Premier François Legault knows populism — or at least, he did; or at least, he seemed to. He and his Coalition Avenir Québec party have successfully reoriented Quebec politics from a battle between separatists and federalists to a battle between tolerance for linguistic, religious and ethnic minorities, and the lack thereof. It has been remarkably successful: The Parti Québécois might well win the next election, and might well launch a third referendum. But even if it did, there’s no chance the Yes side would carry the day.
So it has been all the more baffling to watch Legault flailing around recently like a witch doused in holy water. Last week Le Journal de Montréal busted the premier for spending $4,828 in public money on 14 signed Guy Lafleur jerseys in 2021 — gifts for his fellow premiers, although Legault also snagged one for himself. He billed the taxpayers $931 to get his jersey framed. And that’s after his government recently set fire to $7 million to pay for two Los Angeles Kings exhibition games in Quebec City, in an 18,000-seat arena that was also built at great taxpayer expense for an NHL team that it’s not going to get.
It’s all the more surprising because other Canadian premiers and would-be premiers seem to be in a populist sweet spot — even if it’s just a matter of undoing things other people did.
British Columbia New Democrats have lately been heard to complain that the ongoing election campaign is focusing to an absurd degree on the question of plastic versus paper straws. B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad promises to eliminate the federal restrictions on the former — which the Federal Court found unreasonable and unconstitutional, let’s not forget — as well as to eliminate plastic-bag fees implemented by B.C.’s current NDP government.
The problem with the NDP’s position as they seek re-election isn’t just, as Rustad says, that “paper straws suck” — though they do suck, powerfully, just not the way they’re supposed to. The problem is that there was almost no point in going after plastic straws to begin with. “The ban on single-use plastics is a significant step the government of Canada is taking to mitigate this serious threat to the marine environment and protect our critical aquatic ecosystems, so they remain healthy and abundant for the next seven generations,” then fisheries and oceans minister Joyce Murray was quoted saying in a press release. (We were left to wonder what grim fate awaits the eighth generation.)
But Canada was already sending almost literally zero plastics into the oceans, whereas the Philippines contributes an estimated seven per cent of the total pollution. Every last nickel that Canadians spent on stupid reusable straws, that Canadian governments spent designing these mostly performative bans, would have been infinitely better spent helping the actual source countries of plastic ocean pollution clean up their acts.
Doug Ford’s government in Ontario is on what certainly looks like a pre-election spree of ostensibly consumer and commuter-friendly announcements. This week we learned paper bags will soon be returning to the province’s provincially run liquor stores, after a roughly 13-month absence. Ford had more or less demanded it.
The LCBO went bag-free under Ford’s watch. But the premier was instantly and wisely against it. And again, there was no particularly good reason for it to have happened. But there was also no good reason for the LCBO to ditch its unusually sturdy and reusable plastic bags 15 years earlier: There are fairly compelling argumentsthat paper-bag production is worse or at least no better for the environment than plastic-bag production.
In hindsight, it seems completely bizarre that now-imperilled governments would have done these things to themselves. If the best case you can mount for making people’s lives slightly more difficult and inconvenient is “stop complaining and suck it up,” then defeat is the only place you’re likely headed, and rightly so.
The common, understandable lament when politicians go fishing for votes in these shallow populist ponds is that Canadian jurisdictions have so many bigger and more complex problems that command our elected officials’ attention. Ontarians still aren’t done wailing and gnashing their teeth over the recent arrival of beer and wine in hundreds of additional convenience stores. Their complaints often boil down to something like, “why can I buy a six-pack at Circle K but I can’t find a family doctor?” — a total non-sequitur, but a very popular one.
Some provinces are faring better than others on the health-care front, but I’m afraid Occam’s razor generally applies here: The reason Canadian governments don’t “fix health care,” among other intractable problems, is because they don’t know how. They don’t think they can sell the reforms that are necessary to the public, and they could well be right. Hell, some Canadian governments are lucky nowadays if they don’t wind up breaking things by accident — just look at the mess the federal Liberals made of immigration.
That being the state of play, it’s entirely correct for governments to do what they can do to help us out — which in so many respects just means getting the hell out of our way. If they can’t make good policies, they can at least delete bad ones. In modern Canadian politics, sad to say, it’s about the most compelling thing going.
National Post
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