Justin Trudeau's Last Stand

April 10, 2024 7:11 AM

To self-censor, he says, would mean “I start second-guessing myself and don’t trust my own instincts.” (slTheWalrus)

This is a Canadian politics post so please be mindful of that.

posted by Kitteh (115 comments total)

This sticks out: What intrigued me was that Trudeau wanted to talk about something I’ve long been obsessed with: how to renovate Canadian democracy.

Trudeau had a chance to be great. Canada had a chance at electoral reform. This whole situation feels so.. Canadian: we like to portray a certain image in the world, but with every day that image rings more and more hollow and casts a shadow on past achievements (such as they were). Trudeau's time could have been worse but also so much better. Also: Chrystia Who? Freeland's currency is spent, I'm not the only one who, for a brief moment, thought we had a future leader here.

Non-Canadians may struggle to understand just how off-putting Poilievre is: imagine a slightly less bombastic Trump whose charisma is so truncated that even the fervent supporters are doing a lot of work to convince themselves he's the one. He is a bully and a twat in the worst possible way. And he stands to win an election.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:29 AM on April 10 [43 favorites]

Poilievre is a horrible weaselly man with zero charisma who comes across as the sort of person who would say or do anything for power.

But Trudeau and the Liberals have run out of steam and there is no other viable alternative, so that is what we are going to be stuck with. I only hope it will be a minority government to reduce the potential damage he can cause.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:33 AM on April 10 [13 favorites]

Non-Canadians may struggle to understand just how off-putting Poilievre is: imagine a slightly less bombastic Trump whose charisma is so truncated that even the fervent supporters are doing a lot of work to convince themselves he's the one. He is a bully and a twat in the worst possible way. And he stands to win an election.

So, this person is the Canadian Ron Desantis?
posted by NoMich at 7:34 AM on April 10 [24 favorites]

But the depth and intensity of Canadians’ frustration cannot be chalked up to misunderstanding the division of powers or to misdirected anger.

Uh... yes, it bloody well can? We have a full and well-funded right-wing media apparatus dedicated to doing exactly that, especially ginning up and turbocharging the "misdirected anger" part.

I'm more left than the Liberals and they do stuff I don't like, but an easy 75% of the anti-Trudeau stuff out there is factually incorrect -- I'll strengthen that, anti-fact propaganda -- from people who are so generally outraged about the diminishment of white men as the default setting for society that they will believe black is white and dogs are cats if you tell them that's true, and it's all immigrants' fault.

This kind of both-sidesism is the scourge of journalism that underlines a lot of our issues right now. Justin Trudeau makes decisions I don't like. He and his parties have policies and stances I don't appreciate. I think I veer more centre than some folks here, but I'd say, on balance, after eight years, he's just fine as a PM. I'd grade him a strong C+ or B- depending on the day.

Ultimately, he's a reasonably intelligent man that makes decisions based on facts, and generally believes that government should serve the people and do right by them.

On the other side of the aisle -- frothing "axe the facts" rage addicts led by a man who's never been anything but a right-wing-funded politico. There are no policies or plans grounded in reality. It's sheer, senses-shattering abnegation of everything short of gravity itself. And people are buying into this in part because we can't just straight-up say that we have an adequate leader without some mealy-mouthed concession that "the other guys might have a point."

They don't have a point. They are divorced entirely from reality. And if we can't get journalism that reflect that basic divide of reality vs. right-wing populist fantasy, we're doomed.
posted by Shepherd at 7:36 AM on April 10 [90 favorites]

there is no other viable alternative,

It's really incredible how much work people will do to convince themselves not to vote NDP.
posted by mhoye at 7:36 AM on April 10 [38 favorites]

So, this person is the Canadian Ron Desantis?

Yes, but also a coward. Ron Desantis will at least flat out say what he thinks. PP scurries around telling his supporters one thing and publicly saying other things.
posted by Shepherd at 7:38 AM on April 10 [8 favorites]

It's really incredible how much work people will do to convince themselves not to vote NDP.

I vote NDP, but I'm not kidding myself that they are in a position to form even a minority government right now.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:38 AM on April 10 [13 favorites]

Justin is cooked. The national mood is against him. Some people are just tired, others are angry, others still are very angry. Facts have nothing to do with it. There is deep dissatisfaction with a whole range of things -- cost of living, housing, culture wars seeping up from the States -- and Trudeau is going to wear that, no matter what programs he introduces. He can't talk his way out of it -- people don't want to hear him.

Maybe if he had stepped aside a year or two ago, and given a successor a chance at a refresh, the Liberals could have avoided this fate. But that didn't happen.

I am no fan of his, but I honestly don't think his tenure has been all that bad. Covid in particular -- I really don't think anyone else could have done much better. I certainly don't get how some people have such virulent hatred for the guy that they drive around with Fuck Trudeau flags or attend weekly protests -- I have better things to do with my Friday nights. But for some people, being anti-Trudeau is their social life, and not even Mulroney courted that.

Governments in Canada have a natural expiry date, and Trudeau seems to have met his a couple years early. Maybe that's not surprising given the sped-up pace of the news cycles and how much we've been through in his eight years.

And as always, we'll vote someone out instead of voting someone in. The Tories will be the beneficiaires, even though whatever you think the problem with Trudeau IS, the Tories will certainly be worse. Twas ever thus.

We're in for a long five to ten years...
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:39 AM on April 10 [37 favorites]

It is puzzling, though. Here's this generally adequate guy who people are just mostly jaded about, there's nothing really fundamentally appalling about him, except that he's not more left than he is, like -- it's an old mule pulling a cart, just trundling along, decent economy, definitely too captured by money, but still, and now here's this actual turd, with barely functional legs, that has come along and offered to pull the cart, and people are like, "let's give the turd a shot" and "the turd is inevitable" and then there's this bright little pony off to the side, loads of promise, loads of good ideas, with an orange blankie, ready to run, on saying "oo pick me pick mee" and everyone is like "nah that guy could never pull the cart, sheesh, it's gonna be the turd, we better settle in for five years of the turd."

Canadians, really pretty disappointing overall, from a political perspective.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:44 AM on April 10 [28 favorites]

I guess on the plus side, with a Tory possibly coming in at the federal level, Ontario will probably finally fucking elect someone progressive to get rid of Dog Fraud (because Canada is really stupid like that, opposing parties at provincial and federal levels is A Thing), and then maybe that person and Olivia Chow (mayor of Toronto) can Get Some Shit Done around here.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:47 AM on April 10 [5 favorites]

Canadians, really pretty disappointing overall, from a political perspective.

this is all that needs saying

and to all of Shepherd's observations about the apparatus deployed to push people's buttons, this coordinated and well-funded rightwing outrage machine, we all know this is a fact of our lives now. it's just depressing to see the percentage of people who are happy to buy into it
posted by elkevelvet at 7:48 AM on April 10 [8 favorites]

to get rid of Dog Fraud

as a dog lover I would rather leave the species out of this

Ontario would be better served by a dog
posted by elkevelvet at 7:50 AM on April 10 [7 favorites]

Trudeau and the liberals are fine and adequate government and have steered the country through some of the worst crises since WWII. Covid, inflation, economic difficulties, the housing crisis, global warming, the rise of right-wing-nuttery, dealing with the Trump administration, wars and unrest, wildfires, etc. And they have done a perfectly decent job at it. But he is being taken down by lies and bombast and just the general tiredness of Canadians who want change for changes sake.

