There’s a giant game of chicken going on in Ottawa, involving five parties in a self-serving display of cynicism that has little if anything to do with the interests of the country.
It centres on Bill C-319, a private members bill put forward by the Bloc Québécois. The end of the New Democrats’ deal to prop up the minority Liberals in return for pricey concessions opened an opportunity for Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet, who used it to issue an ultimatum. Either Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agrees to enable approval of the Bloc bill, or Blanchet would do all he could to bring down the government.
The bill contains two provisions, both bad. One would provide even greater protection to Quebec’s dairy, poultry, and egg farmers at the expense of Canadian consumers. The other would give a 10 per cent boost to a benefit program for seniors aged 65 to 74 at an estimated cost of $16 billion over five years plus $3 billion a year after that.
Quebec’s dairy farmers may already be the most supported, subsidized, and protected group in Canada, thanks to measures blocking competition and regular income boosts no matter the state of the market or the cost to Canadians in higher prices. Seniors are a deserving bunch, but are already beneficiaries of extensive support systems, including the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security program, and theGuaranteed Income Supplement, not to mention free health care and all the housing and other gains the baby boom generation ensured for themselves.
The cost of the bill goes against everything Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been saying about the need to get spending under control, balance the budget, and put Canada back on the path of reliable productivity from which it has strayed under the Liberal government. Trudeau’s record has been a nine-year spendathon that’s seen the federal debt doubled, the size and cost of government balloon, deficits soar, financing costs escalate and voters grow increasingly nervous about the financial burden piled on future generations.
Yet Conservatives voted with the Bloc, NDP, and Greens in favour of a motion to push the bill forward against Liberal opposition. The obvious reason for its position was the party’s single-minded determination to force an election it is heavily favoured to win. As a tactic it may be worthy, but as a reflection of Tory credibility it’s about as helpful as a torpedo through the hull of a sailing ship.
Should an election indeed be triggered, and Poilievre emerge as prime minister, would he then push through the Bloc plan at the cost of adding $16 billion to federal borrowing after endlessly pledging to control spending? Would he even give a straight answer to that question if asked today? We’d all like to hear it.
Having previously said he supports the anti-competitive dairy program, despite the inflationary impact on groceries, the Conservative leader would find himself arguing the Liberal regime has become unaffordable even while backing two multi-billion-dollar drains on the budget put in place largely to placate Quebec.
It’s no surprise that the NDP would back the bill, given that New Democrats live by the belief Ottawa has a bottomless pit of money, and that no amount of debt or borrowing could ever have an unfavourable impact on the state of the economy.
Liberals, however, find themselves manoeuvred into a very uncomfortable and unfamiliar corner. What easily qualifies as perhaps the biggest-spending administration in the history of the country outside war, one that’s seldom, if ever, seen a benefit program it wouldn’t support with additional borrowing, is now caught trying to convince Canadians this one particular payout is a benefit too far.
“If anyone thinks that in today’s fiscal environment… that it’s useful to spend a new taxpayer dollar — a taxpayer dollar we don’t have — on seniors who are making over $120,000, the Bloc should explain that logic to me,” Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith complained.
Trudeau ministers have been working to improve the government’s reputation for fiscal recklessness, maintaining its attention is fixed firmly on prudence and the struggles of younger Canadians. But refusing an income boost to one class of seniors just two years after grantingit to another class — seniors 75 and over got a raise in 2022 — is a tricky position, one which party officials sought to temper by claiming other motives: that aiding the Bloc would be offensive to federalism; that the bill lacks “contextualization,” and that allowing an opposition party to force it into granting a “royal recommendation” needed to move the bill towards approval would set a bad precedent.
So the Liberals are stuck. They have until Oct. 29 to help turn the separatist bill into law, or have the Bloc join the Conservatives in an ongoing crusade to force an election. It would take all three major opposition parties to marshall the votes to defeat the government, potentially forcing Trudeau to return on bended knee to Jagmeet Singh’s NDP in order for his government to survive another day. Singh might agree, but at a high price, and how would the Liberals rationalize opening the vault to NDP spending demands in order avoid capitulation to the Bloc?
The alternative would be to go down fighting, positioning itself, bizarrely enough, as the party of prudence after nine years in which no expense was spared if it meant putting money in the pockets of one group of voters or another.
It’s a great situation for the Bloc, which gets to portray itself once again as the defender of Quebec interests. Bloc support in Quebec is strong; polls give it a potential 42 seats if an election were held today, a 10-seat increase from 2021. Its separatist colleagues in the Parti Quebecois are similarly popular, having risen from the dead to a healthy lead among provincial parties. Separatism appears to have little to lose from ongoing squabbling in Ottawa or a national election, both of which enable it to claim disfunction in Ottawa as an argument for independence.
As for Canadians who would prefer to see a federal government busy on such critical issues as health care, housing, immigration, or the economy, it’s just more evidence of a government adrift, too busy trying desperately to survive a few more months to be of much use on bigger issues. A winter election might be the last thing they want, but at this point self-immolation looks to be the biggest service Liberals could provide for the country.
National Post