Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s bombshell resignation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet on Dec. 16 arrived at an auspicious moment for the federal government—the first weekday after Trudeau’s much-vaunted sales tax holiday came into effect. The timing couldn’t have been better for big corporations.
Immediately after Freeland posted her resignation letter on social media, the mainstream media situated it within a bigger and sharpening debate over economic policy. Is it better, as Trudeau argues, to give people a break on sales tax during a busy shopping season, or should the government, as Freeland insists, “keep its fiscal powder dry” in the face of an aggressive Trump administration?
Corporations, right-wing pundits, and, of course, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre are all lining up at the microphones now to declare that Freeland’s resignation and her stated reasons are clear indications that there needs to be a federal election now, so that the people of the country can deliver a (presumably conservative) mandate to a new (presumably Conservative) government.
This isn’t a huge surprise; Bay Street and big capital across Canada have been beating the drums of austerity for months now, so it’s far from unexpected that their mouthpieces in government (on both Liberal and Conservative benches) would echo that view.
Nor is the Freeland-Trudeau rift particularly shocking. The latter’s populist gimmickry used to be a public relations asset. Remember when he used to throw himself down the stairs, or when he had the boxing match with Senator Patrick Brazeau? But now, as the contradictions of capitalist society sharpen, these kinds of stunts no longer cut it with either the working people the Liberals rely on for votes or the corporate heads they look to for funding and support.
Clearly, the pressure got to Freeland, and she bolted; she’s been connected at the hip to Trudeau for years.
But what’s fascinating in the media coverage of this situation, especially since it hinges to a large extent on the sales tax holiday, is the complete absence of what working people really need from the federal government.
Nobody is talking about the still soaring cost of living, or the fact that two million people are still out of work, or that full-time jobs are diminishing and being replaced by part-time employment, or the ongoing and deepening housing crisis.
And there’s certainly no talk of why Ottawa—with all-party support in Parliament—plans to jack military spending by more than 100% to $80 billion in less than a decade, and in the process drain the public coffers of any capacity to protect and expand social programs and infrastructure.
This is not at all to say that Trudeau’s sales tax holiday is a policy that delivers what people need. It’s a vote-buying gimmick whose real intention is to keep working people on board with neoliberal capitalist policies at a time when the faults of that approach are being laid bare on an increasingly regular and dramatic basis.
The problem here is that Canadians are being sold a false choice: either a tepid neo-Keynesianism with temporary and limited tax holidays to prime the consumer pump, or another austerity program complete with “fiscal anchors.” Of course, in either case, we end up with bolstered corporate profit and a new arms race, all paid for by working people.
What we really need is to use the current turmoil to inject some working-class ideas into political discourse, casting aside entirely the notion that capitalist policies can save us from capitalism.
This is the moment to talk about trade and economic policies which foster full employment, good wages and incomes, full benefits, job security, and income security into retirement. This is the moment we need a loud argument for strong and expanding social programs like health, education, childcare ,and housing, along with climate and environmental clean-up and protection.
Rather than wringing our hands over a two-month break on sales tax, we should be calling for comprehensive and progressive tax reform to eliminate regressive sales taxes altogether, increase corporate taxes, and shifting the income tax burden onto the wealthy.
Instead of pretending that the housing crisis can be resolved through tax holidays and savings schemes for first-time mortgages, we need real action to reduce housing costs and build publicly owned and publicly provided housing, on the basis of need and with prices geared to income instead of to increased profits for developers and corporate landlords.
Pundits are having a field day analyzing the inner workings of the Liberal Party caucus, based on questions raised by Freeland’s resignation. Speculation is running wild on who’s jockeying for what position and how this one or that one is angling to take Trudeau’s job. But in the process, they are overlooking (or pushing aside) the real political, social, and economic issues facing millions of working people every day in this country.
In the middle of all the turmoil on Dec. 16, very little attention was paid to the government’s fall economic statement. This update—apparently written by Freeland before her resignation and delivered by the Trudeau government after her departure—lays out a clear road map for more privatization, more government-facilitated transfer of wealth from working people to corporations and the rich, and more years of skyrocketing costs of basic necessities while Ottawa sits on its hands and says it can’t do anything.
This is the real political crisis. This is what workers need to change.
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