Justin Trudeau’s comments in 2015 about “sunny ways” feel like a fever dream today. At the time, he promised to repair relationships with Indigenous peoples, tackle climate change, and introduce proportional representation voting.
But since then, his government has backtracked on those promises, and life has remained unaffordable for most people, or gotten even harder. So people are pissed. This has opened the door for opportunists to offer simplistic solutions that won’t solve much, if anything.
It’s worth retracing how we got to this point, and where it leaves us.
The many letdowns
The Liberals backtracking came fast. First, they tossed proportional representation aside. Then the government bought the TMX pipeline, pushed it through without Indigenous consent, and gave huge subsidies to the oil industry. They didn’t even bother making meaningful investments to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, like a nationwide retrofit program for existing buildings, which would also create jobs.
Though they talked about addressing wealth inequality, it has only grown to even more outrageous proportions. The richest family in Canada, the Thomsons, saw their fortune balloon from around $30 billion in 2014 to $98 billion today, according to estimates from Macleans and Canadian Business. Meanwhile, food bank use in Toronto is four times higher than it was before the pandemic.
The few programs the Liberals have introduced to meaningfully benefit people arrived years late and only when the Liberals were dependent on the NDP to stay in power. Those include $10-a-day daycare and partial dental care and pharmacare programs.
And after years of promising immigration reforms that would give hundreds of thousands of people who live and work here access to basic services like healthcare and also labour rights, the Liberals did a full 180. They recently announced massive cuts to immigration permits, falling in line with the popular yet misguided trend
of blaming social problems on migrants and immigration.
With an election coming in the next year, the Liberals are scrambling to rebuild goodwill. But as millions of people struggle due to inflation and corporate price gouging, the Liberals aren’t making big changes. Instead of putting a moratorium on evictions or capping the prices of essentials like groceries, they’re pulling a classic conservative move. They’re removing the HST from some products for two months only. They also proposed to send most of us (but not everyone) a one-time $250 cheque, but that failed. (Editor’s note, Nov. 29, 2024: the print version of this article indicated the cheques were a done deal. We apologize for the error.)
All the broken promises and half-hearted attempts to make life better are leaving a bad taste.
Of course, not all the blame is Trudeau’s. A lot of it also rests on provincial premiers. That includes Doug Ford here in Ontario, who is privatizing parts of the healthcare system, undermining the $10 daycare program, and a lot more.
But the Liberals’ lack of a credible plan has opened the door for opportunists to push culture war battles and create moral panics. This acts to divide the working class instead of bringing it together to demand more of a share of the wealth the ultra-rich are hoarding.
For example, instead of looking into how much money landlords are pocketing each month as rents keep rising, some people are blaming immigrants for the housing crisis. Instead of pushing the Liberals to increase taxes on record profits for oil and grocery giants, people are yelling about immigrants supposedly taking jobs.
While it would be more useful to have discussions about how capitalism creates crises in cycles and how we’re at a low point in that rollercoaster, we get chaotic conversations about the symptoms.
The loop
This is all a familiar story.
A politician campaigns with vaguely left-wing talking points, promising “real change” and wins over hearts and minds. But once in power, they move to the right, backtracking on many promises and slowly delivering on a few when they need our votes.
But because they don’t change much and capitalism keeps creating inequality, life keeps getting harder for most people. Dissatisfaction grows.
Liberals and business leaders remain hostile to left-wing ideas, such as increased public ownership of services, like Saskatchewan’s public telecomm and insurance providers (both which have great rates). And the NDP, which has tied itself to the Liberals for the past few years, tends to push leftist activists and ideas aside, especially during elections. So left-wing proposals are rarely discussed widely.
Then a new conservative politician swoops in, talking about a glorious past, promising to “bring it home” or saying “Let’s Make America Great Again” (Ronald Regan’s campaign slogan in 1980, reprised by Donald Trump.) That politician eventually wins, worsens wealth inequality, and introduces some authoritarian practices.
So, with less than a year before the next federal election where does this leave us?
First, it’s no good to politely wait for Liberal governments to make life better for working people. They typically only do that when there is immense external pressure on them. We need organized people demanding better. That will also be useful if a Conservative government comes in soon proposing to cut all kinds of services and regulations.
Second, this is a moment when people are searching for answers. The culture wars debates aren’t going away (see articles in the rest of this issue). So engaging and debunking misleading arguments with your family, friends, and community members is important.
And crucially, there is a big opportunity for putting forward proposals that will actually help people.
It’s an uncertain moment, with troubling trends. Liberal letdowns may have opened the door to much of this chaos, but it’s up to us to shape what’s next.
This article appeared in the 2024 Dec - 2025 Jan issue.