I also don't get how anyone could hate him enough to run around with Fuck Trudeau flags and signs. I have a hard time imagining any Canadian politician that I could muster up that much anger and hatred for, much less the mostly inoffensive and boringly adequate PM we currently have.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:01 AM on April 10 [20 favorites]

Trudeau had a chance to be great. Canada had a chance at electoral reform.

As Prime Minister, I’ll make sure the 2015 election will be the last under first-past-the-post system http://lpc.ca/ao3o #upfordebate

I guess 3.5 million votes for the NDP changed that tune pretty quick. Centrists are so fucking terrified of forming a coalition with progressives (or what passes for progressive, fucking BC NDP) that they'd rather continue to let conservatives win with 35% of the popular vote.

He is a bully and a twat in the worst possible way. And he stands to win an election.

Ah yes. Canada's version of Peter Dutton.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:03 AM on April 10 [15 favorites]

the housing crisis

This is the same government that said housing was a provincial responsibility? That's navigating the housing crisis?

But he is being taken down by lies and bombast and just the general tiredness of Canadians who want change for changes sake.

Mate, a house in Toronto is a million bucks and a house in Vancouver is $1.3 million, 13x the median annual income and you want to think they want change for change's sake? Anyone under the age of 40 just wants anyone who will give a flying fuck of them being crushed under the weight of a system that clearly isn't working.

Housing is right there at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If we don't have secure and plentiful housing then why are we even a civilization? What are we doing here? We can't even meet the need that underpins almost every other need we have as humans.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:08 AM on April 10 [35 favorites]

metafilter: the turd is inevitable
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:18 AM on April 10 [8 favorites]

I think the issue is that the housing crisis was very, very real and the Liberals had ignored the housing crisis until it looked they were getting decimated by the Conservatives in the polls. Immigration control was the lever that the Liberal government did have to control home prices and they refused to pull it until Marc Miller became the Minister of Immigration. If the Conservatives don't address the housing crisis in their term, they'll be voted out for another Liberal government (and maybe an NDP government?), but it's hard to give the Liberals another chance presently.
posted by DetriusXii at 8:19 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

My biggest fear of Poilievre is that he's actually talking about housing and affordability and that's going to swing young voters his way that would never otherwise vote Conservative. I think his government will do zero to actually fix the problem, and if anything, make it worse if it enriches their cronies in the process, but some people are going to see his campaign ads about housing costs and take it at face value.

I too lean left of Trudeau, but liked a lot of his campaign promises in 2015 and was looking forward to this new version of Canada. Instead, we got someone who's more status quo Liberal than his own father ever was.
posted by thecjm at 8:22 AM on April 10 [16 favorites]

My biggest fear of Poilievre is that he's actually talking about housing and affordability and that's going to swing young voters his way that would never otherwise vote Conservative. I think his government will do zero to actually fix the problem, and if anything, make it worse if it enriches their cronies in the process, but some people are going to see his campaign ads about housing costs and take it at face value.

The worst part is that a conservative government doing sweet fuck all for young homebuyers is just going to disillusion them from voting in future elections. Young people who would potentially vote at least for social issues just gone from the electorate. Perfect for the conservatives. So there's no downside or accountability for them handing fat public private partnerships to their cronies.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:26 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

Anyone under the age of 40 just wants anyone who will give a flying fuck of them being crushed under the weight of a system that clearly isn't working.

But yet a bunch of them will vote Tory. Curious.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:26 AM on April 10 [4 favorites]

But yet a bunch of them will vote Tory. Curious.

5% of the electorate disappeared from voting between 2015 and 2021 as well. Some people just lose all hope and give up on the electoral process, which IMO is far more damaging to democracy as a whole.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:33 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

Pollievre was literally pushing better housing policies than the liberals for years and then they adopted half-assed versions of those policies. I hate the guy, but housing affordability is The Issue here and the liberals just ignored it until it was obvious the conservatives were going to trounce them in the next election.

I think it is very important to mention here that Trudeau was originally elected by NDP and Green voters who really believed they were going to get electoral reform - and if Trudeau had followed through on that promise, the tories would never have had a chance at power in this country again.
posted by congen at 8:36 AM on April 10 [17 favorites]

If you check out the latest projections from 338Canada you can see that we're a... mostly... left wing country (where does the Bloc even sit on the spectrum, beyond Quebec-first?). And yet, the left wing parties can't get over themselves and see that FPTP is a losing proposition. Trudeau floated the idea of some kind of PR back in 2015 and then squandered it; now we're going to be stuck with Harper's Leftover Charisma and party for a few years.

Better to work with like-minded people and reflect the will of the people than to cede control to the virulent minority.
posted by clicking the 'Post Comment' button at 8:39 AM on April 10 [7 favorites]

For years I (a Canadian) have been hearing people shout that the “government needs to do something” about housing prices and availability. I have never found anyone who could explain to me what is it they could actually do. To a cynic like me, this feels like “won’t someone think about the children.”

For full transparency — my wife and I own our home outright through a combination of making double mortgage payments, then selling that home and buying a cheaper one outside of the Greater Toronto Area.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 8:52 AM on April 10 [4 favorites]

Trudeau floated the idea of some kind of PR back in 2015 and then squandered it

Trudeau wanted instant runoff voting rather than proportional representation. They're two different systems than FTFP, but they're not the same. I actually prefer instant runoff voting to proportional representation as it allows the local community to still elect their chosen party.
posted by DetriusXii at 8:56 AM on April 10 [3 favorites]

One of the many things the feds could do is literally what they used to do until the 80s - build lots and lots of non market housing every single year. Another is tax capital gains on housing.
posted by congen at 8:56 AM on April 10 [27 favorites]

To be very clear, I am not saying that the Conservatives would govern better (though I suspect they would do better on the below issue since it's so simple). But this article hits on huge, real problems with the current situation where the Liberals seem unable to cause basic aspects of governance to happen. Power is heavily centralized, yet without effective leadership.

One example (not even mentioned in this article): appointing judges. A basic function of government that we shouldn't even notice. Yet since the Liberals have been in power, they've systematically failed to appoint judges across the country to fill the full complement of the various courts. If you can't fix a problem this simple, comparatively, how can we expect progress on vastly more complex issues?

I can't summarize the situation any better than the letter from Chief Justice Wagner to the Prime Minister's Office of May 2023, reproduced in a recent federal court decision (Hameed v. Canada (Prime Minister), 2024 FC 242):

As you undoubtedly know, there are currently 85 vacancies within Federal Judicial Affairs across the country. Some courts have had to deal with a 10 to 15% vacancy rate for years now. It is also not uncommon for positions to remain vacant for several months, if not years, in some cases. As a concrete example, over half of the positions at the Manitoba Court of Appeal are currently vacant.
...
...the appointment of judges in due course is a solution within reach that could help quickly and effectively improve the situation. Given this obvious fact and the critical situation we are faced with, the government's inertia regarding vacancies and the absence of satisfactory explanations for these delays are disconcerting. The slow pace of appointments is all the more difficult to understand since most judicial vacancies are predictable, especially those resulting from retirements for which judges usually provide several months' notice.
...
Despite all these efforts, it is imperative for the Prime Minister's Office to give this issue the importance it deserves and for appointments to be made in a timely manner. It is essential that the vacant positions within the judiciary be filled diligently to ensure that judicial branch functions properly. In the past, the Canadian Judicial Council has urged governments to make judicial appointments more quickly. This time, we have serious concerns that without concrete efforts to remedy the situation, we will soon reach a point of no return in several jurisdictions. The consequences will make headlines and have serious repercussions on our democracy and on all Canadians. This situation requires your immediate attention.
...
Many chief justices say that as part of their efforts to respect the timelines prescribed by Jordan, they are currently forced to choose the criminal matters that “deserve” to be heard most. Despite their best efforts, stays of proceedings are pronounced against individuals accused of serious crimes, such as sexual assault or murder, because of delays that are due, in part or in whole, to a shortage of judges.
...
Furthermore, the necessary urgency in processing criminal cases means the courts' role in civil cases is being neglected. The justice system is consequently at risk of being perceived as useless for civil matters.

