I found this article interesting in regards to how it’s
holding Justin Trudeau up as perhaps one of the last western progressive
leaders following a year that has seen things like the upset in Italy, Brexit
and Trump.
Here's the link to the article.
Now I voted for Trudeau. Why? Because I felt that the Canada I was raised to be proud of was growing further away and heading down a dark path and I wanted to try to plug my finger in the dam so that my son could grow up in a country that still stood for decent things.
1. “When progress stalls, fear moves forward.”
–We’ve seen it time and again and I feel the words hold true. When people take
stock of their lives and see that they are not moving forward, can’t get ahead,
or others prosper where they cannot despite all their best intentions and hard
work, they naturally seek outward to find something or someone to blame.
The insidious “Them” becomes the perceived enemy.
The Government. The Right. The Left. Those people. That religion, etc. People
look for, in fact they seem to NEED someone else to blame. Because if there is
not someone else, well then all they are left with is themselves.
Once they’ve fixated on “Them” it’s almost impossible to get them to change. They entrench themselves in a victim mentality and this is exactly the type of divisiveness that Trudeau was speaking about.
2. The
approval of two pipeline projects shows me that Trudeau understands that moving
towards a sustainable energy future is the right thing to do, but that there
needs to be a transition and he sees that families are impacted by this in a
real way. I personally am not a fan of pipelines but I think this was a sign of
being a progressive and balanced leader and should help bring some much needed
relief to industries hit hard by the economic downturn.
3. The
price on carbon, though not a popular thing –I didn’t like seeing gas prices go
up any more than the next guy –will also create a revenue stream that can help
pay for the infrastructure projects over the next 3 years and mitigate some of
the budget deficit we will have.
4. The Government has a goal of raising the
median family income to $105,000 in Canada by 2030. The current median family
income in case you were wondering is around $76,000. So, over the next 13
years, the Government wants to find ways to create an average yearly increase
of $2230 –or raising the median by around 38% by 2030 or 2.9% yearly.
Now current average inflation is projected at 1.14%
yearly, so the Government’s intention is to find ways for middle class families
to increase year-over-year by a percentage that’s higher.
This is a lofty aspiration and while a detailed
analysis of just “How” they will do this can certainly be discussed in a later
post what I want to focus on is that to my mind, I never heard such an
ambitious plan by the former Harper Conservatives. For that matter I certainly
haven’t heard it ever from Trump.
So for this part, I will have to score a point on
the side of Progressive leadership at the moment. We’ll see if the Trudeau
Government gets to keep the point, depending on what happens over the next 3
years.
5. The article indicates that an innovation
agenda, a poverty reduction strategy and a review of the tax system are all on
the table. And that proposals are already out there and in the works.
Sounds promising. I’ll give another point to the
Progressive column.
6. The next portion of the article talks
about a bunch of things in the works such as poverty-tracking, infrastructure
and interesting things like wage insurance. Whether you think it can be done,
or whether you agree or not, these things indicate that there is some real thought
being given behind the scenes as to how to accomplish the goals.
I get into a lot of conversations/arguments about
how the Government needs to do more to help folks. I have to be honest, I think
that if those same people were better off financially, they’d never make a peep
about “needing to help people at home more”. Others just simply would not be on
their radar.
How can I make this assumption? Because the ONLY
time I hear them moan and complain is when they are kicking up a fuss about
Liberals –be they Provincial or Federal. When it’s just a regular day or even
when the Conservatives were in power I never heard a peep.
You’ll find that currently of the 290 campaign promises
Trudeau made, they have achieved 38 (13%) of them and have 67 (23%) more in
progress and various stages. They have failed at 28 (9%) of them –but NO
Government ever follows through on all of them.
So, for the first 400+ days in office, around 36% of the
promises made have been completed or are in progression. At this rate, if they
stay true to the numbers currently by the end of year 4 they should have
achieved around 52% of the promises, with more still in progress and a
projected failure rate maybe around 30% or so. Hard to really determine
accurately.
To my mind, if he’s not quite the “last hope of mankind”
he still stands as a Progressive Leader in regressive times.
