Crispy Bacon said:
E.R. Campbell said:
Bird_Gunner45 said:
Why the next election could be fought on trade
JOHN IBBITSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Apr. 22 2014
If Barack Obama and Shinzo Abe can hammer out a deal on agriculture subsidies this week, then next year’s Canadian election could be the first in a generation in which trade is a key issue, with Stephen Harper favouring the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Thomas Mulcair and (possibly) Justin Trudeau opposing it.
That’s an awful lot to cram into one sentence. So let’s unpack it.
You’ve almost certainly heard about the Trans Pacific Partnership talks, which involve Canada and 11 other Pacific nations, including the United States and Japan. Negotiations have been dragging on for years, but all sides are keeping at it because of the enormous potential: the countries involved account for a third of the world’s trade.
Things are at a make-or-break stage, and this week could prove decisive. All parties have generally agreed to broad tariff reductions, limits on the abilities of governments to favour local suppliers and increased protections for intellectual property. The devil in the details is Japan, which refuses to lower tariffs on agricultural products and automobiles. The Americans are insisting on greater access.
Various media, including the Japan Times, reported over the weekend that the two sides are approaching a deal on rice and wheat, in which the United States would grant Japan some continued protection in exchange for a gradual increase in import quotas. Talks on the remaining issues resumed Monday, and on Thursday President Obama will meet with Prime Minister Abe in Japan. Both sides would like to announce something – if not a complete agreement, then at least a substantial breakthrough.
For its part, Canada is seeking to preserve the supply management system that protects the dairy and poultry industry within the TPP. But if Japan agrees to lift agricultural tariffs, Canada will have no choice but to do so as well. There will no doubt be ample time provided to phase out dairy and poultry quotas, along with financial compensation, but the Conservative government, if it must choose between protecting supply management and signing the TPP, is almost certain to sign the TPP, for reasons of politics as well as policy.
Stephen Harper wants to campaign in the next election on his economic record. Landmark trade deals are integral to that record. The government has already negotiated an agreement with the European Union and last month announced a free trade agreement with Korea. Adding a Trans Pacific Partnership accord would bring the total of countries that have signed new free trade agreements with Canada in the last year to 40.
There is irony in this. It has long been the dream of progressive thinkers to wean Canada from its excessive dependence on trade with the United States. With the TPP, the Conservatives might actually pull it off.
But governments of all stripes in Canada have traditionally shied away from angering dairy and poultry farmers. Supply management is bound up in Canada’s historic attachment to agriculture. Many Baby Boomers had parents or grandparents who worked the land. People saw value in preserving the family farm. And dairy and poultry farmers vote. Angering them could cost a party seats in eastern Ontario and in rural Quebec.
But the ties to the land are dissolving. Millennials feel less attachment to their family’s agricultural legacy than did their parents or grandparents. The millions of immigrants who have come to this land in the past two decades are mostly from Asian and Pacific nations. The old settler-culture myths mean nothing to them. Enmeshing Canada within the Pacific region that most of them hail from means much more.
For the Conservatives, the political stakes of abandoning supply management are relatively low. Many of the affected farms are in rural Quebec, where there are no Conservative MPs. Signing on to the TPP might cost the Conservatives a couple of seats in Eastern Ontario, but Cheryl Gallant, for example, is safe in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke no matter what happens to the dairy farmers in her riding. The political costs for the Tories should be marginal.
And the potential political gains could be enormous among suburban, middle-class voters, especially immigrant voters, who will support expanding trade opportunities. Suburban Ontario voters decide federal elections, which is why the opposition parties should be supporting the TPP as well. But they might not, because for them the political calculation is different.
The New Democrats could never endorse the TPP. Those Quebec dairy and poultry farmers are in ridings held by the NDP. There is no way the party would ever support dismantling supply management.
Justin Trudeau knows that to win the next election he must minimize the Conservative advantage on the economy. That’s why the Liberal Leader supports the recent trade agreement with the European Union.
But the TPP is different. The Liberals are determined to expand their base in Quebec. That means winning seats in rural Quebec. That means protecting supply management.
Would Mr. Trudeau be prepared to sacrifice those potential Quebec gains for the sake of attracting suburban Ontario voters by supporting the TPP? Logic suggests yes. But the Liberal Party’s DNA is rooted in its Quebec base. This will be no easy decision for Mr. Trudeau.