Yet there is still no sign of meaningful change on the issue and the crisis continues. Serious criminal cases get dropped all the time, families suffer from family violence and can't get a court order for protection in time, civil cases become prohibitively slow and expensive, and confidence in the justice system suffers. It also exemplifies the inscrutability and lack of sense accompanying these issues. There has been no meaningful reason provided for why this issue is happening, let alone any suggestion of what is being done to fix it.

I apologize for such a long comment, but I'm just so fed up with this shit at this point. And it exemplifies how the crucial details of governing are being missed in so many different areas. It's not unfixable with a Liberal government, but is it unfixable by Justin Trudeau's administration? Quite possibly.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:02 AM on April 10 [14 favorites]

> I actually prefer instant runoff voting to proportional representation as it allows the local community to still elect their chosen party.

so long as each riding has either one or two viable parties, because once there's more than that the bad randomness that fptp produces comes back with a vengeance.

on edit: in this essay i will (1/?)
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:16 AM on April 10 [3 favorites]

Look I appreciate the conversation about housing, which is fucking dire, but there are bigger issues on the table: abortion rights, bodily autonomy, homophobia, transphobia, and systemic racism to name just a few. You don't get to sit at the adult's table and talk about housing, dire though it is, until you openly avow and establish that all humans -- all sexes, races, genders, orientations -- deserve legal protections, and full support from all levels of government.

And the Tories, to a man, don't do that, so they can fuck off into the sun.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:28 AM on April 10 [14 favorites]

Shephard: Uh... yes, it bloody well can? We have a full and well-funded right-wing media apparatus dedicated to doing exactly that, especially ginning up and turbocharging the "misdirected anger" part.

I've noticed a distinct change in editorial slant since Jordan Bitove bought the Toronto Star. The Star used to be pretty friendly to the liberals, but these days there's a new "Trudeau did this bad thing" headline every day. It definitely feels like they're trying to influence public opinion.
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:30 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

I vote NDP, but

the specifics of Canada's parliamentary democracy mean that I always vote for whoever I think has the best chance of beating who I fear most. So given my current riding, that makes NDP a no-brainer. But I'd vote for Trudeau's Liberals in a heartbeat if I was one riding over.
posted by philip-random at 9:43 AM on April 10 [5 favorites]

One of the many things the feds could do is literally what they used to do until the 80s

I get why housing is a crisis, but I fear we're conflating a few issues and it bears some analysis:
- there's the sense of a younger demographic feeling like they'll never own a home (affordability, wages not keeping up with cost of living in some cases, meteoric rise of housing and real estate values in many parts of metro Canada)
- there's the growing visibility of homelessness, the unhoused. This is much worse than it was 25 years ago, astonishingly so

and no simple solutions. A major change since the end of the 70s is the shift started by Reagan and Thatcher that really undermined existing social safety nets and public initiatives in housing, health, education, etc. The extent to which we are increasingly individuals with our own little stakes in our communities and less committed to working as communities is a real thing.

If a federal gov't initiated a bold low-income housing program yesterday, what would it look like? I will cut through some layers of considerations, but in many instances it would look like China saying: "these towers of apartments go here" end of story. I don't think a Canadian federal gov't could do that, and I don't think we elect leaders who think that way, and there is so much regulatory capture and our culture has shifted so much that blaming a party is kind of pointless.

The last thing we need is 1950s solutions to 21st century problems. People need to set aside the electric car utopia and reinvest in communal/public transportation, and same goes with the housing issue. This goes against the grain of a lot of voters now.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:45 AM on April 10 [8 favorites]

Housing isn't even really a provincial issue, it's a local one. Like, hyper local. Like NIMBY activists saying "you can't put up midrise apartments near my mcmansion." Those things would be going up like woah if there was literally anywhere to build them. They're much cheaper to build and service on a per-family basis to both 80 story condos and detached houses. How do the feds make that happen when locally and provincially entrenched zoning rules make it simply impossible to tackle cost effectively. Who has the political ability to overrule stupid city and regional council decisions on zoning?

I dunno. As I've said before, I look out my window and see 5 construction cranes building condos, every day adding at least another floor of 10-20 units between them, and there's dozens more cranes all across the city. I'd rather we were building square kilometres of midrises in Cabbagetown or the Annex or any of the other hundreds of stupid little streets in the heart of Toronto that are just endless rows of shitty brick houses a bare five minute walk from the subway. It makes no sense but how does Justin Trudeau, or whoever else at the Federal level, change it?
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:08 AM on April 10 [11 favorites]

I dunno, we can throw 2.4 billion to the tech industry for AI research but all we can offer actual humans is new ways to go deeper into debt.
posted by rodlymight at 10:09 AM on April 10 [14 favorites]

I get really tired of the attitude (from the Liberal party, explicitly and implicitly) that we shouldn't criticize them because it could contribute to electing someone worse.

But not holding a party accountable and expecting good governance also contributes to electing someone worse, as effective criticism and fear of losing office is a force that causes parties to govern well.

And I'd argue the Liberals have a long-standing attitude problem ("natural governing party", "ends justify the means" type of thing) that justifiably rubs people the wrong way and further contributes to electing worse people.

So I can't get behind those who are judgmental of the act of criticizing Liberals (specifically those in the party and involved in governing, and I've heard this stuff directly from them) with the attitude that it makes you part of the problem.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:20 AM on April 10 [12 favorites]

the phrase i've seen for that sort of thing is "democratic centralism in the defense of milquetoast liberalism", i.e. the requirement that all party members (rather than just the party electeds) publicly support the party line once that line has been agreed upon.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:23 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

The scolding seems to extend to all people who don't support Conservatives, as far as I've seen. I know it's not unique, but there's a special flavour that irks me greatly. It would be different if they had answers to questions about genuine problems.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:36 AM on April 10 [7 favorites]

It's the non sequiturs that get me. If I say like "The Liberals aren't doing enough about [problem]", they're like "Oh, so you want Conservatives to be elected?". Without going through the part about how they take the problem seriously and plan to do something about it (even though that in itself would not be enough, but they don't even bother with that part).
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:40 AM on April 10 [4 favorites]

If a federal gov't initiated a bold low-income housing program yesterday, what would it look like?

It would recognize that yes, government(s) has (have) to be building, promoting and mandating social/geared-to-income/co-op housing, like they once did before. Government would make renting a better option for both tenants and landlords. Pressure to reform local zoning and NIMBY provisions. A bigger push for the 15-minute city, and density around transit hubs.

(side note - my architect friend tells me that in Ontario, getting permits in different municipalities is often misery - no consistency in zoning regulations, and most planning & permit offices are understaffed. Simple stuff taking 6+ months to get approved. LOTS of room for improvement here.)

