Carson Jerema: The Trudeau Liberals only philosophy is to spend, spend and spend some more – National Post

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Why would the party make choices when it can say yes to everything?

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The Liberal party has so embraced increasing the size of government that even the appearance of principles to justify profligacy has been abandoned. After nearly doubling the size of public debt while in power, the partys platform promises to grow the budget by another $78 billion, with new revenue to cover hardly a third. Barely any of this new spending would be in service of a coherent set of beliefs honestly held about the role of government. When faced with two competing, or even contradictory, policy options aimed at achieving the same goal, the Liberals will inevitably refuse to decide and instead choose both.

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Take the pledge of $10-a-day daycare, estimated to cost $30 billion over five years and accounting for nearly 40 per cent of all new costs outlined in the platform. Ignore for the moment that existing provincial subsidies for lower-income families already bring expenses dramatically down, or that given already high levels of female participation in the workforce, any gains are likely to disappoint.

That is, whatever the merits of the policy, the Liberal daycare plan would, at least, appear to represent a clear vision of government, a well defined philosophy, that daycare is too important to be left to the market and that standardized care overseen by public authorities is the best way to deliver that service, regardless of income level and absent the involvement of (greedy) capitalists.

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And the plan indeed would represent a clear position favouring state planning, except the Liberals have already implemented a competing market-based approach to daycare. After forming government in 2015, the Liberals expanded direct payments to families from $160 per child per month to as much as $530 per month, payments that have since grown to as high as $570. Direct support to parents for daycare assumes that they are in the best position to determine how to spend those dollars, particularly important for families who opt for care arrangements outside a rigid Monday to Friday daytime schedule.

Previous elections were fought along these two competing approaches, standardized care versus direct payments, planning against markets. In 2015, the Liberals argued their direct-payments policy was more fiscally responsible than the NDP proposal to bring in a national system for $15-a-day daycare, even calling the NDP plan to pay for it a mirage. The Liberals have now, of course, decided that being responsible no longer matters and are implementing both policies at the same time. In fact, the current Liberal proposal for a national daycare system is more generous than the one they panned six years ago. Why choose when you can just say yes to everything?

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Another example is the Liberal approach to climate change. The idea of a carbon tax was initially conceived as a more efficient, market-based policy intended to bring emissions down, while avoiding the often suffocating effects of regulation. By working within the price system, a carbon tax is a less intrusive way to allocate resources towards more environmentally friendly products and practices.

However, rather than being used as a substitute for regulation, the Liberal carbon tax was implemented alongside other new rules, such as a more onerous development review process for pipelines and other resource projects. The current Liberal platform would regulate industry further still with promises to make sure oil companies cap emissions, bring in clean electricity standards and, incredibly, mandate that every new car or passenger truck sold in Canada be electric by 2035, while the carbon tax will continue to grow.

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The Liberal tendency to avoid decisions by implementing all ideas was also evident during the pandemic. When workers were being laid off by the thousands, there was a spirited debate about whether the government should support people directly with payments to individuals, or indirectly with payments to businesses. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals chose both options, and in equally large measures such that many got payments they didnt need and many private companies redirected their payments often to bonuses for executives.

What enables the Liberals to take multiple expensive, and often opposing, policy paths is a refusal to treat public debt as anything but imaginary. Faced with the option to either raise taxes enough to cover expenses or cut spending, the Liberals again refuse to choose and in this case instead of choosing both, they choose neither.

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When Stephen Harper left office after nearly a decade in power, he had cut federal revenues by 15 per cent as a proportion of GDP. At the time, in a long essay for Policy Options, former Harper advisers Ken Boessenkool and Sean Speer argued that this left Ottawa with much less room to spend and that the incoming Liberal government and subsequent governments would be constrained. Harpers plan of making Canada a more conservative country had prevailed.

That thesis hasnt aged well now that the government of the day has simply decided that revenues dont matter and debt is of no consequence.

This is not a liberal party in the original sense of the word. Nor is it a democratic socialist party, which would at least imply consistency and principle in its programs. If the Liberal party is guided by any principles at all, it is the principle of government for its own sake.

National Postcjerema@postmedia.comTwitter.com/carsonjerema

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Carson Jerema: The Trudeau Liberals only philosophy is to spend, spend and spend some more - National Post