In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
The CBC’s days are numbered—and it has no one to blame but itself
As the CBC faces growing scrutiny, including for a new round of executive bonuses in spite of major layoffs, its proponents continue to hang onto the argument that the public broadcaster is still needed to fill the gaps caused by the decline of local news across the country.
Although arguments about market failure in the news media industry tend to be overstated, the case that there’s a real breakdown in local communities—particularly outside of major cities—is more persuasive. The recent failure of SaltWire in Nova Scotia and the declining value of Corus local radio and television stations reinforce that it’s highly challenging to generate a sustainable return by producing news for local markets.
But even if one accepts that this is a case of genuine market failure, the CBC doesn’t really provide the type of news that most people ostensibly have in mind when they make such an argument. Public interest local journalism would in theory cover basic civic news like city hall, local sports, or community activities. The CBC’s provincial and local coverage is decidedly not focused on these topics.
A case in point is an article published this week on the CBC Newfoundland webpage about a local trans man who unexpectedly gave birth to a baby. Whatever one thinks about the story it’s hard to argue that it reflects broad public interest journalism. The article itself indicates that the individual’s chance of conceiving a child was 1.8 percent. The nature of their experience—particularly in St. John’s—is even more atypical. It’s highly niche content that is neither representative of the broad-based local experience nor informative of major national or international developments for a local audience.
It didn’t have to be this way.
The decline in local news isn’t a new issue. It’s been a slowing-moving crisis. The CBC had plenty of time to reorient itself as a key part of the government’s response to these developments. But it has chosen not to.
In a parallel universe, the public broadcaster could have reconfigured its staff and other resources beyond the 40 or so communities (which mostly comprise provincial capitals and key population centres) in which it’s currently present. It could have gone much further than last year’s addition of 14 journalists in communities like Cranbrook, Lethbridge, and Kingston to establish itself as a major player in secondary and rural communities across the country. It could have dedicated a greater share of its local coverage to public interest journalism and away from its overemphasis on identity politics.
If the CBC had pursued these changes in the face of the decline of local news, it would have renewed its public broadcasting mission for today’s media environment and made it far more difficult for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives to campaign on the pledge to defund it. Its failure to be responsive to the evolving local media landscape has undermined its strongest argument for continuing to exist.
There may be a role for public policy to support local journalism. That’s the subject of a worthy policy debate. But however one comes down on the question the CBC isn’t the answer. The CBC doesn’t do public interest local journalism anymore. It does identity politics. And that will ultimately be its downfall.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland listens during a news conference, June 11, 2024 in Ottawa. Adrian Wyld/The Candian Press.
The times are changing—can the Liberals finally update their economic playbook?
The challenge with big developments in the economy is that it can take a while for us to adjust our thinking in response. We risk applying old diagnoses and solutions to new and different problems. The Trudeau government’s persistent focus on income inequality in the face of Canada’s economic stagnation is a good example.
The Trudeau government came to office in 2015 convinced that the country’s chief economic problem was income inequality and the solution was redistributive changes to the tax and transfer system to solve for the market’s unequal distribution. Its first budget raised taxes on high-income earners and significantly boosted government transfers to individuals and families.
Some of us were critical of this interpretation of the Canadian economy at the time. It seemed like a debate that was imported from the United States and disconnected from the evidence of our own economic and social conditions. But it was a conception of the economy that was consistent with broader intellectual trends in progressive politics and familiar to those in Trudeau’s inner circle, including now-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland who wrote her book, Plutocrats, in 2012.
The government has since struggled to update its policy framework to reflect new economic developments. As long-time economics reporter Theo Argitis set out in The Hub earlier this week, the most recent budget’s capital tax hike amounted to a doubling down of an anti-inequality mindset that has defined its time in office.
But if an income inequality lens was debatable in 2015, it’s even more disconnected from the pressing economic challenges facing us in 2024. Economic stagnation and poor productivity aren’t going to be addressed through a combination of higher taxes and more social spending—in fact, there’s a decent chance that it makes things worse. Policymakers should instead focus on a pro-growth agenda composed of de-regulation, pro-investment tax reform, and public investments in science and technology.
