MacDougall: Liberals can’t put out the economic fires they created

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As a parent of young children, I appreciate when they try to clean up their mess after a long day of play. But I’m not sure how satisfied Canadians will be with the Liberal clean-up efforts outlined in this week’s budget after nine long years of government gamesmanship with Canada.

He budget document tabled in the House of Commons by Chrystia Freeland contains some alarming figures. There are the $54.1 billion in public debt burdens, a sum that is expected to rise even further in the coming years. The debt charges help explain the projected $39.8 billion deficit in 2024-25, as well as $39.2 billion in new federal spending. Overall, the government will spend $52.9 billion more over the next five years than was outlined in last fall’s economic update. If you’ve ever wondered how much bad surveys cost, now you have the answer.

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But enough of the boring stuff. The budget’s star attraction, the rabbit out of the hat, was on the revenue-raising side, with the Liberals dipping their hands into the pockets of the wealthiest Canadians to the tune of a $19 billion increase. dollars in capital gains taxes on individuals. and corporations. The government is keen to frame this as an issue of intergenerational justice, going so far as to suggest that this is what all those rich grandparents across the country want for their grandchildren.

What the liberals are really doing is robbing the increasingly sclerotic Peters to pay the increasingly frustrated Pauls. In the war between boomers, millennials and Generation Z, the Trudeau government would like the youth of this great country to know that it is firmly on its side. That’s right, kids, the arsonists who helped set your future on fire are now trying to play firefighters.

It’s not likely to work. For one thing, young people tend to be quite adept at detecting hypocrisy. And a shameful desperation. But more importantly, the economy in which the Peters and Pauls live is itself increasingly sclerotic. Without measures to boost growth and productivity, the government’s major reshuffling of tax revenues is nothing more than a gigantic game of tricks. And when it comes to growth, the government basically has nothing to say other than “here are some sectors of the economy we like and are willing to subsidize.”

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And even if liberals had something meaningful to say, it’s unlikely anyone other than Kool-Aid drinkers would still be listening. If you want to have a genuine conversation about intergenerational inequality (and you definitely can have a conversation after years of low productivity growth, cheap money, and massive asset inflation), you need a new voice. Canada’s children are no longer in the mood to listen to their parents.

In fact, the reason Pierre Poilievre and his group rank so high in the polls is because they are talking about topics that kids want new ideas about. Only they’re doing it without the baggage of having run the government for the past nine years, while the prospects of millennials and Generation Z have dimmed.

And so, if liberals want to start a conversation about growth and intergenerational justice, they will first have to relegate their current leadership to a nursing home (where they will no doubt be taxed at the new higher rate). As long as Justin Trudeau is on their screens, young people won’t be sliding in the right direction.

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To see how a change in leader and a change in message can have a dramatic effect, Liberals should study some history in a place they’ve learned to avoid: Alberta. There, in the early 1990s, Ralph Klein He took over the Progressive Conservative Party from a debt-laden Don Getty and gave it a giant kick in the ass with his “Alberta Advantage.” Klein went big and his opposition finally went home.

But Klein is the exception, not the rule. People don’t tend to vote for arsonists, even after they show up at the crime scene with a bucket or two of water.

Andrew MacDougallis a London-based communications consultant and former communications director for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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