The Trudeau of Canada pushes policy on the left amid Covid pandemic

Now he is shifting his agenda into a higher gear, which has been one of the biggest leftist movements in Canadian federal politics since the mid – 1960s, say political analysts and historians when the liberal government of the day universal health care and introduced a national pension plan. .

“We can choose to accept new, challenging solutions to the challenges we face, and refuse to hold back by old ways of thinking,” he said. Trudeau said in August when he first began making promises about a wider social safety net and more aggressive environment. policy. “This is our chance to build a more resilient Canada.”

He has appointed a new finance minister, Chrystia Freeland – who led Canada’s negotiations with the Trump administration over a revamped North American free trade agreement – to oversee the development of this new policy map.

Polls suggest there is an appetite among voters – battered by the devastation of the pandemic – for a large government that spends a lot of money.

“Canadians currently feel very insecure,” said David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, an Ottawa polling firm. ‘There has already been a general view – right as well as left – that those with access to resources are faring much better than those struggling to stay afloat. This has only been confirmed in the past year. ”

Other analysts believe the attack on Mr. Trudeau could get a boost from the Biden government, given the U.S. president’s similar agenda, which focuses on the environment and social programs. Mr. Trudeau was the first world leader to marry Mr. Biden called when he moved into the Oval Office.

President Biden and Mr. Trudeau has “clearly a shared vision,” said Stewart Prest, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. “They can also strengthen each other, especially on the world stage.” To be sure, there will be differences and setbacks, such as President Biden’s intention to halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline extension.

The Trudeau government has spent aggressively mitigating the hit of the pandemic, with Canada’s budget balance in 2020 deteriorating the most among the major developed and emerging economies. The deficit is expected to reach a record 18% of gross domestic product in the financial year ended 31 March. The bulk of the cash was on households and businesses.

Mr. Trudeau said more government stimulus is on the way, about 5% of gross domestic product, to embark on a recovery, and the rebuilding and expansion of a social safety net targeting additional day care spaces, better care for the elderly, and a national plan to subsidize drug costs.

“We are not just going to go back to where we were before Covid-19,” she said. Freeland, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters last week. ‘The pandemic has exposed critical gaps in our social safety net. And the virus has hit certain sectors, certain groups of people, harder than others – the elderly, women, low-wage workers, young people, coloreds, indigenous people. ”

But the pressure is also worrying. Robert Asselin, a former senior assistant in the Trudeau government, points out that the budget deficit is being driven to half a billion Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $ 390 billion, and said the government has not focused when it comes to to generate longer-term economic growth. .

‘I find it a little disturbing. It is mostly about the redistribution of wealth, “said Mr. Asselin, now senior vice president at the Business Council of Canada, a lobbying group representing the country’s executives, said. The approach of the incoming Biden government, by comparison, also shifts the policy agenda to the left, but contains detailed strategies aimed at stimulating growth in certain sectors of the economy, he said.

One of the tasks that Mr. Trudeau handed over to the Minister of Finance, Freeland, reads a letter that Mr. Trudeau’s office has set out its mandate, the introduction of new taxes aimed at “extreme prosperity”. Before politics, Mrs. Freeland a journalist and he has written a book on the world’s rich elite and income inequality.

The measures taken by the Trudeau government come at a time of increasing anticipation that Mr. Already in the spring election, Trudeau will seek to cash in on solid public support for his response to the pandemic and try to exchange his minority government for a majority mandate.

Mr. Trudeau came to power in the fall of 2019 with a minority mandate, punished in part for a scandal over the role of his office in trying to intervene in the prosecution of an engineering firm in Montreal. While Canadian election laws indicate that the next vote is set for October 2023, the prime minister has the authority to dissolve parliament and hold an election at his behest.

The calculation of mr. Trudeau that Canadians want more government seems to be bearing fruit. Polls from Abacus Data and other public opinion polls usually suggest that Trudeau’s Liberals have a firm lead over their biggest rival, the Conservative Party, as most Canadians approve of the government’s response to the fight against the pandemic.

The Liberal Party of Canada has been the dominant force in Canadian politics in the country’s more than 150-year history, in part because of its ability to determine the public vote and shift the policy agenda as applicable, political analysts say. The Liberals, for example, ruled largely from the right in the 1990s, as they cut spending on government programs to deal with budget problems and cut taxes to ward off conservative opponents.

Kathy Brock, a political scientist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, said that Mr. Trudeau’s shift to the left – which also includes more aggressive measures to combat climate change, such as a proposed sharp increase in the carbon tax – is intended to persuade progressive voters who park their votes at the left New Democratic Party or elsewhere. In the last federal election, in 2019, about a third of voters voted for progressive parties, while two-thirds voted either liberal or for the Conservative party.

Mr. Trudeau disregarded the discussion of an election, arguing that he was focusing on the pandemic and overseeing a vaccination.

Mrs. Brock said signs point to a spring mood, but it could be increased, especially if the vaccination in Canada comes ahead of further delays and lags badly behind the US, UK and other group of seven countries.

A poll published by the Angus Reid Institute on Friday indicated that government approval for the government vaccination fell sharply in January to 45% from 58% in the previous month. Yet Shachi Kurl, the institute’s president, said the vaccination of frustration should not yet dampen the popularity of Mr. Trudeau does not weigh.

Write to Paul Vieira by [email protected]