Jagmeet Singh Archives - Page 8 of 9

Following the release of the NDP’s “costing” document – a term that deserves to be used only very loosely – leader Jagmeet Singh declared that he is going to get things done where the Liberals haven’t because he has “unlimited zeal.” And then he started hashtagging it, and the memes started rushing in, because that’s their digital campaign strategy apparently. The problem with “unlimited zeal” is that unlike zeal, resources and capacity are finite in government, which is why one needs to have priorities and plans to implement them. The NDP have neither, but are using some particular sleight of hand to try and convince people that they have both costing and credibility when in reality, they have a hollow shell.

Consider their costing document – it contains billions of dollars in new spending obligations that they balance off (somewhat) with promises of billions in new revenue sources. The reality is that there is no way they can book that revenue in the first or second year like their costing documents suggest. This is part of the problem with having the Parliamentary Budget Officer doing the costing for these platform promises – he has to work with the inputs that the parties give him, and because implementation of these policies matters, he can’t judge whether the implementation is feasible. Thus, he has his stamp of approval on their proposed annual net wealth tax – and most people aren’t going to read the “source of uncertainty” disclaimer at the bottom when the NDP simply plug the “verified” numbers into their costing document.

The description of the tax proclaims that it is meant to “impose an annual tax of 1% on net wealth owned by Canadian resident economic families on December 31^st of each year, beginning in 2021.” It would be exempt on those whose net wealth is below $10 million, and on any wealth acquired through lottery winnings, because gambling apparently doesn’t have the same moral stench as capitalism. The problem? Our tax system is built toward individual filing – we don’t have “economic families” in tax law, and we would need to create a new structure to capture these revenues – and the American economists whom the NDP are modelling this policy from are clear that it needs to be “families” that can include siblings who live together, as well as children, to prevent income being sprinkled among them. There is also the added question of what counts as wealth under this regime (such as retirement savings), and it is going to take a lot of time to both legislate this, and for CRA to start making these determinations. There is no way they are going to capture $10.85 billion in the 2021-22 tax year. And yet they can claim the PBO signed off on it.

The trickier part of their costing document is that while they got the PBO to put all of their revenue projections on his letterhead, no matter that their input assumptions won’t pan out in reality because implementation matters (but hey, he gets to hide behind his “uncertainty” caveat), but for nearly all of their spending promises, they haven’t released any PBO costing, so you’re just going to have to trust them on it. As well, because their platform document was largely platitudes without any details of how they planned to implement anything, we don’t have any way to gauge whether these spending plans are realistic or achievable – and given that we know that the revenue projections aren’t, it really, really puts the question on the spending side.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy, run by former PBO Kevin Page, was not sold by the NDP’s assurances in their document, giving it a 10/18 – very nearly a failing grade. They did give a failing grade inside to the transparency of their plans, which is not surprising considering that they haven’t released the spending side of their costing, and the only reason they didn’t fail the “Responsible Fiscal Management” portion was because they reduced their expected revenue generation figures by ten percent (which is not enough), and included a contingency fund. It’s not too dissimilar to how Mark Jaccard gave the NDP’s environmental plan a 2/10 for its credibility because they have no implementation plan or even a pathway to how they will get to their emissions targets, especially as some of their stated plans would tank the economy for little in the way of reductions.

This is why it’s crucial to actually spell out a plan for how to achieve their policy goals – it’s not enough to be enthusiastic, or to use political willpower, of “unlimited zeal.” Enthusiasm isn’t getting Jason Kenney or Doug Ford to sign onto universal child care, or for every premier other than PEI’s to sign up for universal pharmacare – including the NDP premier of British Columbia. For Singh to say he’ll get the job done under the premise that these premiers will sign right up because it’s him and not Justin Trudeau in front of them is fantasy. Likewise, insisting that he’ll get all of the remaining boil water advisories sorted on First Nations reserves within a year is also simply hand-waving because each community’s problem is different – capacity, training, maintenance, distance, ability to bring in materials (one community only made progress after an all-season road was completed) – and if they could be solved by throwing money at the problem, they would be by now as the current government has not been shy about doing just that. Singh is lambasting Trudeau for not fulfilling his promise in the desired timeline while at the same time making a promise he can’t keep.

