GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau ‘excited’ to show nation his fiscal responsibility

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Heading into his government’s fall economic statement on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has always exercised fiscal restraint since he was elected in 2015, that Canada has one of the strongest economies in the developed world as a result and electing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as PM would endanger those accomplishments.

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“We continue to deliver investments in Canadians while remaining responsible fiscally and have all the way through,” Trudeau said on Friday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco.

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“And that’s more of what I’m excited to share next week with the fall economic update — a demonstration that we know how to continue to be fiscally responsible while we make the investments that are going to grow the economy and support Canadians.”

So that’s what Trudeau wants to be judged on Tuesday when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivers the fall economic statement she says will be a “responsible fiscal plan” focused on affordability and housing.

In defending his economic record, Trudeau said, “we have the lowest deficit in the G7 (Canada, the U.S., U.K, France, Germany, Italy and Japan), we have the best debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, the lowest debt as a proportion of the size of our economy.

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“We are one of the three largest economies in the world that is rated by the independent rating agencies as a Triple A, top-tier economy with a responsible fiscal track.”

Trudeau’s problem, of course, is that Canadians don’t live in other countries and in Canada, for many, their lived experience bears no resemblance to Trudeau’s boasts.

Millions of Canadians are caught in the middle of an affordability crisis which even the Trudeau government admits is serious, people are losing their homes because of high mortgage interest rates, or paying exorbitant rents because of a national housing shortage, while inflation is eating into household budgets for necessities such as food and shelter.

Food bank use, at almost two million visits in March of this year was at its highest level since records started being kept in 1989, according to Food Banks Canada.

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The larger problem for Trudeau is the issue of whether most Canadians are even listening to him anymore, with polls showing widespread disillusionment with the PM and his party and that Poilievre and the Conservatives would win a huge majority government if an election was held today.

It’s not surprising, for example, that Poilievre drastically outpolled Trudeau on affordability concerns in an Abacus Data poll last month on issues such as, “making life more affordable for you” (44% to 27%); “building more housing and making it more affordable” (40% to 28%); “managing the economy and creating good-paying jobs” (43% to 28%) and “keeping taxes as low as possible” (46% to 22%).

But what’s shocking is that, according to an Angus Reid poll released Nov. 16, twice as many Canadians said Poilievre and the Conservatives would be best to lead the country on Trudeau’s signature issue of addressing climate change, than the PM and the Liberals, with 28% choosing the Conservatives compared to 14% for the Liberals. Jagmeet Singh and the NDP were chosen by 16%.

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In contrast to Trudeau, who describes Liberal policies such as $10-a-day daycare and dental care for low-income families as economic policies in addition to being social ones that Poilievre would cut, Poilievre’s message about what he wants to see in Tuesday’s economic statement were more in line with the views of many Canadians.

First, freeze the federal carbon tax at its current level of $65 per tonne of industrial greenhouse gas emissions on its way to $170 per tonne in 2030, which Poilievre says he will eliminate entirely when (not if) he wins the next election; balance the federal budget to help bring down inflation and interest rates and adopt the Conservative plan to build more housing by requiring big cities to increase homebuilding by 15% annually or risk losing federal funding, as opposed to Trudeau’s plan which Poilievre says will just create more government bureaucracy.

As for balancing the federal budget, Trudeau promised during the 2015 federal election to do that by 2019 — as it turned out, the year before the pandemic hit — and failed to do so.

Freeland said in last year’s fall economic statement that the Liberals would balance the budget with a $4.5 billion surplus in 2027, before abandoning that commitment in this year’s budget in March, which set no target date to balance the budget.

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