{"id":75977,"date":"2024-03-12T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/?p=75977"},"modified":"2024-03-11T17:46:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T21:46:11","slug":"ginny-roth-poilievre-still-pro-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/2024-03-12\/ginny-roth-poilievre-still-pro-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Ginny Roth: Don’t mistake Poilievre’s big business broadsides for an anti-growth agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A striking scene took place last Friday\u2014one that doesn’t typically generate much buzz for being an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence: a Canadian conservative addressing a chamber of commerce. But speaking with<\/a> the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, Pierre Poilievre admitted that this was the first chamber of commerce or board of trade that he has met with since becoming the Conservative Party leader 18 months ago. In contrast, he said that he has visited five local union halls and 110 “shop floors” in that time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His message matched the overall tone he has adopted towards big business in his time as leader\u2014which is to say he was not afraid to mince words in criticizing “utterly useless” corporate lobbyists and the business leaders who fail to stand up for workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, he claimed that if he becomes prime minister his “daily obsession” will be to advance the interests of the “working-class” people of this country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is behind the strident rhetoric? And does this signal a fundamental shift in the Conservative Party’s adherence to free-market principles?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To answer the first question first, astute political observers have recently homed in on the dismal state of Canada\u2019s GDP per capita. They rightly point out that the powerful statistic is one of the best measures of how individuals and families are experiencing the economy. And as far as it goes, things aren\u2019t looking good. As Pierre Poilievre might put it, people don\u2019t just need jobs, they need powerful paycheques. And when the cost of living is rising as the economy falters, Canadians\u2019 paycheques are feeling…weak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as prognosticators begin to chart out what the potential future prime minister would do about the economy, this focus by him and many of his new candidates on cost-of-living\u2014sometimes pejoratively described as economic populism\u2014is leading many to worry that when it comes to governing, he\u2019ll put sloganeering before sound economic principles. They\u2019re concerned he\u2019ll sacrifice solid financial management at the altar of political pandering, avoiding unpopular decisions and attacking, maybe even penalising, the very drivers of economic growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true that Poilievre\u2019s economic policy is likely to be influenced by recent global trends and new externalities\u2014from the rise of China as a bad-faith trading partner to the impact of new technologies on work and culture. And there\u2019s no question that Poilievre\u2019s campaign messaging isn\u2019t especially friendly to the corporate class. But a plan that isn\u2019t tied to real people\u2019s experience of the economy is worthless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poilievre and his team are responding to almost a decade of political decision-making that saw workers with weakening paycheques and consumers with rising costs play second fiddle to virtue signalling global climate deals, and climbing taxes, regulations, and winner-picking corporate welfare. For them, fighting for workers means restoring the conditions in which free enterprise can flourish by restoring the baseline conditions for fair dealing. Poilievre may campaign like an economic populist, but when it comes down to it, he\u2019ll govern like a modern fiscal conservative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard to blame Canada\u2019s business community for feeling trepidatious about what\u2019s to come. More than a year into his leadership, Poilievre made sure to remind Bay Street executives at a C.D. Howe lunch that he wasn\u2019t all that interested in spending his time meeting with them. Just last week his newest star member of Parliament, Jamil Jivani, took the opportunity in his victory speech to warn \u201cliberal elites\u201d in business to get their priorities straight and worry less about DEI and more about their workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not that this commentary is mere rhetoric. Indeed, Poilievre and Jivani are quite serious about the priorities they\u2019re setting. But rather than assuming a focus on these themes will lead to economic interventionism, it\u2019s worth thinking through what underpins them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservatives know that for wages to go up and prices to go down or stop growing so fast (in other words, to get at that pesky GDP-per-capita problem), our economy needs to grow\u2014especially if our population continues to grow. Left-wing populists may believe the best way to make one person\u2019s piece of the pie bigger is to make another\u2019s smaller, but conservatives\u2014even pro-worker conservatives\u2014understand that the better approach is to make the pie bigger. To make matters more complicated, much of what anemic growth we have had in Canada has been a result of our housing bubble, which Poilievre and his team are planning to help deflate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the Conservatives want to \u201cfix the budget.\u201d It\u2019s the third of their top four priorities if you assume their slogans are indicative. And while any meaningful path to balance will include finding savings, more importantly, it will involve driving revenue through economic growth, which, for a frequent Milton Friedman quoter<\/a>, is going to have to come from lower taxes and deregulation. In other words, Poilievre won\u2019t be able to achieve the Canada that he wants for workers and consumers without growth-oriented, traditionally pro-business policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will no doubt be instances\u2014like weighing whether to approve a merger or takeover or deciding whether to legislate workers back to their jobs\u2014where free market principles will have to be weighed against competing common goods like national security or labour rights. And of course, if a company\u2019s idea of pro-business policy is for the government to preserve protected regulatory status, tax treatment, or a funding envelope, then that is an argument for crony capitalism, not a growth agenda. Business leaders may need to come to terms with not being the heroes of a potential Poilievre government\u2019s economic story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, prioritizing the interests of a small elite is part of how our country got into this mess. But casual watchers should not mistake Poilievre\u2019s distaste for corporate Canada\u2019s trendier priorities with a fundamental discomfort with free market capitalism. In fact, it\u2019s the opposite. For Poilievre, fiscal conservatism and economic populism aren\u2019t incompatible, they\u2019re a match made in heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prioritizing the interests of a small elite is part of how our country got into this mess. But casual watchers should not mistake Poilievre\u2019s distaste for corporate Canada\u2019s trendier priorities with a fundamental discomfort with free market capitalism. In fact, it\u2019s the opposite. For Poilievre, fiscal conservatism and economic populism aren\u2019t incompatible, they\u2019re a match made in heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":75984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-03-12T10:00:24Z","apple_news_api_id":"96fc9c47-f264-46f6-8e9f-209567455a63","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-03-12T10:00:24Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AlvycR_JkRvaOnyCVZ0VaYw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","_custom_css":"","_custom_scss":""},"categories":[30,66,64,6],"tags":[],"hub_format":[2],"thefutureofnews":[],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75977"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76126,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75977\/revisions\/76126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75977"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hub_format?post=75977"},{"taxonomy":"thefutureofnews","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thefutureofnews?post=75977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}