It’s not enough in politics to simply say you want to do something, and that it’s just a matter of willpower. That’s not how the real world works, and it’s doing a disservice to voters to pretend otherwise. We also need journalists to step up to demand answers on implementation, and to stop just taking the PBO’s word as the final authority because of the problems he has with inputs. Willpower or “unlimited zeal” is not an implementation plan, and it only sets up for future disappointments, as Singh has only been too happy to remind the Liberals, apparently lacking the self-awareness to see that he’s simply doing more of the same.

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.

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If you think the federal election has been a snooze fest so far, don’t worry, all the really fun stuff is going to happen over the next few days.

I say that because, typically speaking, it’s only in the last week of an election that the legions of undecided voters out there actually make up their minds.

Before then, they’re really only half paying attention to all the political shenanigans taking place on the electoral stage.

The fact is, for a huge number of people in this country (or in any democracy for that matter), the game of politics is just not that interesting, which explains why there are so many undecided voters.

In other words, they’re undecided not because they’re diligently studying all the various competing political party platforms, or studiously comparing all the pros and cons of the leaders, or carefully pondering the issues put on the table, they’re undecided because they’re simply not engaged in the electoral process. (This is one reason why you should take all those political opinion polls conducted in late August with a huge grain of salt.)

Yet, the closer we get to Election Day, the more the undecided voters will get caught up in the electoral drama and the more their minds will become focused on politics.

Knowing this, political parties will always unleash their best, most persuasive messaging campaigns in the last week of the race, a time when they figure voters will be the most receptive.

It’s not a coincidence, for instance, that Jody Wilson-Raybould releases her book this week.

So, brace yourself; each party is about to launch a full-scale propaganda assault.

And since these ads will be geared toward the undecideds, don’t expect much in the way of subtlety or substance.

After all, if you’re reaching out to people who don’t care about ideology or policy, your ad campaign shouldn’t focus on ideology or policy.

Nor will you have time to “educate” voters on policies or issues.

The only persuasive tactic that will work during this short but crucial period is to manipulate emotions.

So, watch for all the parties to bash us over the head with strong appeals which will tap into our hates, fears and hopes.

The exact tone of the ad messaging, of course, will depend on what the internal polls are telling the party strategists.

If, for instance, pollsters are telling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he’s falling behind, expect the Liberals to accelerate their efforts this week to demonize Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole.

It won’t be pretty.

In fact, if they’re truly desperate, the Liberals will throw everything they’ve got (including the kitchen sink) at the Conservatives. (Expect the name “Donald Trump” to pop up a lot.)

Also, if the Liberals are holding any dirt on O’Toole, now’s the time they’ll release it.

On the other hand, if Trudeau’s doing well in the polls, he’ll push a more inspirational, “vote for a happier Canada” sort of message.

Meanwhile, the exact same political calculations are going on in the Conservative camp, meaning if O’Toole is in trouble, he’ll drop the hammer on Trudeau; if he’s ahead in the polls, he’ll take the high moral road.

As for the New Democrats, well this is where their lack of fundraising success in the past, will come back to haunt them.

My point is, I seriously doubt they’ll have the financial resources needed to match either the Liberals or Conservatives when it comes to pushing a last week advertising blitz.

What that means is it’ll be much more difficult (but not impossible) for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to make any sort of surge at the finish line.

Anyway, watching all the parties for broke this week should be entertaining.

So, grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.

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For an election that is supposed to be about the future of post-pandemic Canada, and at a time when we are having a national reckoning about the thousands of deaths that took place within residential schools as the unmarked graves at those sites are coming to light, there has been a strange lack of a conversation on Indigenous issues. One would think that given the current circumstances and the public mourning for what is essentially the death of innocence in this country as we come to grips with our genocidal past (and some say present), that this might merit some kind of attention in the campaign. Thus far, it’s been vanishingly little.