Trudeau fatigue has definitely settled in. Trudeau himself seems tired. But even globally there's more anxiety and a turn to the right, and Trudeau's "sunny ways" is a harder sell these days. I guess the best we can hope for is a minority Tory government, and Poilievre implodes like Liz Truss.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:41 AM on April 10 [5 favorites]

see also: "Biden is supporting genocide in Gaza"

SO YOU ARE VOTING FOR TRUMP IS THAT IT
posted by elkevelvet at 10:42 AM on April 10 [8 favorites]

It would recognize that yes, government(s) has (have) to be building, promoting or mandating social/geared-to-income/co-op housing, like they once did before.

I don't disagree. But "like they once did before" is doing a lot of work. You can barely enforce covid mandates in this country, how is a federal gov't going to implement bold housing strategies at this rate? Just saying they can/should is one thing, I am curious to see what it would look like. There is a lot of power and money pushing against it and I don't see Canadians electing leaders who would put the fight into it.
posted by elkevelvet at 10:45 AM on April 10 [2 favorites]

how is a federal gov't going to implement bold housing strategies at this rate? Just saying they can/should is one thing, I am curious to see what it would look like.

For a start... leadership. Highlighting the problem, discussions with provincial and municipal governments, formulation of goals, and federal carrots and sticks to push forward.

Yes, this is all fuzzy, but the feds have until recently been just about AWOL on the housing problem.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:56 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

I liked this piece and will revisit it more in depth.

Just from a comms perspective though - the reason Trudeau became a slur so easily is because Pierre Elliott's NEP basically begat the populist conservative movement in Western oil-producing provinces. And of course, famously, PET gave the finger in Salmon Arm over the Constitution. It didn't take much. Although the Cairo-based content farms certainly have helped! (If you want to despair of modern media, listen to that podcast - it's pretty astonishing.)

Here's Justin's answer to a kid asking about the finger. I actually wish THIS Justin Trudeau would show up more often. But his answer still shows his weakness - he doesn't really say "I wish my dad had not treated protesters that way," or whatever, he says "My dad made good decisions and I will be doing that too." I knew Justin briefly in our youth and this is his big weakness in communication - he really often goes to "but our policies are good" or "but I'm going to do what I think is right" when he could pause on that and connect.

I was really frustrated listening to him answer Matt Galloway's question on The Current I think it was last week about why does he think people hate him. He launched into the whole 'but-we-have-good-policies' thing, and like, man, I don't entirely disagree but could you just say something like "I don't know why man, I care about Canadians" or say "I wish they didn't" or something just human. Get off your Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf pedestal from time to time.

When Pierre Pollievre comes off as more human than you that's a real problem. I think it's not the only problem, but I think it is a significant problem.

The Liberals have been arrogant. It is a Canadian Liberal thing (see also: pre-Wynne Ontario) and it takes them down all the time. I think they did a really good job over Covid; saved my business directly and fed my staff directly and did it in the way I wish governments would, which was, get the money out, catch the fraud later. I can't quite support them wholeheartedly though. Like a lot of Canadians I tend to vote strategically and against someone. I actually like the current federal balance of power.

But we know Pollievre is going to come in. I really hope he does not take the Bank of Canada down and invest in cryptocurrency.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:01 AM on April 10 [13 favorites]

But we know Pollievre is going to come in. I really hope he does not take the Bank of Canada down and invest in cryptocurrency.

I'm sure his in-laws are bursting with innovative ideas on attaining increased prosperity.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 11:07 AM on April 10 [3 favorites]

→ But for some people, being anti-Trudeau is their social life

Some of the construction people we work with seem to now be using "Trudeau Must Go!" as a leave taking phrase. It's a weaker local version of"let's Go Brandon" kind of thing. Depressing as hell that anyone can see anything in PP apart from a blatant opportunist.

It's pretty clear that the internal machine of the Liberal Party is very isolated from reality, and even Trudeau can't influence or change that. The whole mess over how Jody Wilson-Raybould was treated was horrid, yet no insider or process was harmed.
posted by scruss at 11:11 AM on April 10 [3 favorites]

The whole mess over how Jody Wilson-Raybould was treated was horrid, yet no insider or process was harmed.

As was the SNC Lavalin fiasco, Trudeau's zealous protection of a criminal organisation lazily passed off as 'saving jobs'. The Liberal Party of Canada has been remarkably adept at stomping on their own gonads for years.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 11:16 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

It's pretty clear that the internal machine of the Liberal Party is very isolated from reality, and even Trudeau can't influence or change that

Trudeau and Freeland are both out of touch, to be exceedingly mild. Here's the most recent statement from the PM that got my blood boiling:

Young Canadians put a lot of their hard-earned money towards rent every month. We think that should count for a lot more – like towards your credit score.

This sort of detached nonsense -- along with Freeland giving smirking, profoundly ignorant responses to questions about Canadians facing economic hardship -- only serves to fuel loathsome reptiles like Poilievre.

I have no respect for the conservative party, or PP, but I'll be damned if I vote for Trudeau either. The liberals are sleepwalking into a massacre. I don't care if voting NDP is perceived as throwing my vote away, I can't support either major party -- they make me seethe with a rage like nothing else.
posted by Dark Messiah at 11:18 AM on April 10 [11 favorites]

PP makes Erin O'Toole look like an absolute statesman

PP makes me nostalgic for Harper's robotic efficiency

PP makes me wistful for Mulroney's chin, his charming penchant for indiscretion when it came to mysterious money-filled envelopes
posted by elkevelvet at 11:18 AM on April 10 [9 favorites]

Pollievre's reign will consist of a bit of economic populist window-dressing accompanied by tons of Freedom Convoy culture war bullshit.

> Trudeau had a chance to be great.

Nobody in Canadian federal or provincial politics can kick the "we only need about 38% for a majority" habit, so we're stuck with FPTP.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:20 AM on April 10 [11 favorites]

Some people making less-than their provincial median salary are going to save a couple cents per litre on gasoline and will consider themselves Free.
posted by Dark Messiah at 11:22 AM on April 10 [3 favorites]

> For years I (a Canadian) have been hearing people shout that the “government needs to do something” about housing prices and availability. I have never found anyone who could explain to me what is it they could actually do.

Simple. On Pollievre's first day he'll press the big red "LOWER PRICES" button on the PM's desk that Trudeau refuses to press for some reason.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:27 AM on April 10 [6 favorites]

Governments in Canada toe the corporate line, from government subsidies to oil companies which are massively wealthy, to allowing extreme consolidation for telecommunications and food companies, etc, to seemingly endless corporate tax cuts over the decades while Canadians are struggling and gouged silly in response by these self same companies.

They are wealthy so they can hire PR flacks and such to redirect blame. I live in Vancouver and over a 5 week period or so I saw local gas prices go up roughly 30 cents a litre. The response, on social media, that I saw was 100% blaming Trudeau and the carbon tax even though Harper first came up with the idea. The oil companies know that he will get then blame, not them, so they wait for an announcement then gouge away. It's maddening, watching how easily they can do this, while inserting their massive proboscis into the Canadian body politic and attempting to suck it dry.

Poilievre will only make this worse. A rat faced little shit heel and gormless fuckstick of the first order, he will be essentially a disaster for Canda.

A portrait I did of him a few years back.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 11:37 AM on April 10 [10 favorites]

Another is tax capital gains on housing.

I'm a real estate lawyer and I have a large number of clients that have purchased investment properties to rent them out. These are properties that those tenants likely could have bought themselves if the investors hadn't contributed to raising prices in the first place. From 2008-2023 when interest rates were historically low landlords/investors were fully expecting that they would be cash flow positive on their investment property from day 1, which basically meant that if the tenants could afford to pay rent they could have afforded to pay the monthly costs of that property as well. Nowadays they're more accepting that they may be cash flow negative for a time but are still for the most part expecting that they'll make money when they sell the property.

