A month or so ago, I wrote in these pages that, “McKenna is laying a lot of track for what a Liberal version of ‘build back better’ would look like”, referring to what I then called “bevy of announcements focused on transport infrastructure – from active transportation, to increasing the gas-tax transfer to municipalities and a new focus on rural transit” from federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna.

That “bevy of announcements” continued this week, with a nearly daily joint announcement between McKenna and Ontario Transportation Minister (and my local MPP) Caroline Mulroney.

It seems both the federal Liberals and the provincial Tories are metaphorically (and soon literally) laying track on major infrastructure plans that will be central not only to our economic recovery, but also to their reoffering offers in a federal election that could come this fall and an Ontario election that will be underway this time next year.

It shows a strategy articulated in Finance Minister Chyrstia Freeland’s budget to get the pandemic under control, and then like Ross from Friends “pivot” to stimulating economic growth through infrastructure.

What is intriguing to note is that the Ford Tories are undertaking much the same approach as their federal Liberal counterparts, of course with subtle differences.

Speaking of matching strategies, another interesting piece of Ontario provincial politics has emerged this week through the focus the Ontario Liberals under Steven Del Duca are taking to tie themselves to the Trudeau Liberals on childcare. Del Duca announced in front of a Zoom of mothers and babies (many of the former who are also MPP candidates) that he would match the Trudeau plan to deliver $10-a-day childcare.

It is no secret, and he has conceded it himself, that Del Duca has struggled to define himself, being elected mere days before the lockdown last March. With his childcare announcement, he seems to be banking on the strong brand equity of the federal Liberals having a reciprocal or halo effect on the provincial party.

With our politicians all on similar pages in terms of their economic thinking coming out of the pandemic, I’m reminded of comments former President Barack Obama used to make about epochal intellectual movements in public society – from the New Deal and Great Society liberalism, to Reaganomics and Thatcherism, followed by the centrism of Blair/Clinton/Chretien, we are now seemingly in an era where big government is back in vogue.

Look at President Joe Biden’s massive spending plans to remake American infrastructure, childcare and healthcare as the leading example, and the Trudeau Liberals’ plan as its Canadian equivalent (smaller in comparison largely because unlike the US, we have a fifty year head start on social programmes).

I suppose that means we’re all Keynesians, at least for now.

That leaves the federal Tories struggling for an intellectual foundation. What is their offering? Are they deficit hawks, despite the public appetite for government support? Or is there a way to retool Conservative playbooks to offer people support and social solidarity, but in a more small government kind of way?

Erin O’Toole has yet to answer this question, though he hints that he wants to. The problem he faces is that his party doesn’t yet have its marching orders, so they vacillate between austerity and attempts at appealing to blue-collar workers, depending on which MP is speaking.

And with the Ford Tories embracing a populist version of “build back better”, and their provincial Liberal rivals looking to one-up them on particular offerings such as childcare, it leaves O’Toole in a tough spot that looks a lot like the odd man out in the Confederation’s surprising intellectual and policy alignment these days.

To torture the metaphor, if there are no atheists in foxholes, it seems there are no libertarians or deficit hawks in pandemics.

Photo Credit: The Conversation