An election in which both the Liberals and the NDP opposed a Pacific trade agreement while fighting over Quebec seats that Conservatives could never hope to win anyway – even as Mr. Harper promotes the new trade deal in suburban Ontario as further proof that only he can be trusted to manage the economy – is not the worst scenario for a governing party seeking a fourth mandate and trailing in the polls.
The TPP won’t decide the election. But it could be a useful Conservative wedge. And in any election, a useful wedge is worth its weight in gold.
John Ibbitson is a CIGI senior fellow, an award-winning writer and leading political journalist in Canada. Currently on a one-year leave from The Globe and Mail, John is researching, writing and speaking on Canadian foreign policy at CIGI while he works on a new book.
Along with other CIGI experts, Mr. Ibbitson will be contributing at www.cigionline.org/blogs, where this post was originally published.
Just how well Canada’s middle class is doing is a matter of perspective
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Campbell Clark
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Apr. 23 2014
In the battle for the votes of the middle class, Stephen Harper has just heard what he wants to hear: Canada’s middle-income earners make more than those in the United States.
The New York Times’s new website, the Upshot, broke the bad news to Americans Tuesday that their middle class is no longer the wealthiest in the world: Canada’s has caught up.
To Mr. Harper it had to sound pretty good. It’s the kind of statistic that strikes the heart of Canada’s political debate as we head to a 2015 election.
NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has toured the country complaining that life isn’t affordable for ordinary Canadians. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has declared himself the champion of a middle class that’s now struggling to make ends meet. Mr. Harper, however, has had a different take on Canada’s economic performance: We’re doing better than others.
Every politician loves those hard-working middle-class families, because almost every voter counts themselves as part of the middle class. Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau have engaged in squabbles over who really feels middle-class pain, with the NDP Leader arguing, in effect, that Mr. Trudeau is too spoiled to get it. There’s little doubt that Canadians are feeling anxious about their economic prospects, and opposition leaders are trying to channel it against Mr. Harper.
But Mr. Harper can take some comfort from these figures and employ them as a shield. Canada’s middle class is doing relatively well.
In fact, it helps Mr. Harper tell the economic story that has always worked for him: These are uncertain times, and he and the Conservatives will steer Canadians away from the worst. A new statistic won’t make voters stop worrying about losing their jobs or paying their debts, but it does bolster the best argument he will have for his economic management: being middle-class is tougher in other countries.
There are some other positives, too, even if the overall picture is far from a portrait of a booming economy with burgeoning incomes.
The figures were compiled by Luxembourg-based LIS, which maintains comparative data on incomes in many countries, adjusted into constant dollars and using purchasing power parity to remove fluctuations of currency exchange rates. It’s counted after taxes and government transfers.
The LIS found that the median per-capita income in the United States stayed almost flat between 2000 and 2010. Over the course of the same decade, the adjusted median income in Canada increased by almost 20 per cent, to an equivalent amount. The New York Times notes that means Canada has the highest median income of any large country. (There are smaller nations, like Luxembourg, with higher median incomes.) One reason that Canada’s median income has caught up to the United States is that there is less inequality north of the border. Affluent Americans, like those in the 95th percentile of income earners, earn more than those in the same percentile in Canada; at the lower end, when comparing those in the 20th percentile, Canadians earn more. In other words, the rich are getting richer faster in the United States, but the ordinary Jane is doing better in Canada.
But it’s not all cause for celebration. Canada’s chart-topping was caused by the stagnation of U.S. incomes, not rapid growth in Canada’s. One of the co-authors of the LIS research, Branko Milanovic, noted that the Canadian middle class has lost ground to China’s, even as it gained on America’s.
(And of course, things can change. The data for the comparison ended in 2010, when the U.S. was in a deeper recession than Canada. American incomes may rebound as their economy improves.) But even as Canadian middle-class incomes gained on the U.S., their growth was tepid. And it was weakest in the middle of the middle class, the middle percentile – incomes in that group rose by an average 1.3 per cent per year, said economist Brenda Lafleur, director of the How Canada Performs project for the Conference Board of Canada.
Still, Ms. Lafleur said, Canadians do have to recognize that compared to other big Western economies, incomes in Canada have done relatively well.
