Canada needs a plan for the future, not a blast from the past

This isn't a regular election, and we need more than a regular politician.

Credit: CBC News

It’s obvious that there is a lot of reverence for the former Prime Minister within whomever chose the direction of the CPC campaign. Mr. Harper headlined Mr. Poilievre’s rally in Nisku, a small town about a half hour south of Edmonton’s city centre. The location likely chosen to attract more rural folks to make the drive.

Jason Kenney, shortly after launching his leadership bid for the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, also invited Mr. Harper to headline an event at the PC’s policy convention in 2016 to give a short speech to a couple of busloads of people who had never been involved in the PC youth wing but could vote for the next board.

Mr. Harper does have pull in certain circles, to be sure.

After releasing their platform on Tuesday, the CPC sought headlines in English media Thursday after republishing it with their “anti-woke promise”. The promise was included in the French version of the party’s platform.

While the word wasn’t being tossed around during Stephen Harper’s government, the goals are similar enough to be reminiscent of Mr. Harper’s time; the muzzling of government scientists and cancelling the long form census.

There’s always going to be a market for people who don’t like facts but it’s become more apparent over the past few decades that government in particular benefits more from dismissing them entirely; because they don’t have to address them.

Climate change was the problem that dogged Mr. Harper, and the fact that Covid was airborne made almost every leader in the country plug their ears rather than have to keep mask mandates, require employers offer sick days, or upgrade public spaces to keep people safer.

Being responsible is hard; not everyone is cut out for it.

It’s also why the long form census, and social science research, are easy targets: if there’s no identifiable problem, then no one expects government to solve it.

Certain parties also benefit from fake problems that either don’t require a solution, or can be solved by doing something completely unrelated.

Take the fear of crime for example. Mr. Harper had his “tough on crime” agenda, and Mr. Poilievre is hammering it as well. People don’t like to worry they’ll be a victim of crime and the people who do worry about it aren’t the people who actually need to be worried about it. The people who are worried feel they are vulnerable; women and seniors, mostly. The people who should be worried, but generally aren’t, are young men.

A stranger is less likely to violently attack than an intimate partner, a stranger is less likely to harm a child than someone they know and trust. It’s also very difficult to instill fear of people you know and trust than it is a stranger. So, people fear strangers instead.

That’s not to say feelings are invalid. It’s been my personal experience that facts can deal with those better than fake solutions.

Fake problems are easy to solve

Solving the problem for those who are most scared of it is easy because it doesn’t exist. The fear is real, but the threat is not.

One of my personal favourites started with Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party. Alberta was making its way out of the oil downturn in 2018, but thanks to a concerted effort by many Kenney-aligned groups holding rallies about unemployment and a lack of work in the province, combined with Mr. Kenney’s and the conservative message discipline, they blamed the NDP rather than oil companies who had shelved upcoming projects in the wake of dropping oil prices by the end of 2014. Those same oil companies were also able to get a number of automations online during that time as well, leading to what many termed “a jobless recovery”.

Conservatives however, masterfully pointed their fingers at the change everyone could see — the NDP — proclaiming loudly and consistently that the government was the problem. The solution? Super easy, and Albertans have full control — just elect the UCP! Problem solved!

The oil and gas rallies disappeared, the UCP did victory laps, and Jason Kenney took photo ops at a new McDonald’s that wasn’t built in the first week he became Premier, but why not take all the credit you can?

It’s also the same solution that Pierre Poilievre is offering today. He needs to get that disdain for Justin Trudeau back into the forefront of people’s minds before they vote. All of today’s problems, he says, are because of “the lost liberal decade”.

Except that’s not true.

The problems existed under Stephen Harper, and Paul Martin, and Brian Mulroney before him. It’s not a “lost liberal decade” it’s three or four lost decades and every party was there but no one really took responsibility.

Incredibly, before Mark Carney showed up, Pierre Poilievre was “the change candidate”. The more I hear from Mr. Poilievre, though, the more he sounds just like his predecessor. That’s not change at all — it’s just more of the same.

As conservatives work their magic to try and sell Canadians on the idea that Mark Carney is the same as Justin Trudeau, I get the feeling that they don’t want Canada, or Canadians, to succeed at all.

I’m reminded of the Angus Reid polling back in March that asked Canadians if they would be interested in becoming the 51st state. 90 per cent of Canadians said “no” in January, and 90 per cent of Canadians said “no” in March. 10 per cent of Canadians said “yes”.

Of those, one per cent of self-identified Bloc voters, three per cent NDP, two per cent Liberal, and 21 per cent CPC voters said they would rather not be Canadian. The number of CPC supporters who would vote “yes” if the Liberals formed government again jumps up to 33 per cent.

1 in 5 conservatives asking us to vote for Poilievre don’t care about our country now and 1 in 3 would try to erase our country if we elect someone who wants to make Canada better, rather than solve pretend problems and doing victory laps after.

A change in leadership and a new direction for Canada

Credit: CBC Radio-Canada

Mark Carney sees the current situation in Canada through more than just a partisan lens; he’s looking at what has taken years to get us here and that’s why he began his campaign with “it’s time to build”.

We sold our vaccine research, Connaught Labs, because we could just order vaccines from the U.S.; until a pandemic hit and we had to stand in line. We sold PetroCanada to appease people who don’t think government belongs in oil and gas but demands money from government when they can’t meet their contractual environmental and remediation agreements.

In Alberta, we stopped thinking about the future beyond our own noses thirty years ago and that short-sightedness has spread into our federal government.

When I think of the kind of Prime Minister Mark Carney would be, I think of a person who doesn’t have the capacity to only think of the next election because he’s always had to think about a future that goes beyond the next four years. I fully expect him to make short-term goals, but I believe he will have those as mere stepping stones for a more far-reaching long-term goal of Canada being able to rely on its people, provide opportunities for its people, and attract more opportunities than exist today.

I believe that because his career has been about more than election cycles.

Mr. Carney views the current situation in Canada as a crisis but he’s not shying away from solving the problem because he can admit there is a problem. It’s a real problem that won’t be fixed by “tax incentives” to do the right thing. Every conservative who bemoaned the carbon tax should be able to see why that is.

For decades, we’ve allowed people who have their best interests at heart, but not ours, to dictate what we should be permitted to expect from our governments.

Today, at least, there is someone who is telling us to expect more, not less. That’s why I support Mark Carney for Canada’s next Prime Minister.

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