Governments across the world have been resorting to big, stimulus heavy responses in order to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on their economies. America recently passed a $1 trillion stimulus relief package, while here in Canada the Liberal government’s budget, packed with new and expanded social welfare programs, ballooned to $135 billion.
This has been a break from the neoliberal orthodoxy of recent decades which placed a premium on reducing government spending and employing a tight-fisted control on debt and deficits.
So, has the pandemic heralded a readjustment in economic thinking that’s here to stay beyond the current crisis and recovery? Are we entering into an era of Big Government? Have progressives really won the battle of ideas?
The Hub’s editor at large Sean Speer joins Angella MacEwen, senior economist at CUPE National, and Tasha Kheiriddin, principal at the strategy and public affairs firm Navigator, on The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss.
“The budget is not just a political document,” Speer argues, “it represents a significant moment in the world of political ideas and the rise of a new confident progressivism that is challenging the consensus around economic policy making that has shaped a bi-partisan approach in Canada, and indeed across the anglosphere.”