The most discussion we’ve had over these issues has been in trying to wedge partisan games into what should be serious topics of discussion. As the Assembly of First Nations was releasing their federal priorities that they want to see parties commit to in the election, the media’s focus was on Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s statement that he wants to see flags on federal buildings return to full mast after they have been in a state of perpetual half-mast since the first discovery of the unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Residential School. This was so much the preoccupation that when Power & Politics had the AFN’s National Chief on to talk about her priorities, host David Common focused almost entirely on O’Toole’s comments.

Likewise, when the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami released their own list of priorities for the election, Common kept his focus on ITK president Natan Obed’s comments that voters should keep in mind what happened in 2006 with the Kelowna Accords during that election, trying to paint him into a corner to force him to say that he was endorsing the Liberals over the Conservatives, which Obed was trying not to do as he has to work with whoever wins the election. Let us also not forget the 24-hour news cycle of video of Jagmeet Singh being embarrassed as Manitoba chiefs declared that they were supporting Liberal candidate Shirley Robinson over NDP incumbent Niki Ashton while at an NDP event – again, the focus being on the public humiliation and endorsement over Indigenous issues. And then there was the TVA debate last week, where a whole four minutes were spent on First Nations issues, the bulk of which was spent by Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet declaring that Quebec wasn’t racist.

There are some particular differences between the parties and how they have approached these issues, and how their platforms differ on them – difference we should be discussing. The Liberals, for example, have a record of advancing Indigenous issues and reconciliation more than any government in history, but it’s also been slow, and prone to gaffes and personality conflicts between some of its current and former ministers. Sometimes it’s slow for reasons beyond their control – they can’t break the laws of physics when it comes to how long it’s taking to repair or replace some of the water systems on some remote First Nations reserves because of the limitations of ice roads to deliver materials (which was hampered further by the pandemic this year). Some provinces have been slow to respond when it comes to the calls to action for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls national inquiry (and it was the provinces who refused to let the inquiry carry on longer – not the federal government). And sometimes, the path to achieving results is messy, such as with the court fight over compensation for children apprehended by the child welfare system (where the litigation is about the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal overstepping their statutory grounds, not the compensation itself).

These are some of the reasons why the former AFN National Chief, Perry Bellegarde, and the ITK’s Obed, have been putting an emphasis on the progress that has been made – and why there is more to do. Getting the Canadian framework to recognize the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples took longer than it should have because Conservatives have been afraid that this would constitute a veto on future resource extraction projects (never mind that it’s their land and they have rights to it). The bills on Indigenous language protection and on creating the mechanisms to turn over child and family services to individual First Nations instead of the provinces were monumental and will have a massive impact going forward – but they are also things that will require more time, attention, and dollars going forward to ensure that they are able to succeed.

With this in mind, the Liberal platform is largely about continuing the path they’ve been on, moving ahead with the priority areas, supporting Indigenous-led initiatives – which has really been one of the things that this government has been relatively good at, which is letting these communities take the lead and giving them the resources to do it. The NDP platform, while full of photos of Jagmeet Singh meeting with Indigenous people, makes a lot of the same promises as the Liberal platform does but insists that they will get the job done faster, as though throwing money at the problems will make that happen. (If that were the case, those problems would be fixed by now). The Conservatives, by contrast, put a larger focus on regional economic development for Indigenous communities – largely by way of natural resource extraction. This being said, their platform also promises to pass a Critical Infrastructure Protection Act to make it illegal for Indigenous groups to protest by blockading railways as they did in early 2020.

