Last month, the Conservatives held a virtual party convention; this weekend, it’s the NDP and Liberals’ turn. And what a jolly time it promises to be, with policy resolutions that veer from centre-left to downright Trotskyite. Both parties propose a guaranteed basic income, a transition to a green energy economy, and to protect worker pensions. But the NDP then gets creative. Abolish billionaires? Nationalize major auto companies? Phase out the Canadian Armed Forces? Ah, let the fun begin.
Both the Liberals and NDP, however, are banking on the same belief: that Canadians have an appetite for greater state intervention. The question is how far-reaching that intervention should be. Should it be a purpose-driven reworking of capitalism, as former Bank of England Governor (and Liberal convention headliner) Mark Carney proposes in his recent book, Values(s)? Or a wholesale confiscation of private capital, as the NDP bash-a-billionaire crowd would demand? (Hint: the Broadbent Institute recently featured a takedown of Carney’s tome in which it labelled him the “ultimate Davos Man.”)
Both parties’ designs also reveal their Achilles heel: their obsession with centralizing power in Ottawa.
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