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When I heard that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was to appear on Ben Shapiro's Sunday Special this past week, I was surprised and not a little nervous.  Did Ben not know that groups like North 99 have been trying to implicate him in the murder of 6 Muslim men in last year's horrific shooting at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec, suggesting that he inspired Alexandre Bissonnette to commit the atrocity?  Did Harper not realize that this could spell more trouble for CPC Leader Andrew Scheer, who has still not fully extricated himself from the associations some of his staff/former staff had with Rebel Media?

… Oh, hold on.  I'm sorry.  I haven't done the necessary explainers of who Ben Shapiro is, what the Sunday Special is, what North 99 is, what the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec is, who Alexandre Bissonette is, and, for some of you, where Quebec City is, what Rebel Media is and who Andrew Scheer is.  By the way, Canadian media, we're about due for another round of "Nobody Knows Who Andrew Scheer Is" articles.  The last ones came out way back in September!!  If we don't have regular coverage of how nobody knows who Scheer is, then Canadians might just be tempted to investigate!

Actually, you're probably not interested in explainers about who those people, places, and things are, are you?  No, what you want is wall-to-wall coverage on how Quebec and Ontario are at each other's throats again over… the cancellation of a French-language university??  Sure, why not.  It's about as good of a reason as any.  But whatever you do, don't read, or attempt to understand, any of the coverage coming from the other side.  Not only is it in a whole other language, but it would also mean you'd have to concede that maybe they had a point or two.  Toronto Star journalist Robert Benzie sure wasn't going to bother reading La Presse journalist Patrick Lagace's inconvenient reminder about how the English-language press freaked out about Pastagate five years ago, opting to praise his own newspaper for how fair they were being for even deigning to mention the backlash.

What's going on here?  Don't "facts matter", "now more than ever"?  No, because that's just the narrative about journalism that increasingly obsolete journalists cling to.  The facts are that journalism matters less than ever, when you look at circulation, stock prices, advertising revenues, and every other metric available.  Nobody wants to read what Rex Murphy has to say; they just want to post links to his articles on Facebook and add "Rex nails it, again" or some other trifling comment.  Nobody cared what Peter Mansbridge was saying when he was the lead anchor for the National they just wanted his face on the TV, and now that it isn't, the National ain't what it used to be.  But we're still going to keep watching the CBC, because the narrative there is that if we don't, we'll become the 51st state.

These journalists, the politicians, and the people are slaves to the almighty narratives.  Narratives like, "Justin Trudeau Isn't Your Typical Politician" and "Doug Ford The Trumpy Populist" and "The Kielburgers and the WE Foundation Are An Unalloyed Force For Good".  Facts that contradict these narratives are discarded.  Is Trudeau actually a talking-point spouting robot like everyone else with a few skeletons in his closet?  Is Doug Ford not really all that populist?  Could the Kielburgers possibly be less than perfect?  Too bad.  The narrative is God, and God help you if you try to contradict the narrative.

These days, all you can hope for is to situate yourself within a workable narrative and sacrifice every principle and scruple in support of it.  In the States, you hear about the two narratives and how the country is being ripped apart because of them.  But here in Canada, there is only one narrative, the one that is likely promulgated by the CBC.  You're going to care about Facebook's impact on the upcoming election because it's on the CBC, and when someone mentions Tides, LeadNow, UNIFOR or any of the other groups that have been impacting elections FOR YEARS, you're going to look at that person as if they're some sort of conspiracy theorist who gets their information from one of those fake news sites.

Photo Credit: Bridgehead

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


This week's fiscal update showed that the government's path to a balanced budget is still a slow march, but one that didn't have to be that way.  The documents showed that the path to balance was actually closer than we thought the deficit could have been virtually eliminated by 2023, were it not for all of the new spending measures announced that kept the deficit at status quo.  But rather than trying to sell the Canadian public on why this continues to be necessary, and most especially why it's necessary to keep spending the windfall that the growth rate and roaring economy are producing, Bill Morneau and Justin Trudeau have done as they always do reciting some happy sounding pabulum that doesn't really explain anything.

We should establish a few things first there is no actual debt crisis facing Canada.  The size of the deficits the government is running are really quite modest in comparison to the size of our economy, and the debt-to-GDP ratio continues to trend downward, at the best rate in the G7.  If you look to the south of us, the American economy is piling on trillion-dollar deficits to finance tax cuts that have been the equivalent of a sugar rush to their economy, used for stock buy-backs and shareholder dividends without creating sustainable growth, while in the UK, their economy has stalled given the interminable uncertainty over the Brexit omnishambles.  Our economy is running at near-capacity, and we are at near full-employment (oil-producing regions aside) and in fact, some parts of the country are facing labour shortages instead.  We're not Greece or Venezuela, contrary to some of the voices of doom that you hear.

We also need to remind ourselves that while the Conservatives insist that they left the country in surplus in 2015, that should be taken with a shaker's worth of salt the global oil price crash and brief recession that happened that year put a $70 billion hole in the budget that the Liberals inherited, so no matter who was in government, they were going to start from behind.  The austerity of the Conservatives' fiscal policy was also hitting up against the stimulus in the monetary policy from the Bank of Canada, and that mismatch did create problems in the overall economy.  And add to that, the Conservatives booked a bunch of false savings in their budget in order to achieve a paper balance, which meant that the Liberals had to also clean up the disasters at Shared Services Canada and the Phoenix payroll system.

