What happens after Trudeau loses?
Justin Trudeau has been getting his brains beaten out by Pierre Poilievre for more than a year.
If an election were held today, polls indicate that the Conservatives would win about two-thirds of the seats in Canada’s House of Commons while the Liberals would be reduced to around one-fifth.
But Trudeau won’t throw in the towel because “there is a lot more fighting to do.”
Sure. But can he actually win?
Probably not – but perhaps he doesn’t need to. Perhaps he just needs to lose by a small enough margin to prevent a Conservative majority – and then survive the Liberal Party’s mandatory leadership review after the next federal election.
If Trudeau could pull that off – and that’s a big if – he and Poilievre would swap jobs. And Trudeau could continue his fight from the opposite side of the aisle.
I have a feeling that Trudeau would come off quite differently on the offensive. And I have a feeling that Poilievre would come off quite differently on the defensive. In any case, the dynamic between the two of them would certainly be quite different.
And once Poilievre finally laid out his actual plan to “fix” Canada – in the form of a federal budget – Trudeau could team up with another party to take down the Conservatives, trigger another election and, maybe, just maybe, deliver a second-round knockout.
Canadians might hate the idea of heading to the polls again. But Canadians might hate Poilievre’s federal budget more – because he’s selling a dream that won’t come true.
For example, consider half of Poilievre’s four-part slogan: “axe the tax” and “balance the budget.”
The federal government currently spends around $40 billion more than it collects in taxes each year. And Poilievre has pledged to reduce income taxes for working people. So he would need to come up with, let’s say, around $50 billion in savings.
Yes, he’d almost certainly axe the carbon tax. But the price on pollution is actually revenue neutral – the money is returned to Canadians in a quarterly rebate. So that wouldn’t balance the budget.
Yes, he’d almost certainly defund the CBC. But only the English version – for outrageously political reasons – so he’d probably only save around $1 billion. That wouldn’t balance the budget, either.
Yes, he’d almost certainly cut yet-to-be-defined “government waste.” But cutting tens of billions of dollars from the public service would mean cutting tens of thousands of Canadian jobs. And that doesn’t seem like a winning move in the midst of an affordability crisis.
It would be one thing if Poilievre were singularly committed to the small-government utopia he preaches. But he has also promised to make several parts of the government bigger.
He’s promising to increase military spending to 2% of GDP by cutting “wasteful foreign aid.” But the federal government spends billions of dollars less on foreign aid than it would need to spend on national defence to meet that target. So where’s he going to find that extra money?
He’s promising to “stop the crime” by ensuring that repeat violent offenders and car thieves get “jail not bail.” But the federal government already spends tens of billions of dollars on police, courts and correctional services. So where’s he going to find that extra money?
He’s promising to end the drug overdose epidemic by providing addicts access to “recovery programs” instead of “legalizing drugs.” But the federal government already spends tens of billions of dollars on healthcare transfers to the provinces. So where’s he going to find that extra money?
An obvious place for Poilievre to start would be to eliminate Trudeau’s new social programs: the increased child benefit, the new disability benefit, subsidized daycare, subsidized dentalcare for low-income children and seniors, free diabetes medication and free female contraceptives.
But there would be at least two problems with that strategy. First, the total cost of these programs is much less than the total federal deficit. Second, despite Trudeau’s unpopularity, these programs are popular among the tens of millions of Canadians who directly benefit from them.
Right now, Canadians are being asked to choose between the status quo and change – and change sounds great right now. But if the choice were between the status quo and staggering cuts, Canadians might see things differently.
Poilievre, wearing a big white cowboy hat and a small white t-shirt, mused to a crowd at this summer’s Calgary Stampede that “Justin’s in a lot of trouble now, eh?” He’s not wrong. But Poilievre’s in a lot of trouble too. He just doesn’t know it yet.