While we can count it as progress that all of the major parties now have detailed chapters in their platforms dedicated to Indigenous issues, the fact that it has been virtually ignored on the campaign trail is disappointing to say the least. We’ll see if it gets any more than five minutes’ time in either of the upcoming leaders’ debates, but even there, these are issues that require some thought and nuance, and a pugilistic battle for the cameras won’t do it justice either. We need to have this conversation, and the parties need to make space for it to happen.

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Here we are halfway through the first week of this campaign and I’ve got a funny feeling.

I think NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is going to come out with a win. I don’t mean he’ll be the next prime minister, that seems like too much of a long shot, but I think he’s going to make some considerable inroads this election.

There has been something flat about Liberal Leader/Prime Minister Justin Trudeau these first few days. He doesn’t seem to have figured out why he is running other than it looked like the right time to increase his seat count. He hasn’t fared any better than I did trying to talk himself into making this election about getting a mandate to do big things over the next years coming out of a catastrophe like COVID.

Of course it’s early. It’s not like Trudeau hasn’t won elections before, it’s actually something he’s pretty good at. But he’s going to need something a bit bigger than announcing the government will train 1,000 firefighters.

For an election Trudeau has called the most important since 1945, it sure seems to be lacking that tangy zip of meaningful campaigning. And I think the big beneficiary of that is going to be Singh.

People largely seem in the mood to keep government in their lives. The ghosts of Stephen Harpers past are still lurking, and people don’t really care for that kind of grim parsimony.

Besides, Singh has Trudeau pegged.

Watching his opening election ad and you can really see where Singh’s advantage lies. “For six years we’ve heard Justin Trudeau say the right thing with no intention of doing it,” summing up the Liberals’ latest turn in government in a one neat and tidy package.

It’s the kind of thing that works well because it’s just so on point. Conservative attacks that Trudeau is some kind of horribly corrupt bungler just don’t land with the same force.

This is by no means a government that has performed perfectly, but it hasn’t performed horribly, either. It’s walked the line of good-enough governance in a country that doesn’t expect anything much better. So the Tory attacks tend feel hyperbolic and overblown.

But to call this a government that’s all talk and no action? That’s something that lands.

There is nothing they love more than talking about how great they are, and in making a show using the right words. But, again and again, they fail to deliver to the same level as their rhetoric. It makes the Liberal road to a majority victory harder, because this government is a known quantity. The public will be less willing to buy what they’re selling, having been burned so often in the past.

An easy example here is Trudeau’s promise that 2015 would be the last election using the first-past-the-post system. We are now into our second FPTP election since he made and broke that promise.

I could go through a list of things that the Liberals promised and failed to deliver on, but by then I’d have written a whole policy book.

This is why I think the NDP has a good a shot as any this time around.

For all the good the pandemic supports were able to do for regular people, they were still weighted heavily toward corporations, who took in tens of millions of dollars, still turned huge profits, then paid out dividends and executive bonuses like it was any other year. People understand the fundamental unfairness of that.

This is where the NDP promise to claw back benefits to corporations who took public money only to line their own pockets is a good one. It’s also more straightforward that a bunch of new ethics laws, like the Tories are promising.

It’s part of the party’s broader message that government can and should be the vehicle to make people’s lives better. It’s one of the great failings of the current government that they often opt to make people’s lives slightly better, but not too much better.

Plus, Singh is just so personable. His solid debate performances last time around bode well for his second kick at the can. If he’s able to repeat that performance and prove it wasn’t just a one-time fluke, he’ll make a solid case to the public he’s got what it takes to move up in the world.

Campaigns are long, and weird, and what seems obvious at the start can be totally off base by the end. But Singh is starting off with a solid message at a time when Liberal support seems soft and tentative.

It’s a real opportunity for the NDP to make some serious gains. The true test of Singh as a leader is whether he’s able to capitalize on the opportunity. He has everything at his disposal to get this one right, he just needs to make it though the next month without any stumbles.

But deep down, I’ve got the feeling he has it in him. That this is his time, and his party’s time.

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Pestilence, infernos and the Taliban be damned – it’s time for Canada to head to the polls!