With this in mind, we did see a modest effort by Morneau in the early years to say that while the deficits were bigger than initially promised, their spending promises were essentially the same and the deficits were because of the weaker fiscal situation they were left with.  Which was fine, and the government made the political choice to honour their spending promises over their deficit promises.  That's fine and defensible if actually made rather than just offering some trite lines about how they're Helping the Middle Class and Those Hoping to Join Itâ„¢.  The problem is now that they can't keep using that excuse because they've been spending beyond what was initially promised because they've made the decision to spend the returns from their economic growth rather than using it to close the gap.  After all, the "budgets balance themselves" line that the Conservatives like to throw in Trudeau's face was actually about how when you have economic growth, budgets will balance themselves.  The Liberals have economic growth, and that growth would have very nearly balanced the budget by now and indeed, I was almost expecting them to announce that the deficits were smaller than initially reported, followed by a round of self-congratulation and back-patting about how their strategy was working.  And they might have done so, if they didn't decide to keep spending.

I get that there are economic challenges that this government is trying to address, and some of those measures cost money.  The fact that they made these changes to the write-downs for business equipment and depreciations were probably necessary to keep a level of competitiveness in our economy without necessarily matching the US tax cuts (that were themselves deficit-financed and yet the same fiscal hawks who kept demanding that Morneau cut our own rates to match seemed to forget that important aspect, as they simultaneously demanded he balance the budget) did add to the deficit here.  There are also other systemic problems in our economy that the Liberals are actually working to address, whether it's dealing with capacity issues in First Nations, poverty reduction, or investing in reducing barriers to women and minorities so that they can be more productive economically.  These are actually important things.

But we're not being sold on it.  We get trite slogans but very little frank discussion from the prime minister or Morneau about why these things are important to our economy, and why it's worth remaining in deficit for, because right now, I'm not seeing it.  Trite phrases about Helping the Middle Class and Those Hoping to Join Itâ„¢ don't explain to me about building capacity, or about providing training to those who are currently under-utilized in the job market, or even about how their plans to help alleviate poverty will have a greater economic impact.  Trite phrases do make it look like the government is engaging in "virtue signalling" and like the importance they place on gender and minority rights are frivolous and without economic impact.  They do have an impact but you wouldn't know it based on their messaging.

It becomes very frustrating when Canadians can't be treated as though they can comprehend what the government is doing with their tax dollars by either side.  The Conservatives will spin lies about the state of the economy, which the government will let stand unchallenged on the record, while their own pabulum and slogans they respond with come off as "trust us, we mean well."  We shouldn't be subjected to this kind of discourse.  And until we can be trusted with an adult conversation about the nation's finances, the skepticism of the public will remain well deserved.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Imagine for a moment if the new Legault government in Quebec had decided to turn off the tap of public money flowing towards the three anglophone universities in La Belle Province: Concordia University, McGill University and Bishop's University.

Of course, François Legault and the CAQ have no such plans.  Neither do any of the other parties in the National Assembly.

But imagine the uproar.  Imagine the outrage.

But when Doug Ford decided to cancel the project of a francophone university in Ontario, the uproar was mostly left to french-speaking Canadians.  Sure, there was some coverage of the story in English Canada.  The Montreal Gazette even published an editorial and eventually, so did the Toronto Star.  But the story is not being pursued and commented on to the extent that such stories are being pursued when a slight is perpetrated or even just perceived against the anglo-Quebecer community.

In itself, the decision is outrageous.  Out of 24 public universities in Ontario, none of them are french.  Half a dozen provide enough classes in french to be considered bilingual, but the offer is limited.  A french university would allow Franco-Ontarians to get the higher education they deserve in a francophone environment, which would help the community to survive and thrive.

In Manitoba, which has a french-speaking population of less than 50,000, the Université de St-Boniface has been a key institution for the minority community.  The 700,000 Anglo-Quebecers have three of them.  The 600,000 Franco-Ontarians will have no such luck for the foreseeable future.

Sadly for them, Doug Ford has stated it won't happen.  His surrogate, Caroline Mulroney, is struggling to explain why the decision was made, other than the fact that they have no money.  But of course, there is money.  It is, purely and simply a political choice.

It is hurting Andrew Scheer in Quebec, and it is the kind of issue the Bloc Quebecois could use to come back from irrelevance at the expense of the Conservative Party.  Federal Conservative operatives, who have been blindsided by the move, have stated that trying to get through Doug Ford on this issue was like talking to a brick wall.

This is purely about realpolitik.  Since the Mike Harris attempt to close the French Montfort hospital during the Nonsense Revolution, the Ontario PCs have never recovered within the franco community.  This most recent decision, along with the abolition of the French Language Commissioner, simply means that PC operatives have come to the conclusion that they never will.  And since they won a majority without any significant support in ridings where francophones have a sizeable influence, the calculation was simple.

For the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, Franco-Ontarians are expendables.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.