The basic insight here is that the long-run costs of slow growth will invariably produce worse outcomes, including even higher levels of inequality. As Argitis put it: “In a world of inflation and high interest rates and high unemployment, getting the macroeconomic policy right means more to the ‘have-nots’ than how much taxes are being paid by the rich.”
The problem however is that the Trudeau government seems incapable of adjusting its understanding of the economy—what Hub publisher Rudyard Griffiths typically refers to as the “theory of the case”—to reflect the country’s slow growth and declining living standards.
It may be due to dogma. It may be political self-interest. Or even self-rationalization. The cause almost doesn’t matter. The Trudeau government’s hyper-focus on inequality and redistribution has become the equivalent of the carpenter with a hammer who only sees nails.
As I’ve written several times at The Hub, the Trudeau government’s economic vision must be understood as serious and substantive. It hasn’t just been spendthrift left-wing populism. It represented a paradigmatic challenge to a pro-growth agenda—with a particular focus on equity over economic efficiency. A massive rise in public spending on the so-called “care economy” was characterized as both good economic and social policy.
The past near-decade has therefore been something of an experiment of a different kind of economic vision. The results aren’t good. It’s been a lost decade as we’ve previously set out. Yesterday’s Labour Force Survey, which showed a drop in private sector employment and a rise in private sector employment in July, is only further evidence that the private economy has effectively stalled.
As these failures become even more self-evident to Canadians, the question is: can the Trudeau government set out a new macroeconomic policy direction or will it keep hitting the economy with the redistributive hammer?
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance speaks at a campaign event, Aug. 7, 2024, in Shelby Township, Mich. Alex Brandon/AP Photo.
Lessons from American Compass’ outsized influence
This week, The Hub spoke with Oren Cass, the founder and chief economist of the U.S.-based think tank, American Compass. Canadians may not be familiar with Cass. But they probably ought to be.
As one of the leading voices of a growing conservative economic heterodoxy, he’s come to exercise pretty considerable influence within American conservative policy circles. So much so that during last month’s Republican Party convention, New York Times columnist David Brooks called him the party’s new “centre of gravity.”
What’s extraordinary about Cass’s rising influence is that the think tank that he leads is not only small in American terms but it’s not even big in the Canadian context. American Compass’s budget is less than $2 million annually. It’s fair to say that this represents the most efficient ratio between influence and revenues of virtually any think tank in the Anglo-American world.
It prompts the question: how can such a small organization exercise greater influence on American policy and politics over far larger and better-funded think tanks and advocacy groups?
There’s no single factor of course. But it’s worth highlighting three.
First, Cass’s heterodoxy—particularly on free trade and globalization—has been perfectly timed for an era in which Republican thinking is more unsettled than it has been since the 1970s. Donald Trump’s political rise is a big part of this story. His influence has been disjunctive: he blew up long-standing orthodoxy but had no real ideas to replace it. Cass and others like him have seized on the opportunity to advance ideas like industrial policy or tariffs that had been mostly verboten in conservative circles.
Second, his intellectual efforts have been matched with the rise of a small group of young, dynamic Republican senators, including Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who are keen to define conservative economic orthodoxy along more populist lines. Cass’ policy research and advocacy have become influential with this cohort which has since tabled legislation on child tax benefits, worker representation on boards, and country-of-origin rules that have been inspired by his work.
Third, the American policy system’s lack of Canadian-style caucus discipline means that policy entrepreneurs like Cass don’t need to persuade party leadership or the caucus as a whole. He just needs to find traction with a small number of elected officials in order to gain entry into the policy debate.
Cass’ influence can be somewhat overstated. The centre of gravity of the Republican congressional caucus is still pretty orthodox. But he may have two advantages: first, his own thinking broadly conforms to the intuitions of Donald Trump who has proven to have an unrivaled hold over the Republican Party in the short term, and second, this group of next-generation leaders is determined to build on Trump’s takeover of the party by refashioning in a Cassian direction. As he put it to me: “They [this group of senators] are quite clearly the future leaders of the party in terms of where momentum is headed.”
There are a lot of conservatives—including me to a certain extent—who think this would be a bad development and a wrong future for conservative ideas and politics. The onus rests with them (or us) to match Cass’s impressive energy and entrepreneurship and ultimately win with better ideas.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well as a think-tank scholar and columnist. He previously served as a senior economic adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper....