A simple solution would be to tax real estate investing so that the only profitable part would be creating new dwelling units. If you're buying a property to rent out both the rental income and your proceeds of disposition will be taxed so that you aren't making anything out of it. If you're buying an old house to make minor changes (no permits required) to flip you're being taxed so that it isn't worthwhile. If you're buying an old house to tear down and build another single family house same deal. If you're converting a single family house to a legal duplex/triplex/or dreaded fourplex then you're getting tax relief. If you're developing land you're getting tax relief. This would help pull money out of real estate, which is a drain on our economy and productivity anyway, and reduce prices because then buyers are only competing against other people that will actually be living in the house or making new housing and not people with excess capital hoping to be rentiers.

This simple solution would also probably destroy the electoral chances of whichever party implemented it for generations in the same way that Trudeau the Elder destroyed the Liberal's chances in Alberta because the middle and upper classes would never forgive them for ruining their real estate portfolios and they're the ones that consistently vote so I can see why no one serious is proposing something like it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:43 AM on April 10 [38 favorites]

I dunno. As I've said before, I look out my window and see 5 construction cranes building condos, every day adding at least another floor of 10-20 units between them, and there's dozens more cranes all across the city.

Fair enough that these conversations are harder in most of Canada than the US. The GTA built 40,000 units in 2023, which isn't enough to match Dallas/Houston/Phoenix vs population in the US but not bad either. Compare that to San Francisco, which permitted 1800 units in 2023. I guess Canada needs a safety valve metro with affordable housing, like Regina or some place I guess. TO also built 3X more than Los Angeles, which has 3X the population.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:14 PM on April 10

Centrists are so fucking terrified of forming a coalition with progressives ... that they'd rather continue to let conservatives win with 35% of the popular vote.

What I actually don't like about coalition-style governance is the opposite, which we've seen too often elsewhere in the world: right-wing extremist parties becoming normalized as part of government. These then force otherwise fairly centrist parties to more extreme government positions as part of the coalition agreements.

This is broadly my issue. I don't want the party I voted for, who are let's say are fairly rational, having to give too much weight or even cabinet posts to extremist nut bars who then get to decide environmental or immigration policy. It has happened in most places that have natural coalition election systems.

I am strongly against post-election dealmaking that change the policies of the members I voted for to something I explicitly did not vote for. I would rather have a new election, not a coalition that is pulled around by the nose by the worst the country has to offer.
posted by bonehead at 12:29 PM on April 10

I'm sure his in-laws are bursting with innovative ideas on attaining increased prosperity.

Venezuela shut down its petro cryptocurrency back in January. Maybe Alberta could be ground zero for an old-fashioned crudecoin scam, but it might be tough to get buy-in from the other provinces.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:33 PM on April 10

I guess Canada needs a safety valve metro with affordable housing, like Regina or some place I guess.

Winnipeg is a great city. I spent 3 years there for university and would have been happy to stay if I had gotten a job there. I don't know about Regina but I've heard good things about Saskatoon. Every province has places to live that while might not be the equivalent of downtown Toronto or Montreal are still better than their suburbs.

I think the federal and provincial governments should force industries under their jurisdiction to keep business units with a large degree of autonomy in the areas they do business in. Mortgage approvals for the whole country shouldn't be processed out of Mississauga but out of the county, or adjacent one perhaps, that mortgage is in. If Postmedia is putting out papers in Saskatchewan they better have a proper office there to report on local issues. Spread the "good" jobs around across the country and across the provinces instead of consolidating them all in the main cities for the sake of efficiencies which really just mean increased dividends to the shareholders.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:37 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

I've become a big fan of minority governments. Fingers crossed we land there.
posted by mazola at 12:42 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

I often find myself thankful for how many issues are within provincial jurisdiction.

Though perhaps if more "bread and butter" issues were federal (in more than just money transfers), people would pay more attention and vote differently in federal politics.

How it is now, the federal government ends up charged with a number of crucial things that affect smaller groups (immigration, fisheries, criminal justice, my pet peeve, appointing judges, etc), and important but fuzzy things that voters have a hard time apportioning accountability for (transferring money for healthcare, housing, infrastructure etc, joint control over environmental issues).

It seems like, in the absence of direct control on policy over more issues that hit most voters closer to home, federal politics ends up more pre-occupied with messaging and throwing money here or there to address the bread and butter issues ineffectively and inefficiently.

And then the smaller groups who are deeply affected by concrete federal policy are left out in the cold.
posted by lookoutbelow at 12:52 PM on April 10 [2 favorites]

I often find myself thankful for how many issues are within provincial jurisdiction.

[cry laughs in Ontarian]
posted by Dark Messiah at 1:06 PM on April 10 [6 favorites]

[cry laughs in Ontarian]

Albertan here: hold my 4 litre jug of vodka.
posted by mazola at 1:11 PM on April 10 [6 favorites]

If you're over 40 and own a house you have no idea the intensity of the anger on the housing issue. Most people I know would never vote for the Tories but may well sit out the next election since the NDP and Liberals have made it clear they're only interested in pandering more to the landlords and "what about MY PARKING???" concern trolls who got us into this situation.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 1:25 PM on April 10 [8 favorites]

The National Energy Policy hate is wild. I was working at a university in AB at the turn of the century and a significant portion of the young adults there, some of whom hadn't even been born when it was in effect, were both mad about it and would bring it up in completely unrelated conversations.
posted by Mitheral at 1:30 PM on April 10 [5 favorites]

Grmpyprogrammer - love you but take a seat on this one

There’s plenty the government can do
- incentivize selling your investment home by declaring a tax holiday on capital gains for the next 3 years for second (or third or…) properties
- re-zone land
- support co-op developments by leading and organizing them
- underwrite loans by say giving lower income people the down payment (and later if they sell the govt recoups/gets some cut of the capital growth)
- I dunno make the interest tax deductible like the states?
- further tax non-citizen non-resident investors till they sell (sorry!)

PLENTY

Hey Trudeau wanna make me minister of Ideas because I have Them
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:31 PM on April 10 [12 favorites]

These then force otherwise fairly centrist parties to more extreme government positions as part of the coalition agreements

Oh no, the poor centrists!

If there's something specifically bad the NDP has pushed the Liberals on, please let me know. We're not a European country with 6 different white nationalist parties in Parliament.
posted by Dark Messiah at 1:38 PM on April 10 [7 favorites]

The best case scenario for me is for something to happen to Poilievre to knock him out of the Leader's chair be replaced by a more policy focused leader and, to have the right wing nut jobs go to the People's Party and split the vote on the right and for Trudeau to take e a walk in the snow and step down before the election to allow for someone else with energy and ears to hear to take over and lead the Liberals into the next election.

That would at least make me happy to vote NDP.

A boy can dream.
posted by salishsea at 1:57 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

Thank you St. Peepsburg. A few of the many levers the feds could pull, if they wanted to.
posted by Artful Codger at 2:03 PM on April 10 [5 favorites]

underwrite loans by say giving lower income people the down payment (and later if they sell the govt recoups/gets some cut of the capital growth)

First-Time Home Buyers Incentive Program -- recently ended.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:07 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

I'm kind of mystified about what Trudeau is doing. He refused to step down but doesn't seem energized to defend his record or come up with new ideas.

