Geoff Russ: Canada's populist movement will have its day
Canada's populist moment did not come to pass — at least not yet.
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Having deluded themselves into believing that the status quo is tenable, many on the left celebrated the result of the recent federal election as proof that Canada could withstand the wave of anti-establishment politics that has swept the West in recent years.
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The Trump trade war overtook the many other crises affecting Canada as one of the top election issues, but it did not extinguish them. If anything, Trump's attempt to reshape the global economic order will only exacerbate the problems this country is facing. Canadian cities remain mostly unaffordable and riddled with drugs and petty crime, and the broken immigration system will not repair itself.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney has portrayed himself as an agent of change. While he still deserves the benefit of the doubt, his new cabinet does not. The most glaring of these is Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver and the new minister of housing.
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In one of his first media appearances as minister, Robertson asserted that it is not his intention to bring down house prices. Robertson's words were in keeping with the Liberal government's track record.
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Ahmed Hussen, who served as housing minister from 2021 to 2023, infamously tried to explain the federal government's at-best lackadaisical effort to address the cost of housing by asserting that ' mom and pop ' landlords would be at risk if home prices fell too drastically.
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Following the Conservative party's seizure of affordability as their key issue, the Liberals made a show of shuffling Hussen out of the housing portfolio and replacing him with Sean Fraser. Formerly the most incompetent and damaging immigration minister in living memory, the choice of Fraser spoke volumes about Hussen's ability to run the file.
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With Fraser in charge, the government made a series of announcements related to the housing supply, but to little avail. He, too, explicitly said that the government's 'goal is not to decrease the value' of homes.
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This all occurred in 2023 when the Liberals began tanking in the polls. When Trump started rambling about annexing Canada and launching a trade war, the Liberals seized the opportunity. The American president was all they needed to activate their base and garner the support necessary to remain in office.
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For millions of older voters, the Canadian election became an opportunity for them to stick it to Trump by voting for Carney, the guy they thought would put his elbows up and hopefully catch Trump on the nose. The Liberal party has evidently taken its victory as a validation of its decade in office, in which the country went into perceptible decline.
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The Liberal vision of Canada's social contract involves redistributing wealth to the top of the age pyramid. Whether it's enlarged pension payments, maintaining the exorbitant rent charged by 'mom and pop' landlords or providing cheap labour to big businesses through mass immigration, the Liberal economic platform can only be described as 'gerontocratic.'
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