Kevin Lynch was a former clerk of the Privy Council and vice-chair of BMO Financial Group. Paul Deegan was a former BMO and CN public affairs executive.
In recent weeks, much has been made of makeovers – to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, and to Pierre Poilievre’s sartorial and campaigning style. But what has been missing from this frenzied discourse on appearances and communications is a meaningful discussion about our leaders’ respective long-term visions for Canada.
Across all parties, we find ourselves in a moment like the scene in the 1972 political comedy-drama The Candidate, where a U.S. Senate candidate played by Robert Redford finds out he has won, and turns dazedly to his campaign manager and asks: “What do we do now?”
This is a pivotal time, and Canadians deserve a national debate – not over style or wedge issues, but over competing visions of how to build a better, more prosperous and more influential Canada.
Love them or not, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and even Stephen Harper in his first term all had a plan. Mr. Mulroney was a fierce champion for free trade and regulatory reform; Mr. Chrétien had his famous “Red Book,” chock full of ideas, combined with a willingness to adjust when circumstances warranted; Mr. Harper had his “five priorities” and a commitment to a more focused government. As we edge closer to the next election, with polls suggesting Canadians are increasingly pessimistic about their future, each party leader should be asked to address the following questions.
What’s your climate change plan?
As an Arctic country, we are the proverbial canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change. One doesn’t need a PhD in environmental science to know that parts of the planet are not just warming, but boiling and burning. This year, Canada has experienced brutal forest fires, historic flooding and rising sea levels, and there is no reason to believe next year will be different. How do we efficiently and effectively reduce our carbon emissions as an economy and society while meeting our international commitments? What are our mitigation strategies to adapt to the climate change reality and increase the resiliency of our critical infrastructure? Where should we build international alliances to respond to the global migrations, food insecurity and conflict that will accompany climate change? Long-term problems require clear-eyed solutions embedded in long-run plans.
What’s your energy transition plan?
As an energy superpower, the transition from oil and gas to renewable energy sources is perhaps our biggest opportunity and our biggest risk. As the world reduces its reliance on fossil fuels – a process that will take decades, according to the International Energy Agency – should we be doubling down on carbon-capture-and-storage technology, small modular reactors and other approaches that serve only to offer the adjusting world much cleaner oil and gas than Russia, Saudi Arabia and others will provide? Or should we be rapidly phasing out our oil and gas production to cut carbon emissions, despite the associated loss of high-paying jobs and a significant source of government revenues? Like the rest of the world, we need to invest massively in renewable resources, but which specific sectors will allow Canada to build a competitive energy advantage to support economic growth? Hydro is a possibility: We are the fourth-largest hydroelectricity generator in the world, and we still have a great deal of untapped potential. But we have a hard time building anything in Canada, and new dams and power lines face many stakeholder-related and environmental obstacles. What is clear, however, is that energy, the environment and the economy are deeply intertwined in Canada, and the only viable approach is an integrated, longer-term transition plan with a clear vision.
What’s your fiscal plan?
The ultralow interest-rate party is over, and the accompanying “debt doesn’t matter” mantra no longer holds in the harsh light of day. We are now living with a bad hangover: dismal productivity, weak growth, entrenched inflation and a high debt load that will be expensive to pay off. The Mulroney and Chrétien governments, when faced with fiscal cliffs and growth traps, made painful decisions that provided enormous long-term benefits to the country. Clear fiscal choices, rather than a continuation of our cycle of spending, borrowing and regulating, are needed again, so that Canada can regain its fiscal resiliency and rebuild its economic growth. We must ask our politicians: What would be your fiscal anchor to impose fiscal discipline on government decision-making, and restore our fiscal capacity to handle future shocks in a higher-interest-rate world?
What’s your growth agenda?
After a decade of anemic growth in GDP per capita, the OECD projects that Canada will be at the bottom of the pack among developed countries for growth in living standards over the next several decades. Clearly, the status quo of weak growth, poor productivity, declining competitiveness, weak innovation and stubborn inflation is not tenable; we are stuck in a growth trap. What policy choices should we be considering, and what policy paths should we be rejecting? Where do our leaders stand on industrial policy, such as the one that the Biden administration has announced to boost domestic productivity, or the one that the EU is considering? Why is it so hard for Canada to build things and what would they do to change this? We need a vigorous debate about which policy measures will help rebuild our longer-term growth and productivity.
What’s your plan to protect our security and sovereignty in a more hostile global environment?
As the war in Ukraine rages on, Canada continues to face pressure to meet NATO’s defence spending commitment of at least 2 per cent of GDP. At the same time, China’s increased belligerence has threatened some of our most reliable trade markets and supply chains, not to mention our digital infrastructure and elections. Beijing and Moscow have both aggressively sought say and sway in the Arctic, too. Our leaders need to lay out an effective and responsible Canadian defence policy that details clear strategies for all these concerns, especially as Canada faces geopolitical instability over the next decade.
Canada will have a federal election in the next two years, and it is likely to happen in 2024. Now is the time for the party leaders to reboot and begin to outline their vision for where Canada should be in 2035, and how they plan to get there. We cannot afford to have an election that’s more partisan style than policy substance. We need a serious debate about concrete plans, clear policy choices and the inevitable trade-offs. In short, in this massively changing world, party leaders need to answer that crucial question: What do we do now?