Head Tale

via Broadbent Institute

Originally coined by Bill Clinton advisor, James Carville, the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” has become a useful shorthand for what many elections are really about no matter how much politicians try to focus voters on other meaningless distractions.

This holds true in the current Canadian election where surveys have shown that 60% of people feel that the economy is the single most important issue.  And if you figure in that “jobs” comes in at 20%, that means up to 80% of Canadians feel that some aspect of our economy is the most important issue in this election.

So let’s take a look at some of the…

Facts About The Canadian Economy Under Steven Harper

• Simply put, the Harper Conservatives have the worst economic record of any government in Canada’s post-war history.
  

  The most damning aspect of the Conservative legacy is not a short-term cyclical downturn. It is a longer-run failure to stimulate growth, job-creation, innovation, and investment.

• A big part of this is their unrelenting focus on the resource sector instead of diversification so that when the price of oil tumbles, the entire economy slumps.
• Canada has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs under his watch.  Steven Harper has the lowest change in the employment rate since Louis St. Laurent and is the first government to have negative growth since John Diefenbaker 50 years ago
• The Canadian dollar is at its lowest level in nearly a decade when only five short years ago, it was trading at par with the US dollar.
• We’ve had not one but two recessions under Steven Harper’s government.  (To steal a line from Tom Mulcair:  “Steven Harper’s Conservatives are the only government who, when asked about the recession they governed through, can say ‘Which one?'”)
• Contrary to their campaign messages, the Harper government raised, not lowered, your taxes.
• As illustrated by the graph at the top of this post, Harper has had the lowest GDP growth of any Canadian Prime Minister in the post-war era and is the only one with <2% growth.
• The Harper Conservatives have repeatedly focused on policies that benefit the wealthiest Canadians rather than those who struggle with less.
• Compared to other G7 nations, the Harper Conservatives rank last in 7 of 16 indicators of economic performance.

Conservatives tend to be perceived as best party for the economy but, as much as it pains me to say, the Liberals actually have a *way* better track record than the Conservatives in managing the economy in good times and bad.

Beyond that, the fact is that the NDP actually have the most fiscally responsible record of any governing party in Canadian history – a huge surprise to most people who buy into the idea of “tax and spend socialists”.  But the reality is, going back to Tommy Douglas, the NDP realised the banks and corporate sector were not allies for their ambitious plans to improve the lives of everyday workers.  So by keeping the books balanced, they stood the best chance of getting things done (not to mention the benefit of not paying a bunch of money in interest.)

There’s a lot of commonly accepted wisdom you hear that reflect the increasing amount of cynicism that people have towards the political process…

They’re all the same.
There are definitely good and bad people involved in all parties.  But saying that all politicians are bad simply because they’re politicians is as simplistic (and wrong!) as saying “all teachers are the same” or “All doctors are the same” or whatever.

My Vote Doesn’t Matter
Even if you’re in a riding where your preferred party isn’t likely to win or you vote for a fringe party, it’s still important to vote.  Beyond that old line about “You can’t complain if you don’t vote” (which many people agree with but I’m not a particular fan of since I think everyone has the right to complain no matter what!), there’s the reality that, in recent elections where turnout usually hovers around 60% and is split between 3+ parties, there’s not a single election where 100% turnout couldn’t have changed the results of the election.  I think I read somewhere that any party that gets over 10% of the vote (?) in a riding also gets a refund on a portion their eligible election expenses so even if you live in the heart of Tory Alberta and vote NDP or Liberal, you’re helping the democratic process by ensuring those parties get some money back for their efforts.

I Don’t Have Time
There are people whose personal circumstances do make it more of an effort to get to the polls – a single mom with three kids, someone without transportation, or whatever. But a federal election happens only once every four years or so.  And since this is the longest election campaign in history, there’s been plenty of time to make arrangements to get to the polls.  Most parties also have “get out the vote” (GOTV) efforts on election day where volunteers will offer rides to the polls or help facilitate the process for you in any way that they can.  As my grade seven teacher used to say when someone said they didn’t have time to get their homework done, “You didn’t have the time or you didn’t *make* the time?”

The Government Sucks/They Don’t Do Anything For Me Anyhow
General cynicism about politics can lead to increased cynicism about the important role of goverment.  This is even helped along (hopefully unintentionally) by the media, which should have a role in impartially covering the issues but end up creating cynicism by covering politics and elections like they were horse races or sporting events.  Even political parties can contribute the cynicism with their attempts to discourage certain groups that are unlikely to vote for them from participating or just by giving the impression that they don’t listen to the public.