For example, I'm really frustrated with his messaging and policies around the carbon tax. They absolutely should stick with the plan of regular increases but clearly their "but most people get that money back in rebates!!" message isn't working too well. Why not do some things with the revenue from the tax to make it easier for people to avoid using fossil fuels and then start talking about that? Reliable bus service between rural areas, investing lots of money into transit, even outside of cities, grants to help people install heat pumps, heck, even a reliable electric car charging network. The fact that the TTC, for example, is at risk of a major shutdown in part because it doesn't get any money from the federal government is bizarre in a world in which we're apparently trying to reduce our carbon emissions. It's baffling.
posted by fansler at 2:13 PM on April 10 [7 favorites]

Anybody besides me watching Trudeau answer questions at the Foreign Interference hearing?
posted by sardonyx at 2:22 PM on April 10 [1 favorite]

My biggest gripe with Trudeau is that he campaigned on a progressive platform only to govern as "conservative light". His policies have been almost entirely pro-corporate, particularly oil and gas, which have only worsened Canada's resource curse. Mishandling housing, immigration, and electoral reform are just the icing on the shit-cake. I wish we had a viable NDP that could actually win. We can only hope another Layton-like figure comes along.
posted by thoughtful_jester at 2:43 PM on April 10 [8 favorites]

St. Peepsburg — thanks for those suggestions.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 4:05 PM on April 10 [1 favorite]

yes but it will take generations for the bene ndperit to breed another kwisatch laytonach
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:11 PM on April 10 [14 favorites]

Non-Canadians may struggle to understand just how off-putting Poilievre is:

Ted Cruz
posted by eviemath at 4:32 PM on April 10 [5 favorites]

As much as I am tired of Trudeau's Liberals (I live in the area where we had 2 area MPs having to step down for various "issues" so I got good reason to see them move on), I think the next election is not for Trudeau to lose but Poilievre's Conservatives to win.

Honestly I am not overly convinced he or his party are up to the challenge. He's got to reign in his cranks (which was Stephen Harper's super power and PP's power seems to be eating apples and being angry) and come up with policies that include climate change action, a housing plan, and cost of living allowances to appease voters in seat rich Southern Ontario and Quebec. That's a steep challenge for a party that's mostly in the hands of very social conservatives who seem to be more interested in talking about what they deem as morality, their virulent transphobia, a desire to reduce or out right ban abortion access, more access to guns and oil exploitation. So yeah people may be tired of Trudeau but PP has to still win them over. To me that is such a steep hill to climb that I can't see them winning anything other than minority at best. They have had 2 other leaders who done nothing but snatch defeat from the jaws of victory while running against a guy who has worn blackface in public multiple times! The NDP's Jagmeet Singh is a smart MP but I really don't think he's doing a great job as leader. I think his NDP are a shadow of what Layton (or even the late Ed Broadbent) had built. The Greens are a mess.

But saying all that, as a reminder to Canadians, we vote for our MP not the leader in our first pass the post system (I know people totally do but you technically don't) and an individual MP can be better than the party they happen to be in (I have a Green MP and he was hands down better than the other candidates even if I think his party is a dumpster fire). Maybe decent individual MPs can make the change the leaders aren't able or willing to do?
posted by Ashwagandha at 4:48 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

> Who has the political ability to overrule stupid city and regional council decisions on zoning?

The province! I mean no politicians want to piss off wealthy single-detached-house owners, but they could. I'm excited to see what the big city changes mean.

My favorite nicknames for our next prime minister are Bitcoin Milhouse and pp.
posted by anthill at 4:58 PM on April 10 [1 favorite]

Re-zoning land can help, slowly, but the bigger bang for the buck is social housing. Upzonings mostly rely on the private sector to get houses built, even in the most development-friendly areas. So developers sometimes don't always build enough.

Grow the social housing stock using private-sector techniques to acquire existing buildings.. create Community Land Trusts. This has been done successfully in several European cities.

Community housing has proven economic benefits. There is a causal connection between the proportion of community housing within the overall housing stock and gains in economic productivity.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 5:10 PM on April 10 [6 favorites]

Sigh. I'm just disappointed that the NDP had plenty of leverage in the minority government, and they didn't even think of trying to pry electoral reform out of Justin. I'm lefty, and the NDP often disappoints me with their often lame policies and messaging (against an unsympathetic conservative-owned media, of course). (Hey, provincial ONDP under Horwath was just really pathetic).
posted by ovvl at 5:13 PM on April 10 [8 favorites]

Yeah the most relevant comparison of Pierre Marcel Poilievre to an American political figure would certainly be Ted Cruz. An abyss of attention-seeking desire merged with an absolute zero-level of likeability and charisma.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:18 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

Ted Cruz is intelligent, though.
posted by orange swan at 6:03 PM on April 10

Ted Cruz is intelligent, though.

But conservatives have to pretend to be stupid to communicate with their base so it's often very difficult to tell.
posted by klanawa at 6:39 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the article. It puts a lot of relevant problems into one piece.

These aren't "FUCK TRUDEAU" misinformation problems. They're the problems of a government that had a mandate to accomplish big things - and in partnership with the NDP, maybe an even bigger mandate to accomplish big things - but that turned out to be at best adequate.

The fight over Jordan's Principle illustrates a lot of what's been disappointing about Trudeau. Not long after his first election win in 2015, it came out that Harper's government was not spending nearly as much on healthcare for First Nations kids as it should've and promised it would.

This would've been a great opportunity for Trudeau to step up. Make an announcement that he was going to do the right thing, and then do the right thing.

But, instead, he had his government fight it in court for years and years. He would say pious things about being "committed to compensating those kids", but they just had a few legal concerns (that would delay things for a few more years...)

Courts and tribunals shot the Trudeau government's case down again and again from 2016 through 2021.

First Nations kids that I grew up with, went to school with, died in that time.

Finally, in 2023, they reached an agreement that will be implemented going forward.

...well, as long as the Conservatives don't get elected and wreck it, huh? It took two years of serious consultation with First Nations groups to come up with something adequate. This could've been started in 2016 and finished by 2018. It shouldn't have required the shock of all the unmarked graves of all those dead kids, you fuck in 2021 to get Trudeau to finally start doing the right thing.
posted by clawsoon at 7:11 PM on April 10 [10 favorites]

Ted Cruz is intelligent, though.
posted by orange swan at 9:03 PM on April 10

tbh Poilievre's ratlike cunning is better suited for survival in 2024
posted by ZaphodB at 7:22 PM on April 10

Someone once described the liberals to me as a party that could be pressured into doing the right thing, but they’d do it badly and only with great reluctance. Stuck with me because it describes their behaviour as a party so well.
posted by congen at 7:59 PM on April 10 [12 favorites]

Maybe decent individual MPs can make the change the leaders aren't able or willing to do?

In a parliamentary system? Not really how that’s structured, no. Witness, for example, how the multiple principles PC MLAs in New Brunswick - who even held relevant cabinet or other positions - were still unable to stop their party’s attack on rights of trans kids in schools. It’s not at all like the US system where Manchin and Sinema were able to torpedo any progressive legislation that the Democrats attempted to pass all on their own.

