Poilievre’s Penny Wise, Pound Foolish Promises

Poilievre’s Stuck In A Crisis Of His Making

So far in this campaign, Pierre Poilievre has promised a tax cut on the first income tax bracket that will cost $13.5B, promised not to cut Pharmacare, Dentalcare, and Child Care funding for those who already receive the benefits, and tossed around another $5.5B in transparent bribes to old voters he’s bleeding with. He’s also nominally committed to two promises - balancing the budget, and getting to 2% of GDP on defence relatively quickly. So, here’s a quick question - how do you square that circle?

The answer, in all likelihood, is that we don’t - there’s no way the Conservatives are going to balance the budget, or come particularly close. They’re lying when they say they can offer all of this and still balance the budget, just like Doug Ford did when he made the same promises and then ran an abhorrent deficit even ignoring COVID debts. The problem for the Tories, as always, is that math doesn’t get easy just by adding a three word slogan to it.

Now, Mark Carney is also so far loose on the details of how he’s intending to reach his aspiration of a balanced budget on day to day spending any time soon - though, shifting the ~20% of Defence spending that’s on procurement off the “day to day” books is a decent start, plus transfers to the provinces for our share of transit projects and building new hospitals and other infrastructure. That said, it’s far more important to find out how Poilievre will fund his promises, given the absolute nature of his promise and the promise Balance The Budget has taken in the Verb The Noun ranking list.

The problem for the Conservatives is there isn’t a good answer. If they admit they’re not meeting 2% of GDP on defence any time soon, they look weak and feckless at a moment when strength is being rewarded and asked for from voters. If they ditch the promise for a balanced budget, they look like frauds, and even more problematically than that they look like every other politician - which is the opposite of Poilievre’s whole appeal. Part of Poilievre’s whole populist appeal is the idea that he’s a Different Kind Of Politician - making promises he can’t keep and then lying about it when the rubber hits the road is pretty much the usual playbook.

The other problem for Poilievre is he’s running as a Different Kind Of Conservative - a Conservative who isn’t bought and paid for by corporate interests, but a working class hero. A Conservative for people who shower at the end of the day not the beginning, as people have said before. The reason Poilievre is backing these social programs is because they’re bread and butter shit for his voters. I say this with immense respect for the people I’m talking about - I couldn’t do the jobs they’re doing, I know that for damn fucking sure - but who do we think needs government Dental Care, teachers and public servants in Toronto or fishermen and loggers in smaller communities on the coasts?

The thing about Pharmacare and Dental Care, as designed, is they’re massive wealth transfers from white collar professionals in Laurentia outwards to the regions. The Seven Sisters lawyer on the partner track and the 2nd year at Deloitte and the guy playing Solitaire in an office tower in Gatineau waiting out his retirement all have dental and drug coverage from work. You know who doesn’t? The lobster fisherman or the day labourer or construction worker working 60 hour weeks to make sure his kids don’t have to skip meals. They’re the voters that Poilievre is trying to win over - in many cases ex-NDP, but also plenty of Liberals, especially out east. He can’t just strip out two of the few government programs that actually transfer wealth outwards from the Toronto to Quebec City corridor, which is why he caved.

The honest truth is that Poilievre’s commitment to Balance The Budget was a massive fuckup, one that every other problem now stems from. Either he outs himself as a liar by breaking the promise, he breaks the promise by blaming Trump and pisses off a considerable amount of his base, or he has to go through with sizable cuts. Or he pretends that actually the sky is red and up is actually down, at which point he looks like an unserious fool up against Carney’s calm but boring demeanour.

Tariff revenue isn’t an answer either, as much as he wants to pretend it is. Yes, tariffs will raise short term revenue, but they’re net negative over time, because what you raise in tariffs is outweighed by the damage to the economy - both in raising the costs of programs and by reducing both corporate and personal income tax revenue. One of the things that’s been unremarked upon as part of Trudeau’s legacy is that the Canada Child Benefit operates as something of an automatic stabilizer, albeit on a lag. The counterpoint to that is if unemployment rises significantly and a lot more families with kids lose income, they’re eligible for a lot more CCB. This isn’t the only program that’ll cost more in a tariff war, but this is the problem with counting tariff revenues - you’re gonna pay for the economic damage in higher costs and get a shitton less tax revenue. Oh, and a bad economy sees a lot less people splurge for the new car or the home reno or any number of things that help the GST raise money too.

The other way Poilievre could square the circle is by telling the provinces to get fucked, but this is a man who dreams of being able to break through in Quebec, and if his fiscal plans come out and there’s a single dollar in transfers cut the entire Quebec media will act like he’s murdered every puppy in the province. Any ambiguity in his plans - if he refuses to rule out cuts to provincial transfers, say - will be spun by Liberal campaigners and the press as an implicit guarantee he will cut them. If the position the Conservatives want to take into the election is that the Feds are spending too much on healthcare and transit and the provinces need to pick up the slack, I look forward to Legault and Ford telling Skippy precisely how he can go fuck himself.

Every time Poilievre makes some big giveaway, he’s doing more damage than good, because he’s creating problems for himself. Poilievre’s spending spree is a short term sugar high that cares more about getting to the end of the day than it cares about coherence or totality. It’s Milibandian in its stupidity, because just like Ed in 2015, all the parts might poll well, but together it doesn’t add up, and the voters know it. If you wanted more proof Poilievre’s desperate and the poll are real, this is it. There’s no way out, and it’s all his own arrogance and failures.

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