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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 content is restricted to subscribers

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 content is restricted to subscribers

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 content is restricted to subscribers

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 content is restricted to subscribers

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 content is restricted to subscribers

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 content is restricted to subscribers

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.


As the year draws to a close, I figured that instead of a greatest hits column, or some grand pronouncement about the past year, I would instead look at some of the political lessons that we learned. Well, some of us have learned these lessons, and others have steadfastly refused to learn them, which is one reason why we’re in the state that we’re in, and it’s not looking pretty.

1- You can’t outrun your best before date

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has been trying to do this all year, and despite his best efforts, ignoring the problem has not made it go away. Even when the signs were there over a year ago that it was time to pack it in and let someone else lead them in the next election, Trudeau refused. With a saviour complex and surrounded by a small cadre who insist that he’s the only one who can defeat Pierre Poilievre, the polls kept slipping. The by-election losses and the resulting caucus unrest should have been even more conclusive signs that he needed to rethink some life choices, but he refused. In spite of saying he likes data, those members of his caucus showed him the polls, one after the other, and told him what they’re hearing on their doorsteps, but he still refused.

And then, Trudeau made a big mistake. In trying to sideline Chrystia Freeland, he showed that loyalty will win you no favours with him, and that his political judgment is impaired. Some people have suggested that we need term limits for first ministers to prevent this, but really, the natural “best before” date wouldn’t really require some kind of legislated term limit. It does require that said first ministers pay attention to their surroundings, and know when it’s time to go, and for caucus members to be more assertive in letting the leader know when it’s time, but I’m reluctant to impose new rules that aren’t really necessary.

2- Jagmeet Singh cannot be trusted to operate in good faith

Singh made a big song and dance at the end of summer about how he was “tearing up” the Supply and Confidence agreement with the Liberals, in spite of the Liberals living up to the agreement and acting in good faith, and bringing the NDP leads on files into the tent so that they could see how the machinery of government operates (because they don’t have a clue). Singh even admitted that the Liberals were operating in good faith in the agreement, and tacitly admitted that in tearing it up, he was the one acting in bad faith. In the months since, he has waffled on important policy issues like carbon pricing, or what it would take to bring the government down, and he continues to blame the federal government for things the provinces aren’t doing. His MPs sometimes demanding that the prime minister somehow “force” premiers to behave in certain ways, as if the division of powers didn’t exist in the constitution. So long as Singh remains in charge, the NDP have shown that they cannot be trusted.

3- Pierre Poilievre will lie to you about absolutely everything

This one goes pretty much without saying, and yet, we have a whole lot of credulous media outlets (and Elder Pundits) who keep trying to find excuses to take Poilievre at his word, even though he is proven consistently wrong about absolutely everything. He has tried “debt bomb” hysteria, lies about what is happening in correctional facilities, the state of violent crime in the country, what actually happened with BC’s drug decriminalization experiment, and the so-called “woke identity politics” that he claims broke the country. He continues to make false promises that don’t add up, whether on housing affordability, or his planned “crackdown on crime.”  Every single thing he says is false, misleading, and it’s with intent, not ignorance.

Why? Because lies are an easy way to play on people’s emotions in a way that lets you lead them to your opinions. And what emotions are easiest to tap? Rage and resentment, and we’ve seen this play out in spades in the most recent US election, and Poilievre has been sowing those seeds dutifully here for the past couple of years. This also lends itself to authoritarian tactics, the notion that everything is so broken that it needs to be destroyed and rebuilt, and that only one person—in this case, Poilievre—can fix it, which is yet another lie, but who’s counting at this point?

4- Nobody wants to admit that decades of bad policy got us to this point

There has been a whole lot of complaining about how “broken” everything is, and how the so-called “Canadian Dream” is on life support, and everyone seems to want to blame the current federal government. The reality, however, is that there are a whole lot of structural programs that go back decades, from the systemic underfunding of healthcare and the justice system by provinces, to the NIMBY policies that refused to allow densification or just more houses to be built because it would mean that the value of someone’s home might not appreciate at a skyrocketing rate. Nobody wants to talk about how the Boomers pulled the ladder up behind themselves, and that they don’t care about the generational unfairness left behind in their wake, but will simply tell the next generation that they just need to work harder and not eat so much avocado toast. Actually acknowledging this reality might mean that we can work on policy solutions, but a lot of people don’t want to learn that lesson.

Hopefully these political lessons will help us move into a more productive 2025, which is going to be a gruelling year with the incoming Trump administration and the chaos it brings with it, as well as the federal election which will happen at some point, but who can say when? Regardless, heeding these lessons can help to avoid more headaches for all involved, if the players involved actually bother to take them to heart.

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 content is restricted to subscribers

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.