So why aren’t they happy? Ms. Lafleur believes it’s because those income increases aren’t keeping up with Canadians’ expectations of a consistently rising standard of living. They’re small enough to be ignored. It takes more education to earn the same level of income. And many Canadians see their children having a harder time and facing the prospect they won’t really be better off than their parents.
That’s not exactly a bullish feeling. When the political debate comes next year over who really has middle-class interests at heart, Mr. Harper can cite statistics, but he’ll be doing it to defend against some economic angst. The question is whether Canadians will be relieved that things aren’t worse.
Wynne's campaign offers clues to Trudeau's Liberal strategy
CAMPBELL CLARK
The Globe and Mail
Published Sunday, May. 11 2014
Kathleen Wynne has given the whole country a peek at how Liberals run against Stephen Harper. Expect Justin Trudeau to repeat it next year.
The Ontario Liberal Leader faces a less-than-charismatic opponent in Tim Hudak but spent the first week of her campaign fighting Mr. Harper. She needed a special kind of bad guy: a cold calculator who refuses to lift a finger to help economically vulnerable Ontarians. That’s how she painted Mr. Harper, because she thought many voters would believe her.
She did it because she is, in a sense, running on the economy. She’s trying to turn that into an empathy issue, about who feels Ontarians’ anxieties about making ends meet. The federal Liberal leader, Mr. Trudeau, is planning to do that, too.
All three federal parties are lending operatives and watching closely because they know they can’t win a federal election without a strong showing in Ontario, notably the 905 and 519 area codes.
It features a PC party that, as with the federal Conservatives, is promising to manage the economy better, using restraint. The NDP is trying to find economic arguments that win suburbs. And the Liberal Party is trying to harness Ontarians’ economic anxiety, without making it a debate about who’s better at managing. For the first week, Mr. Harper was the foil.
Ms. Wynne picked an issue that plays off Mr. Harper, arguing Ontario needs to create its own public pension plan because he won’t protect Ontarians’ vulnerable retirements. Just look at the way she described Mr. Harper in a Toronto Star interview: She said he “smirked” at the suggestion of expanded pensions in a private meeting and said “people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
It helped when Mr. Harper stepped in to say the Conservatives have created tax-break accounts that help people save for their own retirements. That appeals to conservatively minded voters, but it allows Ms. Wynne to suggest he won’t do anything for the many who still worry they won’t be able to retire decently.
That’s where Mr. Trudeau’s federal Liberals are going, too. Many of their barbs at Mr. Harper are not so much aimed at painting him as incompetent on the economy, but out of touch.
When a New York Times website published an article indicating Canada’s middle class is the most affluent in the world, the Conservatives said the “good news” put the lie to Mr. Trudeau’s assertions that Canada’s middle class is suffering. Some Liberals said privately they wished the Tories would repeat that more – so anxious Ontarians hear the Conservatives tell them they are doing fine.
When Mr. Trudeau rose in the Commons to complain about the temporary foreign workers program, he highlighted that many went to struggling Ontario towns, such as London and Sarnia, suggesting the Tories are out of touch with the real economy. The latest Liberal ad, meanwhile, preaches that Mr. Trudeau is focused on “your job, your retirement, your kids’ future.” In other words, they’re claiming he cares, and Mr. Harper doesn’t. Just like Ms. Wynne.
Will it work? It seems like a long shot for Ms. Wynne. After a decade in power, and a spate of scandals, Ontarians generally want the Liberals out. An Ipsos-Reid poll released Friday found 72 per cent feel it is time for a change of government.
On Friday, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak seemed to play into her narrative by announcing plans to cut 100,000 public-service jobs. Now Ms. Wynne can paint him as the insensitive one. But it will only work if those who don’t like Mr. Hudak’s plans coalesce behind the Liberals, rather than splitting to the NDP’s Andrea Horvath. Mr. Hudak, meanwhile, has given conservative voters a red-meat reason to vote.
But in a federal election, Mr. Trudeau can try the same tactic with a clean slate. Polls show Mr. Harper is rated as the better economic manager. Liberals claim Mr. Trudeau is better positioned, through personality, to be the empathy candidate than either the PM or NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair.
