What Is A Strong Canada?

This election offers Canadians a stark choice between a strong, independent Canada and one beholden to foreign interests. Once the voting is done in a few weeks, there will be immense work to do in order to make Canada live up to the promises of the campaign. What should that look like?

Campaigns are normally far more about personalities, soundbites, perceptions, and narratives than they are about substantive issues and the in-depth roadmaps offered in the full length books of costed policies that make up many party platforms.

It is why Pierre Poilievre’s campaign has all but collapsed in a few short weeks. He had nothing whatsoever to offer other than a hatred of Justin Trudeau and a slogan to “axe the tax”, both of which were neutralised overnight by the arrival of Mark Carney and his first act of… well, axing the tax. It laid bare the comprehensive lack of substance on offer from the convoy-supporting alt-right-backed Conservative leader.

Canadians aren't being asked to meet the moment

The Liberals do not need to present an in-depth platform this election. The more details placed in such a document, the more specific items their adversaries can seize onto for sloganeering; it’s far easier to take out of context and attack than it is to offer something of their own. The question on offer is simply: “Canada?” Even former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that, given its absolutely existential nature for the country, there are only two choices in this election — and the NDP isn’t one of them.

That said, if the voters do say “Yes!” to the question of Canada, and the Liberal government retains power, the patience of the electorate will be very short. After the election, there will be an expectation of immediate, serious results, something that is hard for any government to do. The machinery of government moves at a glacial pace at the best of times; substantive policy changes take years to be felt on the ground.

In the immediate, the government will have to assert our sovereignty and put us on a war footing. It is hard to overstate the danger posed by a totalitarian United States to Canada, and we cannot be pussyfooting around it. Only one leader on offer understands this reality with the Churchillian clarity we need in this moment.

The longer play will be fixing the systemic problems that are allowing the American public to accept the end of their democracy with barely a whimper, whose opposition leaders don’t even see a reason to fight.

A victorious Mark Carney will have to demonstrate, quickly, that his vision for the country is not only progressive, but creates progress for everyone. His first moves have been decidedly right of centre, with his opening acts being the repealing of the carbon tax, cancelling the increase in capital gains taxes, and addressing things he sees as being perhaps more woke than practical such as abolishing the Minister for Women and Gender Equality. All are pragmatic moves meant to undermine Conservative talking points and slogans against him, but all are tacks to the right to do so.

The American political spectrum is skewed very significantly to the right. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are seen in the United States as being on the far left. In Canada and most of Europe, they’d be seen as mainstream centrists, advocating for established norms like universal healthcare and the rights of workers.

The risk of us moving to the centre-right to counter the far-right is that Canada falls into this same trap. The “centre” gently and continuously shifts to the right to neutralise Conservative messaging and ideas, forcing them ever further to the right, and we will eventually end up with someone even more extreme than Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre himself is trying to protect his right flank from Maxime Bernier’s overtly extremist People’s Party, whose supporters are overwhelmingly pro-Trump.

Canada needs, quickly, to address the angst that is at the core of the increasing right-wing support in the first place. And there has to be tangible action before the 46th general election. We must not forget how quickly Justin Trudeau’s sunny ways, hope, and hard work mantras gave way to anger and resentment across the country.

The ever-increasing dichotomy of America

The solutions are simpler than we realise. Rural and small town Canadians, where Conservative support is the strongest, need to feel as much a part of Canada as urban Canadians. Housing and basic daily costs have to be brought under control. The wealth transfer from the poor to the rich has to be arrested and reversed rapidly and decisively in a way that people understand and feel. Canada is getting wealthier; Canadians are not.

People hate symbolism. The problem with “woke” politics is that they feel symbolic and tokenist, not pragmatic. It is not obvious to a family eking out a meagre existence while living in a trailer park, in a small town that used to have intercity bus service and a mill full of high paying and often unionised jobs, how giving what they see as special treatment to immigrants and queers will improve their circumstances. So that family’s conclusion is that the efforts to help those groups comes at their expense.

Someone comes along and tells them their lives will be great again because we’re going to end the “woke mind-virus” that is destroying their community. They believe it because they hear about these progressive ideas coming from the big cities, while they can’t even afford basic necessities at the dollar store in the nearest town anymore. Those progressive ideas aren’t helping them, so the guy who is speaking out against them must be an improvement. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The government needs to invest, rapidly, in rural economic, social, and physical infrastructure. Big cities generally support interventionist progressive parties because the government is a positive presence in their lives. Urban transit systems are a constant, visible, in-your-face good provided by government at enormous public expense. Emergency services are audible and visible constants. Most city residents have never had to deal with emptying their septic systems or digging a well. They have good roads, good jobs, good schools, and accessible nearby services.

Rural Canadians largely have slow Internet, poor cell phone service, endemic underemployment and nearby abandoned and collapsing mills reminding them every day of what they have lost, of the greatness that once was. They also face long distances to travel to do anything with no option but to own and maintain a car. Their only interactions with government are road works, garbage pickup, gun laws, and taxes whose abstract benefits are not tangible. It is not hard, then, to understand why rural and small town areas are largely in support of anti-government right-wing politicians and parties, why in the US the poorest and most rural states are also the reddest states.

Those anti-government right-wing politicians and parties benefit from the lack of government investment and public infrastructure, and stymie solving those problems with all their might. Fixing these systemic issues would eliminate the anger and therefore their support. For conservative politicians, failure is essential to success.

We need to reduce the vast and increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the already wealthy. In order to do that, our entire tax system needs to be rethought. The nomenclature has to change. We need to stop calling ourselves “taxpayers” and start calling ourselves “citizens.” Government is a mechanism to share common costs and achieve common goals, not a business out to rip you off.

Immediate changes that Canadians would feel is the elimination of the requirement to file their taxes, and the replacement of value-added taxes like the GST and HST with embedded taxes included in the sticker price. We demand truth in advertising for airline ticket prices, but add 15% to the price of laundry detergent at the cash. We require people to file their taxes, providing the government with information they mostly already have, in order to access benefits that those least capable of filing their own taxes need most.

Then we need to go further and look back at the period in our country’s history when we built up our infrastructure and families could own a proper home and support their children on a single income. Counter-intuitively, it was a period when the top marginal tax rate was at its highest. Cutting taxes, as all the parties — including the NDP — are promising to do as they chase each other ever further to the right, solves none of this.

Nobody has ever cut their way to long term prosperity, and nobody is fighting the narrative that we’re nothing but taxpayers to be wrung out by a greedy government, rather than citizens who are in it together.

Raising and indexing the basic personal exemption to the poverty line, and guaranteeing that minimum level of income, would make sense. Reducing our overall tax revenue would not. With economic war being declared on Canada by the United States, we do not have the luxury of reducing our war-chest; if anything, it is time to find the resources to get through the challenges of restructuring our economy and rebuilding our military.

When the election is over, the changes to our economic and social structure to realise Canada’s paper success into the lives of all Canadians needs to be rapid, comprehensive, and ruthless.

Without it, the angst that drives the right will continue and the 2025 election will be little more than a stay of execution against a disillusioned country ready to throw out democracy itself, because it will have failed to solve the problems it was built to address.