But ultimately, you don’t have to agree with everything the government does (I don’t like high military spending for instance) to still recognize that part of your social contract as a citizen of our society is that by pooling our resources, via the government, everyone gets to share in the many important services that the private sector can’t or won’t provide as effectively – healthcare, highways, economic policy and about a zillion other things that we all benefit from. If you try to take a larger view and not be cynical about things that only affect you but keep a focus on how our society is doing overall, you can approach these issues in a less cynical fashion.

The NDP released their election platform today.  Called “Building The Country of Our Dreams” [PDF], it mostly summarizes the various proposals the NDP has been promoting over this entire campaign – affordable daycare, making post-secondary education more affordable, increasing corporate taxes and so on.  (Discussion on Reddit.)

Some highlights identified by a Reddit user:

• 7,000 more doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners and other health professionals
• expanding home care to 41,000 more seniors and providing funding for 5,000 more nursing home beds
• Tripling paid leave available for those too ill to work
• one million quality childcare spaces at no more than $15 a day
• extra five weeks of parental leave
• Cracking down on excessive ATM fees
• Creating 40,000 jobs, co-op placements and internships for youth
• reducing the small business tax from 11 to 9%
• $1.5 billion per year in new infrastructure funding to municipalities to fix roads, bridges and water treatment systems
• $1.3 billion per year in a national strategy to improve transit and reduce gridlock
• retrofit over 50,000 homes and apartment buildings
• returning the retirement age from 67 to 65
• Restoring home mail delivery
• hire 2,500 more front-line police officers
• Investing $454 million to give our veterans support
• Bolstering food and rail safety regulations
• repealing Bill C-51
• bringing in proportional representation for elections
• Giving the Parliamentary Budget Officer independent authority, and creating a Parliamentary Science Officer

There are many out there who are lumping the NDP & Liberals together (and I’ve been guilty of that on occasion myself) but although there are some similarities (which are especially appealing for those wanting to see Stephen Harper gone), there are some very stark differences between the two parties that people should consider if they’re thinking of voting for one party in place of the other…

1. Trans-Pacific Partnership
   Along with the Conservatives, the Liberals have indicated their support for this massive international trade deal while the NDP is strongly opposed to the deal which could cause great harm to Canada’s agricultural and automotive sectors as well as causing grave concerns for copyright,  intellectual property rights, and Canada’s ability to write its own laws regarding the Internet as well as Canada’s sovereignty in general (this is the first and probably only time I’ll link to the Green Party in this series of posts!) 😉
2. C-51
   Even though the Conservatives had a majority position and the Liberals did not need to vote in favour of it, they chose to do what was politically popular at the time and support Bill C-51 which gives much greater surveillance powers to the government.  Officially meant to help prevent terrorism, the bill actually could end up leading to increased government spying on private citizens in violation of our Charter rights.  Rightly, this bill is losing support as more and more Canadians become aware of how it could fundamentally change the nature of our freedoms.
3. Keystone XL Pipeline
   Again, the Liberals overlap with the Harper Conservatives in saying support this pipeline (just like most Republicans in the US) while the NDP (like most Democrats in the US including Obama and Hillary Clinton) have said very clearly that they oppose it.

A couple posts ago, I included an excerpt from Thomas Mulcair’s autobiography.  As a librarian who previously spent nearly a decade in the Canadian book industry, that made me think it might be fun to compare and contrast some of the details of each leader’s book (full disclosure – I’ve only read Mulcair’s…so far.)

I saw the above graphic on Reddit and it struck home.

The short term memory of Canadian voters always astounds me – many ridings across Canada will elect Liberals to defeat Conservatives, having apparently forgotten that only a short decade ago, the Liberals were the party that was seen as tired, out-dated and corrupt, much like the Conservatives are seen today.

The NDP has never had a chance to govern at the federal level and that’s one of their greatest appeals to me.  I’m very interested to see what they could do if given the opportunity to break the revolving “red door/blue door” cycle of the last 100+ years of Canadian politics.

Thomas Mulcair makes the point very well in his autobiography, “Strength of Conviction” when he talks about one example – how both parties have failed, repeatedly for over thirty years, to implement a national childcare strategy…

Red door?  Blue door?  On October 19, let’s hope voters open a new orange window!