Mr. Harper, however, has a better hand to respond. He’s projecting budget surpluses that will allow him to promise big tax cuts. He can argue, as he has since the campaign that brought him to power, that promised tax cuts like these prove that Conservatives really do care about Canadians’ pocketbooks – they’re the only party that cares enough to return some of their tax money.
The question is whether it’s a cut that affects enough people to persuade them he’s got their real concerns in mind. After all, Ms. Wynne has already shown him how the Liberals will go after him on the economy: not by telling voters he’s incapable, but telling them he doesn’t care enough to help them.
Harper's Conservatives showing all the signs of an aging government
BRUCE ANDERSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, May. 12 2014
One truism is that governments defeat themselves. Another is that voters eventually get tired of governments, and become restless for change. Which is it?
History suggests both.
Voters know governments lose a step or two as they age, and people start to wonder if there might be something better on offer across the aisle. This is a natural cycle. It can’t be prevented, it can only be managed.
Aging governments generally exhibit two chronic weaknesses.
First, inspired new policies become rare. It’s not that there aren’t good ideas to be found anywhere, but incumbents don’t scour the landscape for them the way challengers do. And when someone brings up a new idea, incumbent group think kicks in, and new ideas are too quickly shot down. Because they weren’t invented here, or might uncomfortably disrupt the status quo, or cost money that hadn’t been budgeted, etc.
In the latter days of many governments there’s less effort put into looking for a better idea, and more fascination with finding a better bumper sticker. Something flashy and eye catching, but not necessarily well thought out and substantial.
Second, while lots of human skills sharpen over time, the political acumen of incumbents seems an exception: it generally becomes duller. Governments get used to congratulating themselves and lose the ability to gaze at their own situation with objectivity. Every criticism is judged as bias, rather than examined for its merits. Every critic is judged an enemy. Offence is taken when none is intended.
When first elected in 2006, the Harper Conservatives had keen political instincts and top-drawer political talent, in the Prime Minister’s Office and in the cabinet. The party had figured out how to appeal to enough voters in the centre and to downplay some of the more polarizing aspects of conservative ideology. They were in the market for new friends, and they knew what they were offering: more accountability, lower taxes, law and order, a stronger military, and a growing economy.
In 2014, the Conservatives find themselves in a much different place.
No longer in the market for new friends, they seem constantly in search of enemies. Every night is fight night in Ottawa these days. They squabble without discrimination; as enthusiastic in their attacks on people they handpicked as they are with opposing political parties.
They see bias in extraordinary places and imagine forces plotting against them around every corner. Auditors-General, Chief Electoral Officers, Parliamentary Budget Officers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a bunch of their own Senate appointees. They have even found a way to fight with veterans, military widows and families, and to draw fire from the Canadian Legion.
The good ideas pipeline is not overflowing. The budget will be balanced soon, and tax cuts will happen. Trade deals will be pursued. But beyond that, the government seems tempted by shiny objects. They want longer arms to prevent fraudulent voting. They advertise that wireless phone companies are villains. They declare war against pay-TV bundles. They want to force businesses to lower prices to match pricing in the U.S., although, inconveniently, the C.D. Howe Institute made the point earlier this week that most of this differential is caused by government policies, not corporate gouging.
The Conservatives have lost lots of talent. Ministers like Chuck Strahl, Jay Hill, Jim Prentice, Jim Flaherty, Monte Solberg and David Emerson. Good people remain, but Stephen Harper seems to prefer to give more ice-time in the House to pugilists like Peter Van Loan, Paul Calandra, and Pierre Poilievre.
In the PMO, there are too few people who don’t owe their careers to the Prime Minister – professionals willing to get in the way of a bad idea before it gathers too much momentum. Think Bernard Roy, Derek Burney, Bill Neville or Jim Coutts.
The Conservatives show signs of aging, but have time to work on rejuvenation. However, so far, signals out of the Langevin Block don’t even pay lip service to the idea of a refresh – the message track is “steady as she goes.” Regardless of the fact that for many voters, their federal government seems much less steady than it used to.
Bruce Anderson is the chairman of polling firm Abacus Data, a regular member of CBC The National’s “At Issue” panel and a founding partner of i2 Ideas and Issues Advertising. Follow him on Twitter at @bruceanderson.
E.R. Campbell said:
