federal election Archives - Page 9 of 10

The NDP decided to take the opposite tactic that parties have established in recent election cycles, and put out their entire platform before Parliament has even been dissolved. After campaigning for a full week before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has even headed to Rideau Hall to request a dissolution, Jagmeet Singh released “Ready for Better: New Democrats’ commitment to you” (emphasis theirs) to minimal fanfare from his stop in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador on Thursday. For a leader who likes to criticize Trudeau as only speaking pretty words and taking no action, Singh has demonstrated that he has only the same to offer.

The document is 115 pages of pretty words. Lots and lots of them, interspersed with photos of Singh around the country, but it’s a document that is hard to take seriously once you actually read it. A lot of it are platitudes, and some back-patting for things they are taking credit for that they didn’t actually do. Because most of their promises are simply reheated versions of their 2019 platform, they didn’t even bother to update it to reflect the fact that the Liberals have either already accomplished or have been actively pursuing and are at various stages of completion many of the things they describe. Well, one generously assumes that they simply neglected to update the pledges, lest it be said that they’re lying about the state of accomplishments in order to create a sense of disillusionment to drive votes, and the NDP would certainly never do that, now would they? (That was sarcasm – it’s one of their most common tactics).

Of course, they padded out the document by repeating many of the pledges over, and over, and over again in each different section, so it looks like they’re really being comprehensive. But more than anything, it’s a lot of what we’ve come to expect from Singh and the NDP, which is a complete inability to distinguish what falls under areas of provincial jurisdiction, and where they do acknowledge that they need to negotiate or “work with” the provinces, the expectation in the text is that the premiers will sign right up to everything that they have on offer – pharmacare, dental care, guaranteed liveable income, changes to labour codes, changes to building codes, free public transit, binding carbon budgets, you name it. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the federal government has been working for over two years to implement the Hoskins’ Report on creating national universal pharmacare, and in that time, the only province they’ve managed to convince has been Prince Edward Island, and it’s only to implement the very first steps of the program, which is to cut some of their existing costs. Early learning and child care has progressed more rapidly because of the amount of money the federal government put on the table, but even then, there are still three provinces including Ontario which have thus far dug their heels in and refused to sign on. And no, just applying more willpower won’t change those facts – there is no Green Lantern Ring of federalism.

There is also a pervasive sense throughout the document that everything can happen at once – pledges upon pledges that can happen at the drop of a hat. Not only will negotiations with provinces resolve satisfactorily overnight, apparently there is also infinite capacity within government to accomplish these things, and the laws of physics don’t apply when it comes to solving pervasive problems like boil water advisories on First Nations reserves. There are also some literal impossible pledges sprinkled throughout as well, such as promising to expunge the criminal records of those convicted of cannabis possession – something the current government explored doing but realized that it could not be done because those records are too disparate and scattered for this to happen. Even the current commitment to expunge the records of gay men convicted of gross indecency has proven exceeding difficult to uphold.

There are also a number of promises that stretch the bounds of credulity, such as making social media companies stop the spread of disinformation (good luck with that), abolishing the Senate – and in the interim, “insisting” that they change their own rules to rubber stamp all bills rather than exercising their constitutional veto powers (not going to happen), and lowering the voting age to 16. They’re also promising to institute a form of mixed-member proportional representation that “works for Canada” – and farming out the design to an “independent citizens assembly” so that they are absolved of any accountability for the decisions that are made. Once again, good luck with that.

I will say that I was surprised that in an age of “defund/abolish the police” rhetoric and aping American Democrat talking points at every opportunity, the document was not calling for that in any regard. Not breaking up the RCMP, ending their contract policing services, or anything remotely like that. If anything, it called for the expansion of current police forces by providing them with even more resources for dealing with hate crimes, gun control, and by enforcing “zero tolerance” policies, you would basically need a steady influx of new police officers to replace the ones who are being drummed out. It’s certainly not what I would have expected from a party that bills itself on being the progressive voice in Canada – the branch plant to the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez crowd – and my only guess was that this was their way of forestalling the “soft on crime” taunts rather than being bold in setting policy, especially considering that they don’t care about jurisdiction in any other regard.

All of this to say that this particular platform was an entirely predictable effort from Singh and company – a lot of blue-sky ideas, unachievable promises, disingenuous characterizations of the current situation, and the belief that simple willpower will make all of their dreams come true. Singh may accuse Trudeau of being a man of pretty words, but he should look in the mirror.

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The good news is the election speculation can finally end. The bad news, well the bad news is all around us.

Western North America is on fire, or if not on actual fire, suffering from severe drought. Greece is on fire. Catastrophic floods are occurring everywhere from Europe to China. There was a “heat dome” that settled over B.C. And elsewhere, when it has been hot this summer, it has been very hot indeed.

Just this week, the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body studying climate science, put out its latest report which confirmed what is increasingly obvious: climate change is already here.

So, in some ways, now is the perfect time for an election. The IPCC lays out a coherent, and pretty dire, case for where we’re at.

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” the report says according to a Bloomberg report.

Bloomberg sums up the report succinctly:

The past decade was most likely hotter than any period in the last 125,000 years, when sea levels were as much as 10 metres higher. Combustion and deforestation have also raised carbon dioxide in the atmosphere higher than it’s been in two million years, according to the report, and agriculture and fossil fuels have contributed to methane and nitrous oxide concentration higher than any point in at least 800,000 years.

This is pretty grim stuff, but it is not sounding our ultimate doom. Not yet, at least. There is still time to put the brakes on some of the worst case scenarios. The earth’s temperature has, so far, only risen about 1.1°C from the 19th Century average. In the next 20 years, that will rise to 1.5°C without taking serious action.

And so far, none of the signatories of the Paris Accord have done enough to prevent warming from crossing the 2°C mark, beyond which the effects on the climate get much worse.

“This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

That’s certainly a dire statement, but it also means there is still time to make a difference.

So here we are at the start of a federal election — which reports suggest will kick off this Sunday — wherein we could perhaps maybe see some kind of solution proposed.

The current likeliest outcome is Justin Trudeau and the Liberals win again with a solid shot at a majority government. Which, if you listened just to their rhetoric particularly about climate change, you might think is a good thing. But it is probably worse that not good, but actively bad.

The trouble with the Liberal Party, this one especially, is how the way it talks about itself becomes all consuming, to the point they might actually believe their own bullshit.

Listen to your own voice enough talk about the serious and important work you’re doing to combat rising global temperatures — hey, there’s a carbon tax now! — and you start to really think that that’s enough. That good will and saying the right words is enough. This is a government, after all, where the prime minister and then-environment minister Catherine McKenna both marched in climate protests that were…protesting their own government.

(You can see a similar mindset at work when Trudeau took a knee at anti-police brutality protests, which again were protesting his own government, all the while he was surrounded by RCMP officers.)

Look no further than current environment minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, who was asked on CBC how that might change the government’s approach to doing things because of the seriousness of the IPCC’s findings. His answer leaves much to be desired.

“Canada needs to ensure that in the context of that transition, it’s extracting full value for its resources and using that money to push forward in terms of reducing emissions,” Wilkinson told CBC. “What we’re doing is saying it’s got to be part of the transition, but part of the transition is being able to raise the revenues that enable you to actually make the investments that are required to go there.”

So, you see, the federal government bought an pipeline, and is finishing its construction, to make sure that we’re able to suck as much oil — of higher-than-average carbon intensity! — out of the ground, so that we can make enough money to counter the cost climate change.

While it is a truly incredible answer, but it is quite honest. The government will never do what is necessary to actually reduce this country’s carbon emissions enough to meet the requirements of our own commitments. Never mind trying to exceed them.

There is far too much money to be made by oil companies for them to get in the way of that.

I would say something like, ‘This presents us with a stark choice in the coming weeks for election day.’ But I’d be full of shit.

There is little chance of a stark choice being offered, because we don’t have the sort of political culture that offers stark choices.

Instead we get variations on a theme. The best hope this election for a more serious climate policy might be the NDP under leader Jagmeet Singh. But pinning hopes on the modern NDP is a fool’s errand. Their party is not one that is looking for a radical departure from the status quo, but instead a party that is focused on wooing Liberal voters to pick up enough seats to wield slightly more influence in the House of Commons.

That sort of focus is not going to lead to the sort of boldness required.

The Conservatives are of no hope on the climate file, and the Greens simply have no hope of anything given the state they are in.

So, once more, we will fight an election on a bunch of piddling issues, with tiny solutions being sold as big promises.

All the while more carbon enters the atmosphere, and the globe grows ever hotter. At some point something will have to be done, but by the time this country is mobilized to truly do something serious, it will be too late.

We have our shot, but don’t worry, we won’t take it.