Not to mention the idea of decent individual Conservative MPs at the federal level, given the far right turn of that party, stretches the imagination.
posted by eviemath at 8:56 PM on April 10 [4 favorites]

I went down a rabbit hole on the judicial vacancies thing, trying to collect the data. And discovered that the committees that review applications have routinely been vacant for many months at a time - BC for 6 months in 2023, Toronto for 8, Manitoba and Alberta for 11 months in 2022. And not even appointing people to read applications is just straight up insulting.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:01 PM on April 10 [6 favorites]

Just wait until you find the rabbit hole about the Ontario Tories appointing the pals to the judicial hiring review committees with the express goal of hiring more judges whose political opinions align with Dougie's--and that's after not filling judicial appointments either and letting positions on benches remain empty for years/months. And yes, they've come out and openly said that's what they're doing. (Sorry, I know that's a provincial politics derail when we're talking federal issues, but I believe it's a story worth sharing.)
posted by sardonyx at 9:05 PM on April 10 [8 favorites]

It is deeply unfortunate that appointment of superior court judges is federal, I think (even though I know for Ontario it would be worse). All we can do is ask over and over and over and over again to please allow us to have a functioning justice system please. Like is the fact that the problems has been often worst in BC for ages coincidental or is it because it's far away? I can't help but feel western-ly alienated sometimes.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:23 PM on April 10 [1 favorite]

Trudeau has lost the public. Waiting in line here in Yellowknife, a guy regaled us with stories of Justin's evil. They were so preposterous that I don't remember them (such as claiming that Justin thinks that food comes from stores, not farms). But everyone in the line was receptive and appreciative of this rant. He must go, although who would replace him?

The Trudeaus have a way of fundamentally altering Canada for the good. Justin brought us decriminalization and the devolution of government powers to the Inuit in Nunavut. Both of these issues are squarely within federal jurisdiction.

But Justin's and the Liberals' approach is essentially managerial. They choose the least risk course of action at any given time, especially when it comes to matters shared with or within provincial jurisdiction. Managers, howsoever good they are, rarely have the imaginative and inspirational qualities necessary to galvanize everyone around a solution to a crisis.

I lost hope during the pandemic. Sure, the Liberals did a good job of governmenting to ensure a smoother ride through that crisis. Yet the pandemic was an omnishambles, a crisis compounded by the climate crisis, corruption crisis (some people call it the cost of living crisis) and a clear demoralization of the public. The pandemic was a true moment of opportunity, a time when people were open to radical moves to achieve radical results. That was the time to announce an emergency housing program and make a serious effort to sustainably resource public institutions. Their opportunity was squandered.

Instead, that opportunity was taken by authoritarians who used all the chaos of the pandemic to cry foul about any kind of collective measure, and limits on individual behaviour for the common good. PP is profiting from the popularity of that messaging.

Canada is following up behind Britain in the deliberate neglect of public institutions so that a frustrated public will cry out for private solutions. At the risk of being a ridiculous old complaining about the present, I do not remember life being so difficult, so rude and so exhausting 20 years ago. Everything takes so much time and effort to accomplish across the board, leaving no time/energy for anything that makes life worthwhile. This makes for angry and volatile people, as we saw with the Trucker convoy.
posted by SnowRottie at 10:06 PM on April 10 [7 favorites]

There’s plenty the government can do
- incentivize selling your investment home by declaring a tax holiday on capital gains for the next 3 years for second (or third or…) properties
- re-zone land
- support co-op developments by leading and organizing them
- underwrite loans by say giving lower income people the down payment (and later if they sell the govt recoups/gets some cut of the capital growth)
- I dunno make the interest tax deductible like the states?
- further tax non-citizen non-resident investors till they sell (sorry!)

PLENTY

Hey Trudeau wanna make me minister of Ideas because I have Them

Constitutionally speaking, rezoning isn't a federal power, so that's out (at least for Trudeau). Property taxation isn't federal either, so forget making mortgage interest tax deductible federally or taxing non-resident investors. So three of your ideas are straight-up not doable as a matter of law.

The feds could absolutely support co-op developments (and have in the past), to say nothing of straight-up public housing. But they need to own land/property for those developments, and most of the good land for co-ops where co-ops are desirable (IE, in cities) that the federal government owned was sold off years or even decades ago as the feds steadily divested themselves from property support. So it's actually pretty cost-intensive as solutions go. Still, it's a solution.

Finally, underwriting home loans in the form of government grants is within their legal power, but it's a terrible idea because the problem with home affordability is one of supply, and subsidizing lower-income people to purchase homes from an inadequate supply would simply drive home prices up higher, which is almost certainly why multiple parties have proposed it over the last few years: homeowners vote, and homeowners don't want home prices dropping, nosirree, that's their most valuable asset.
posted by mightygodking at 10:20 PM on April 10 [8 favorites]

Property taxation isn't federal either, so forget making mortgage interest tax deductible federally or taxing non-resident investors

What? Mortgage interest would be deducted from income tax, not property tax, so yes federal. Though it would likely cause price inflation, and it has to be precisely applied with a ceiling and means-testing, else it just becomes another perk for the well-off and the house flippers. Not my favorite idea.

Taxing non-resident investors? I'm sure there's a federal way to do that. Eg capital gains on sale, if you're not resident.

But this is all ignoring... leadership. Making housing a priority, Setting goals, getting input and buy-in from provincial and municipal governments, and twisting arms.

The national thing that really bugs me is the slow rotting of our healthcare system. Too much to say here. I know the attacks are primarily coming from right-leaning provincial governments, but still it's a federal responsibility to keep healthcare on the front burner, and they mostly fund it.

Ever since the NDP agreed to prop up the Liberals in the current government, I've always felt that, as the inheritors of the legacy of Tommy Douglas, the NDP should absolutely fucking OWN our healthcare as an issue, and they should be uncompromising in its defense. I also think that Canada should be building on medicine to become a world leader and net exporter of medical knowledge, technology and expertise. Duh. And maybe stop the shitting on our nurses. /rant
posted by Artful Codger at 8:23 AM on April 11 [8 favorites]

I much prefer Olivia Chow's approach to dealing with the federal Liberals to Jagmeet Singh's:

‘Outrageous’: Privately, Justin Trudeau’s Toronto MPs are furious at Olivia Chow over her property tax gambit

Liberal MPs are fuming after Mayor Olivia Chow’s administration threatened to hike property taxes even further if Toronto doesn’t get more money from Ottawa to cover shelter costs for refugee claimants.

Olivia Chow faced off against the feds and won — decisively

This week, Ottawa caved, announcing $362 million for Ontario and Quebec communities

She's not afraid to embarrass them when they need to be embarrassed and work with them when they do the right thing.
posted by clawsoon at 9:16 AM on April 11 [10 favorites]

There are two very different groups of people who don't like Justin Trudeau: There's the group that doesn't like him because he says he'll do the right thing, and there's the group that doesn't like him because he says he'll do the right thing.
posted by clawsoon at 9:34 AM on April 11 [7 favorites]

I also think that Canada should be building on medicine to become a world leader and net exporter of medical knowledge, technology and expertise.

We should, but we are so far behind it's not even funny. When it comes to medical research, the US spends about ten times as much per capita on the NIH as Canada does on CIHR.
posted by ssg at 9:53 AM on April 11 [3 favorites]

Conditional cash transfers are the ultimate flexible policy instrument of the federal government. It's how universal healthcare was and is maintained, and it is generally wholly within the power of the federal government to implement policy in this way. But conditions also have to be enforced, with teeth. And there hasn't been much ambition in this regard with money for housing, as far as I'm aware.
posted by lookoutbelow at 10:08 AM on April 11 [2 favorites]

In a parliamentary system? Not really how that’s structured, no.

I was unclear. I meant behind the scenes to encourage their party leadership to make the right choices. Though, as in your example, one would have to be principled in the first place to make a change which for many politicians is a challenge.

