter a capital gain large enough to be impacted. Very few Canadians will pay another cent with that change; those that will won’t be hurt by the modest additional contributions to society from their non-earned income. Yet the public is buying opposition messaging about it being another tax grab. The Liberals, once again, believed good policy would sell itself, rather than reading the mood of Canadians.
If the left and centre-left want to reclaim elections from the increasingly radical ideas proposed and implemented by the right, it is time to propose — and implement — real, significant, popular social reforms that can overwhelm provincial opposition in the court of public opinion. All the social programs in the west aren’t acquired rights; they were brought in by strong, visionary leaders like FDR who had the courage of their convictions and brought their ideas to the public.
FDR, who brought the New Deal in during his first term in office, was the only American president ever to exceed 8 years in office; his success directly resulted in his opponents implementing term limits. He was one of few progressive leaders ever to listen to, understand, and react decisively to the tone of the voting public without threatening democracy itself in the process.
Liberals everywhere need to start reading the whole room, not only the table by the podium. It is time to stop decorating around the edges of public policy and offer voters real, dramatic, and sustainable reform that shows even those outside major urban centres that their country includes them.