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kept television camera operators in the capital bustling on Sunday, as he dragged his entire family to visit the Governor General at Rideau Hall, ahead of dragging Canadians to the voting booth next month.

For many people, the question was: why?

“Nobody wants an election before the end of this pandemic,” Trudeau insisted to reporters back in May. In fact, mere days before triggering the election, Trudeau claimed he wasn’t interested in playing politics and was too busy governing, precluding him from being able to devote a month to the campaign trail.

Fortunately for Trudeau, a 36-day availability miraculously appeared in his prime ministerial itinerary – the perfect duration for a general election! Despite months of assurance otherwise, Canadians would indeed be heading back to the polls.

Emerging from Rideau Hall and feeling the need to justify his change of heart, Trudeau delivered a speech that offered up the mushiest of pablum, claiming that this was perhaps “the most important [moment] since 1945 and certainly in our lifetimes.”

A curious, if ineffective, attempt at political spin. When it comes to the major issues, nothing has changed sufficiently to warrant an election.

To be fair, it wouldn’t boost a prime minister’s reputation to admit the election is a scheming attempt to acquire more power. But that is precisely what this election is about.

Canadians will mark their ballots on September 20th for three reasons. First, Trudeau misses the convenience of leading a majority government. Having to collaborate with other political parties is presumably just too much exertion for the inheritor of an Imperial Oil trust fund. Putting on boxing gloves and smashing the face of a Conservative Senator is one thing, but having to compromise with the opposition around the negotiating table? How tedious.

This is perhaps to be expected from the government that shot down its own electoral reform promise, as working with other parties would have become the norm rather than the exception under improved voting systems.

The second reason for next month’s election? Public opinion polls gaze favourably upon the Liberals, and perhaps more importantly, suggest the official opposition borders on a shambles. Both the Conservatives and Greens have embraced the curious hobby of self-cannibalism, with Erin O’Toole determined to be equally ineffective as his Tory predecessor. There’s no better time to strike than when your enemies flounder, fixed-election-date legislation be damned.

Third, history indicates that minority governments are rarely punished for calling an early election, even amidst a pandemic. Both the British Columbia New Democrats and the New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives called snap elections as minority governments last year, yet both were rewarded by voters with majority governments.

In fact, examples of minority governments punished for calling snap elections are incredibly scarce. Earl Washburn of EKOS Research asked on Twitter if anyone could provide any instances, and the best I could come up with – from both federal and provincial elections – was the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives losing a mere two seats in 2006. There didn’t look to be any examples from British politics, either.

If history suggests a snap election is rewarded, and timing is ideal in regards to the largely staggering opposition, perhaps the only mystery is why it wasn’t called earlier.

But other than Trudeau’s quest to amass greater power, there is no justification for an early election. Trudeau has enjoyed the confidence of the House of Commons, able to pass most legislation without hassle. And it’s been less than two years since voters last went to the polls.

Canadians do not fancy an early trip to the voting booth. It’s summer time, the fourth wave of the pandemic has begun to rear its fangs, much of the country is literally on fire, and honestly, many Canadians just don’t perceive a tangible connection between Parliament and their day-to-day lives at the best of times.

But as the world endures one crisis after another, what Canadians do crave is convincing, assuring leadership to navigate said problems. Climate change, a lingering pandemic, and housing affordability perch atop a litany of issues that require urgent and aggressive government intervention.

On Sunday, during a speech meant to curtail criticism as much as it was to inspire voters, Trudeau said, “The decisions your government makes right now will define the future your kids and grandkids will grow up in.”

He’s right. But many public opinion polls suggest that, at least on a personal level, it might not be Trudeau who Canadians prefer to shepherd them through such tumult.

For the NDP, whose leader is enjoying ballooning popularity, their challenge is to bridge the gap between Jagmeet Singh’s support and his party’s approval rating. And if they can, they might find next month the opportune moment to finally achieve what has proven elusive for them federally over nine decades: forming government.

