For Labour Day, politicians always love to tout their records as leaders of, and defenders for, working people. Sometimes it’s authentic, sometimes it’s cosplay, but it is always banal pandering that is never worth taking too seriously. Except, for once, I am compelled to bite, because Avi Lewis has decided to make an actually serious point in one of these - or, more accurately, a deeply unserious point masquerading as one.
Avi Lewis has said that it is “just as important” to stand up to businesses “that make fountains of money” as it is to stand up to Donald Trump. And to that I just laugh, because at some point it’s worth asking a singular follow up question to this mindless populism that has infected America.
..
It’s obviously absurd to compare the threat of Trump to the threat of corporate success. It is offensive to Canadians suffering the consequences of Trump to make this comparison, but even ignoring that, it’s still absurd. Avi Lewis is, for better or for worse, talking about a fairly radical reinvention of Canada these days. He is not being an incrementalist in tone and demeanour, and while there’s little clear policy I’m not really expecting him to take over a party and reform its policy book explicitly in less than 6 months. But he’s talking a big game, and I just have one question for him.
Where’s the money going to come from for all these grand plans?
Lewis’ own words show that he thinks Canadian companies being too successful is a bad thing. And the obvious responses are as numerous as they are angering. Who gets to decide what is too successful, who gets to determine the “correct” level of success someone should have, and most of all has anyone on the populist left thought about what happens if these companies stop paying our taxes and head somewhere else?
The oil industry can’t do the last, but they’re also not really the economic enemies of this saga. Are gas prices high? Sure, but that’s because of Donald Trump. Oil is a global market sold to the highest bidder - should Canadian companies be mandated to take a lower price without compensation? Because while Lewis might love it if oil companies just shut down all of their production because it’s uneconomical, that’s not exactly going to help Canadian (or global) customers for gas to shut off an important source of production. It’s also just plain reality that the oil industry sees massive losses up front and therefore higher profits on the back end, and yes, when Donald Trump decides to start a war against Iran for no reason and it spikes oil prices, they benefit - as do Canadian and Albertan taxpayers, who are getting significantly above trend tax and royalty payments from the oil companies, and whose workers and employees are going to provide a pretty nice boost to the revenues when their end of year bonuses are good.
But more broadly, Canadian companies being successful is a good thing. We need Canadian successes because those successes are going to be crucial in achieving any number of goals in the future, from investments in transitional and supporting housing, the green transition, proper Pharmacare, Alto and its expansions, and any number of other initiatives that we need. For as annoying as listening to the opinions of Corporate Canada - even when they’re not trying to end the concept of representative democracy - can be, Canada does need the revenues that a robust economy provides.
Mark Carney’s actual premise on which his entire government and legacy rests is that Canada is being held back by overdependence on the US and more fundamentally the incompetence of much of the last decades of Canadian policy. Complain about the cuts of civil service jobs or whatever, but this is fundamentally a government that sees a rising tide as being the fundamental first step to a better society. Whether he can rise the tide is going to be fundamental to whether Canadians can continue to expect the levels of government supports it has become accustomed to, let alone anything new or more.
Put more plainly, an aging society means we need increased growth not as a nice to have, but a necessity to maintain standards as they are. We cannot afford to be purists here, or think we are above or beyond the need for economic reform. You cannot tax beyond a breaking point, and the Trudeau years were a good example of how a focus on distribution of wealth fails to focus on how to grow our wealth.
The problem for the NDP is that it would require them to be serious people, not idiot populists just shilling a different form of idiot populism. They’re addicted to a different flavour of the same disease that they see for the scum it is when the Conservatives do it. When Conservatives bang on and on and on about the Carbon Tax as the grave neverending sin that would solve all the problems of humanity, the left sees that for the idiocy it is. But when the NDP do the same with corporate success, they think they’ve actually found the skeleton key that will save Canada. In reality, both suffer from the same fundamental flaws of unseriousness and overreliance on a single conception of how the world works.
Canadians have become accustomed to the idea that we are one of the winners of the global economy and that the relative economic peace we’ve enjoyed since the late 90s is our birthright. In my lifetime, Canada has never particularly faced a bad economy that was unique to us, and has always had the benefits of low interest rates and the ability to borrow cheaply. Those benefits are not foretold as truths forever, and Britain is a great example of a former empire that now has to run itself on the basis of what it can get away with in the bond markets, and whose tax and spend policies are not merely political choices, but properly constraining on ambition.
I don’t want Canada to be a place where we have to re-write budgets at the last minute because we don’t have enough money. I don’t want Canada to be a place where the limit of spending is set by what borrowing rates allow and not what politics decides is prudent. I don’t want to be in a place where the choice is cutting OAS or a crippling tax rise that will hurt the economy and end up hurting more than it raises. And that means growing the economy.
Donald Trump is a fundamental crisis to Canada. The fact that Farm Boy overcharges people compared to what you can buy the same item for at FreshCo isn’t. The NDP’s contempt for corporate success is populist nonsense dressed up as concern for the working man and woman, and it is as idiotic as it is boring. Canada’s success in the next decade depends on growing the economy to avoid tough decisions that hurt people. And if Avi gets his way we’ll all suffer.
Leadership of the NDP is a vanity project for Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein. That's it. That's all. Raising their public profiles for their next books or speaking tours.
If he were serious, he would have run in the Toronto-Beaches or North Vancouver by-elections. Would he have won? Likely not. But a high-profile candidate would have had a chance. And he would have been seen fighting for the party.
I miss having a serious NDP.
Wealth inequality is global poison. If Canadian corporate success issues in reduced wealth inequality, they will be doing a service to all Canadians. If it provides goods and services actually needed by Canadians, it will be celebrated. But if that success comes at the cost of subsidies and tax breaks paid for by Canadian workers and consumers before anything gets to market, it should be challenged. Still more if it comes at the cost of stealing from our future through dangers to health and continued environmental degradation. There is a point where Canadian corporate success must be balanced by outcomes that genuinely benefit and sustain us all, today and tomorrow. If that balance is not assured inside private corporate structures, Canadians have a right to ensuring that balance is maintained through public programs. It would be great to see corporate leaders tackling wealth inequality directly. The means are known.