Not to mention the idea of decent individual Conservative MPs at the federal level, given the far right turn of that party

Much like a NDP MP who cares about the working class rather than their performative activism and a Liberal who cares about their constituents more than their corporate partners, Tories who aren't mouth foaming nut jobs do exist. Though, like those other two categories, are largely extinct.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:17 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

I think the next election is not for Trudeau to lose but Poilievre's Conservatives to win.

You need to look at the poll numbers. It will take a miracle between now and the election for us not to have a Conservative government, possibly a wipe the Liberals out of opposition majority.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:36 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Right now Polievre has it easy because all he has to do is complain about the current state of things and blame everything bad on Trudeau no matter who is actually responsible for it. In the run up to an election he'll need to articulate what his plans are for things like the economy, climate change, immigration, housing, health spending, etc. and then he'll be on the receiving end of attacks and we'll get to see how he does there. He'll likely still win the election but I'd expect it to be closer than what the polls are suggesting today.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:49 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

But this is all ignoring... leadership. Making housing a priority, Setting goals, getting input and buy-in from provincial and municipal governments, and twisting arms.

It's fine and good to say "make housing a priority." The problem with making housing a priority is that literally anything that will fix the problem of a dramatic undersupply of housing will also, by necessity, have the knock-on effect of reducing housing prices in an economy where house prices have become the be-all and end-all of investment/asset strategies for the majority of voters.

Nobody who owns a house wants to hear "we will ensure that there is adequate housing for everybody! And your house will drop in value by twenty to thirty percent at least." It's straight-up electoral suicide to do it: any political party in charge that signs onto any reasonable housing plan that actually fixes the problem will go into the political wilderness as of the next election and stay there for a generation at minimum if not longer.

What Canadians voters want from housing policy is a magic wand that makes more houses appear for everybody but also their own house doesn't lose value, just like what they want from climate policy is making all the CO2 go away but also they don't have to change their lifestyle, just like what they want from tax policy is low taxes but also excellent public services.

We are a profoundly non-serious nation, and we get the leadership we deserve.
posted by mightygodking at 3:32 PM on April 11 [9 favorites]

Making mortgage interest tax deductible is definitely feasible. You can already deduct a portion used for a home office. Expanding that would not be difficult.
posted by jordantwodelta at 3:52 PM on April 11

Mortgage interest is already tax deductible for investment properties. It isn't for primary residences but you get the capital gains exemption on the sale of that which has been significantly more valuable for the last 15 years at least. If you want to make mortgage interest deductible on primary residences to give homeowners some relief then fine but letting them have that as well as the profits off a sale tax free is just handing more money over to people who are already wealthy.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:02 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

The problem with making housing a priority is that literally anything that will fix the problem of a dramatic undersupply of housing will also, by necessity, have the knock-on effect of reducing housing prices in an economy where house prices have become the be-all and end-all of investment/asset strategies for the majority of voters.

But there has been a golden opportunity on this front over the last few years. You can let inflation do the dirty work for you. Aim for policies that keep house prices constant in nominal dollars, but let inflation slowly reduce real prices. Instead the Liberals (and various provincial governments) mostly pursued policies that made house prices increase.

There's also increasing rental market supply, especially apartments, which doesn't have that much effect on the sale price of single family homes. The CMHC should be out there building apartments in every major city!
posted by ssg at 6:48 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

I was unclear. I meant behind the scenes to encourage their party leadership to make the right choices.

No, you were clear. The New Brunswick situation I mentioned still provides a good illustration of some of the structural obstacles to that.


I’ve know NDP MPs who are from the working class themselves. Though yes, the party also has to contend with a subgroup within that seems to think that pushing fiscal conservativism will ingratiate them to more voters, rather than understanding that as selling out the foundational values of the party.
posted by eviemath at 7:55 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

But there has been a golden opportunity on this front over the last few years. You can let inflation do the dirty work for you.

Even with the massive inflation of the past few years - which is its own problem - that still would have only been a ten percent decrease in real home prices since 2020. Not nothing, but not nearly enough to solve the issue, unless you wait twenty years, and that's kind of Canadian governance in a nutshell: "why can't we do it later" is practically our national motto at this point.

And moreover, this isn't any of us proposing a specific policy. Like, when you're talking about "getting buy-in from provinces and municipalities" you're basically in fantasyland already; provincial and municipal politicians don't oppose increased property values, because property taxation is a large chunk of their revenue.

Doug Ford, after blathering for months about NIMBYs who opposed development in their neighborhoods, just nixed fourplex-development-as-of-right (meaning if you own a property you can turn it into a fourplex without any additional forms or permits or anything) because it "would disrupt neighborhoods" and "folks don't want that." That's about the level of commitment to fixing the problem that exists in this country: none and less.
posted by mightygodking at 11:08 PM on April 11 [4 favorites]

Ford is drowning; he's clutching at any piece of populist flotsam (like ginning up opposition to 4-plexes) that could possibly win back some voters.

O mightygodking, as you rightly point out, it's the Canadian Way to coast, to kick most looming problems into the future, til we're forced to contend with them. There's no single magic bullet that I can propose, other than the general goals of making houses and condos less of a lucrative investment vehicle and more of a place people buy to live in, and incentivizing the construction and provision of affordable housing where needed. Of course any plan that suddenly chops 30+% off of the value of every house is a nonstarter.

There was a time in our past when houses were not appreciating by multiples of inflation, rents were more affordable, and social housing was being built. Other western countries are doing better with housing.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:16 AM on April 12 [1 favorite]

Ford is drowning

to mightygodking's point, if Ford puts that "Buck-a-beer" bullshit out there next election I think it'd work with just enough voters

I spend way too much of a my life as a self-hating Canadian. we really need to do better
posted by elkevelvet at 7:55 AM on April 12 [1 favorite]

It's that the US is right there to compare ourselves to, and in almost every way we do better.

Smugness is right at the core of the Canadian psyche, and it's gotta go.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:20 AM on April 12 [5 favorites]

After 15 years in Canada, I have learned that the gulf between how Canadians perceive themselves and how they actually are is pretty wide. Still, I'll take them over my fellow Americans any day.
posted by Kitteh at 9:05 AM on April 12 [5 favorites]

Of course any plan that suddenly chops 30+% off of the value of every house is a nonstarter.

This is the beauty of just build housing plan (preferably non market). It'll take decades to have any serious impact even if we really get behind it.
posted by Mitheral at 1:26 PM on April 12 [2 favorites]

"you wanna win this election kid? yer gonna have to fight 'im"
posted by elkevelvet at 2:00 PM on April 12

Liberals unveil ‘ambitious’ housing plan to build 3.87 million homes by 2031

Canada, hit by housing crisis, unveils plan to build millions of homes
posted by Mitheral at 3:39 PM on April 12

Liberals unveil ‘ambitious’ housing plan to build 3.87 million homes by 2031

That's about the same number of years they gave themselves in 2015 to get rid of drinking water advisories on reserves.
posted by clawsoon at 6:33 PM on April 12 [4 favorites]

→ My favorite nicknames for our next prime minister are Bitcoin Milhouse and pp.

I do wish he'd be a bit more pp, as in pianissimo: very quiet.

Can't think of a catchy short retort (and above all, Canadian) for how I feel about him: PP PFO, maybe?
posted by scruss at 7:17 AM on April 13 [1 favorite]

That's about the same number of years they gave themselves in 2015 to get rid of drinking water advisories on reserves.

Still not completed but they're getting there.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:44 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

Still not completed but they're getting there.

144 advisories addressed! ...and 72 new advisories.

At least it's two steps forward and one step back instead of the other way around, I guess.
posted by clawsoon at 3:21 PM on April 15 [1 favorite]