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After months of speculation, it is now pretty much confirmed that we are headed into a federal election. A pandemic federal election, at that. Unless Justin Trudeau changes his mind over the weekend or if, unexpectedly, Governor General Mary Simon decides to ignore the advice of the man who just put her on the viceregal throne and chooses instead to listen to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who provided her with a rationale to refuse Trudeau’s request.

Both scenarios are on the outskirts of political fiction, so Canadians will likely have to cast their ballot by September 20th. Opposition parties, along with pundits and columnists, have been saying for weeks that we shouldn’t have an election during this pandemic, especially considering the Trudeau Liberals have won every confidence vote they faced in the House of Commons, giving them the ability to push their political agenda forward despite being in a minority situation.

However, while opposition parties pontificate about the needless election that is coming in the midst of the pandemic`s 4th wave and complain loudly about Trudeau’s power-grab motives, they are wasting valuable time trying to frame the electoral narrative that is before us.

Truth be told, we’ve seen similar attempts made by opposition parties in provincial contexts. While these political pressures perhaps helped Premier Moe to decide to back away from calling a snap election in the Spring of 2020, it was not an issue for Premier Horgan in British Columbia or Premier Higgs in New Brunswick. It doesn’t seem to be an issue for Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin either.

While a pandemic election is a gamble, most voters actually were not deeply offended by those who decided it was time to choose another government. Polls always indicate that voters never want an election anyway, so for political operatives making such a call, voters’ wishes about election timing are usually not a consideration.

However, things can still turn sour for Trudeau. It did for Premier Furey in Newfoundland and Labrador, after he too called a pandemic election. Cases were low on The Rock, and considering how elections unfolded in other provinces, the NL Liberals were pretty confident they were going to surf it too. Unfortunately for Furey, COVID-19 blew up in Newfoundland during the campaign. Candidates had to self-isolate after being exposed and in some cases contracting the disease. Things got so bad that in-person voting was cancelled and the deadline for mail-in ballots was extended numerous times. Andrew Furey saw his Liberals drop almost 20 points during the campaign, from a high of 65% before the election was called to 48% on Election Day.

That’s the cautionary tale for Justin Trudeau: unlike Furey, he doesn’t have the luxury to lose 20 points during a 4th wave campaign – and still win. Which probably explains why Liberal Ministers have been targeting Premiers, mostly Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, to pre-emptively set the blame stage for the 4th wave, in case things take a turn for the worse during the campaign. Surely, the feds can’t be blamed for a 4th wave spreading through schools, since that is a provincial jurisdiction!

Examples of a backlash for calling a snap election are few and far between. David Peterson in Ontario and Pauline Marois in Quebec come to mind. They prove that governments calling an election early without a valid reason can sometimes pay a heavy price.

Opposition leaders can keep trying to demonstrate the foolishness of a snap election, but chances are it won’t work. O’Toole, Singh and Blanchet have taken turns over the past week. Erin O’Toole has been attacking Trudeau by saying that the planned election is a Trudeau vanity project. Thus far, these personal attacks have failed to land. Jagmeet Singh has openly offered to support the government through the pandemic, stripping the credibility of Trudeau’s argument that Parliament is dysfunctional. Blanchet keeps repeating that Trudeau is the only one who wants this “hasty, unnecessary and dangerous election.”

A major flaw in their rhetoric, of course, is that these 3 leaders are making these arguments while being on the campaign trail, actively nominating candidates, announcing policies and even, in the case of the NDP, dropping its entire electoral platform. None of them want a pandemic election, yet they are all out there campaigning. Meanwhile Trudeau has been vacationing away from scrutiny and pesky questions about election timing. He is in effect the only leader currently not campaigning or even talking about the election. When he does, voters will forget about all the noise related to election timing and move on to making up their mind about who should lead the country in the post-pandemic recovery. The sooner the opposition leaders move on as well, the harder it will be for Trudeau to remain above the fray.

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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.