In a recurring feature, Susan Delacourt, a small-l liberal, and Matt Gurney, a small-c conservative, bring their different perspectives — and shared commitment to civil disagreement — to the political debates of the moment.
Susan Delacourt: Just before the long Canada Day weekend, Matt, you wrote a piece that has stayed with me, even if it wasn’t exactly a rallying, hooray-for-Canada tale. You wrote that you’re worried about people giving up on this country because many things, big or small, seem to be too hard for governments to do competently. For those who haven’t read the piece already (and really, they should) do you want to give us a quick recap of why you felt the need to write it?
Matt Gurney: I mean, I mainly write because if I don’t write I go crazy and make everyone around me miserable. Writing just makes some of the readers miserable, which is (for me) a huge upgrade. But the column I wrote was a product of a few things. And I admit they’re mostly anecdotal. I know the quip that the plural of anecdote is not “data.” But when I get whacked over the head repeatedly with something, I start to pay attention. And over the last few years, I’ve come to suspect that people are leaving Canada, for economic or sometimes (though less often) political reasons, or, interestingly, to access health care they can’t reliably get at home. To be clear, I don’t think this is a huge number of people, and I 100 per cent understand that for many, Canada is still the promised land. But I think that some of those with means are either leaving outright (this was something my colleague Jen Gerson wrote about recently) or are at least coming up with a Plan B — a backup location where they have a “vacation” property, a bank account, a health plan and maybe residency rights. I stress again that I don’t think this is a huge number of people. But I think it might be a lopsided amount of money and talent, both of which Canada badly needs. And for what it’s worth, I was reading about something similar just a few days ago right here in the Toronto Star.
SD: It is undeniably true that all kinds of government services to citizens are stretched, especially coming out of the pandemic. But it got me thinking about the whole notion of activist government and the weird place we find ourselves in North America. If polls are correct, a lot of Canadians and Americans are flirting with hard-right conservatism. At the same time, maybe as a product of the pandemic, the public seems to want more activist government. They want fixers in power. I wonder how this can be reconciled with politics that used to be all about getting the government out of people’s lives?
MG: I don’t know how hard-right Canadian conservatives will get. Will they be hard-right enough to fund the military, end supply management and open up domestic markets to foreign competition? Or will they mainly just tweet meanly? In any case, I sort of view the problem from the opposite perspective: I think a problem more progressive-leaning governments have, including very much our incumbent federal government, is that they want full value for their proposals. “We are proposing to do X, aren’t we good people for doing X?” The problem is, me and about 41 million of my buddies have noticed what you very charitably described as stretched government services. I’ve put it more bluntly: things are literally and visibly falling apart. And every time a government proposes to do a new thing, I’m not bowled over with gratitude, I’m suspicious they’re offering me something new to distract me from the old stuff that’s breaking.
SD: I too would be grateful, if only out of exasperation with talking points, if all politicians stopped telling me the government has my back. But clichés are built around ideas that are commonplace. There is an assumption now that the public needs to be assured constantly that government is there to meet an ever-expanding list of citizens’ needs. It’s something that Pierre Poilievre, if he does become prime minister, is going to have to grapple with, as you point out with those examples of military spending and supply management. Poilievre grew up in the old Reform Party, when then leader Preston Manning was repeating the old joke about the scariest words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I’m not sure that joke would get the same laughs now.
MG: I’m not the first person to note this, so give me no credit. But what we need — desperately — is a government that’s focused on competency in service delivery and policy execution. I don’t think anyone suggests we have that today. So a political party that was based around the notion of “Make Government Competent Again” would, I think, be popular. And that’s non-partisan. That could mean more taxes to better fund a big government. It could mean lower taxes to sustain a smaller one. I don’t care! Just make me an offer. But we won’t get that. We’ll get social media wedges and performative grandstanding. And I think we’ll keep getting what we started talking about earlier: a slow trickle of at least money and business activity out of Canada, into jurisdictions where you can buy with cash what governments in Canada can no longer provide.
SD: Competence, one assumes, should be the low bar. But I guess what I’m saying is that I think citizens have to do some hard thinking too about wants and needs. We’re in a housing mess now in part because successive governments of all stripes got out of that business and now everyone wants the government back in. It would be great to have an election debate that got voters assessing just how much they want activist government.
MG: You’re right that competence should be the low bar. But it isn’t. Even talking about it feels like a journey into “if wishes were horses” territory. I’d love a debate about what kind of government we want. I’d love a whole election about that. But everything I’ve seen in recent years tells me what we’ll get is this: a variety of options all basically offering us the same dysfunction, but in a variety of “Don’t you just hate those other bastards?” flavours. No one votes for competency. We vote to punish those that annoy or terrify us.