The events south of the border, with the sight of Elon Musk directing not only certain aspects of US government policy, but now bills going through Congress, has a lot of red flags about the influence of tech bros on government. We’re also seeing a number of other tech billionaires “donating” millions of dollars to incoming president Donald Trump’s inauguration, no doubt in an attempt to curry favour, and to obey in advance, but also because they believe that they can exert influence on the incoming Trump administration. Musk’s role of creating “efficiency” in government is going to be a racket that other billionaires and tech bros are going to hope to get in on—an ability to influence rules and regulations in a way that will benefit them and their companies, and enrich themselves even further. There is also the issue of big American companies investing in Bitcoin to curry favour with Trump and his circles. Given how much Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have a culture of monkey-see-monkey-do when it comes to MAGA and Trump, should we worry about this kind of influence in Canada? Quite likely.

There are definite reverberations from the American culture war here in Canada, most especially among the Conservative caucus, when it comes to the influence Musk has. When you think about the announcement into investments into Telesat a few months ago, there was no shortage of Conservative MPs tweeting to Musk to claim that he could have provided Starlink for cheaper, even though what Telesat was looking to do was not entirely the same as what Starlink offers. Nevertheless, Musk has been a vocal critic of Justin Trudeau and has threatened to help remove him from office, which should be fairly concerning when we talk about foreign interference in our elections, coming from someone who has a demonstrated ability and willingness to manipulate the algorithms on his social media platform to benefit of this preferred political candidate. Conservatives in this country would no doubt welcome any assistance he would offer, believing that he’s doing it for the “right reasons” (i.e. benefitting their electoral chances) rather than because he expects favours in return (i.e. deregulating things that pertain to his business interests).

Poilievre has already been making a big production of listening to tech bros in Canada, particularly those at Shopify, who have been one of the country’s largest success stories. Poilievre recently tweeted support for a rant from CFO Kaz Nejatian about how the answer to building in Canada is to “cut regulation,” and while he bemoans that it has become “impossible to build” in Canada, the same thing is being said by people in pretty much every Western country, including the US. (It also bears mentioning that Nejatian’s wife runs a far-right “media” outlet whom the Conservatives are fond of, so the connections with the Conservatives are already baked in). But we should be cautious about the constant calls to “cut regulation,” because we have to remember what a lot of that regulation is for—health and safety, labour standards, or frankly to ensure that corporations don’t abuse environmental or human rights. The demand to “cut regulation” is frequently a call to governments to allow them to exploit either the environment or workers, which is precisely why it some of the calls for deregulation to be resisted.

I have little doubt that there are places where regulations create problems and inefficiencies—municipal zoning rules and certain building code measures that contradict best practices in jurisdictions like Europe being a prime example—but these are things that federal governments can have very little control over, which is the point of the Housing Accelerator Fund, to try and drive those changes (and no, Poilievre’s plan to punish or reward municipalities for housing completion targets won’t work because he’s trying to use funds that don’t go to municipalities, but go to provinces directly). But we also have to remember that we’ve had attempts at federal and provincial levels to “cut red tape” for going on a couple of decades now and wouldn’t you know it, those same complaints about regulation are still coming from the business community, which again raises the suspicion that this is more about looking for the ability to exploit.

When asked about the tech broligarchy’s influence in American politics right now, journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, calling it an incoming “techno-oligarchic regime,” made the following observation: “One of the mistakes that people are making is that imagining the executive more power, including effectively power without control or the ability to bend the law, is that it will somehow be good for business. This is a very seductive argument that I think a lot of people do believe—Musk, Theil, and maybe Bezos and Zuckerberg. They think it will be good for them, and they could be right in the short term… The mistake they make, and in the longer term, almost always these regimes are bad for business. Hungary, which is a state that so many on the far-right now admire as a model, is now, depending on how you count, the second or third-poorest country in Europe.”

There is reason to be concerned with Poilievre’s professed desire to broadly deregulate in his quest for smaller government and a doctrinaire belief that “gatekeepers” and bureaucracy are what is stifling the economy. As much as he currently professes to be a convert to private-sector labour support, his own record betrays that claim, which likely means a potential rollback of protections for workers (cheered on by certain business lobby groups, in spite of Poilievre badmouthing them). Environmental protections and regulations are almost guaranteed to be slashed under a Poilievre government, but as was demonstrated under the Harper years, this merely led to an increase in litigation that didn’t make projects happen any faster—it just made a whole bunch of lawyers a whole lot richer. I have little doubt that Poilievre will also follow the siren call of more authoritarian executive powers supposedly being good for business, to the detriment of long-term thinking and action, particularly if more of the tech bros he idolizes start banging that drum for him. There will be no smart or logical way to tackle regulatory inefficiency—it will be a slash and burn approach that will benefit a very select few people, and be a major detriment to the majority of Canadians.

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.