Uncommons Weekly: September 7

A look back at this week’s drama and a look ahead to the parliamentary session

A look back at the drama of the last week and a look ahead at what we will hopefully see in this fall parliamentary session, from immigration reform to action on healthcare and housing.

We’re looking to keep doing these weekly video updates throughout the fall, so if you have questions you’d like answered or issues you’d like addressed, reply in the comments or send me an email at info@beynate.ca

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Welcome to Uncommons Weekly. 

Parliament is set to resume shortly and Jagmeet Singh made sure to bring some drama to our return.

Earlier this week, he announced that he’s ripping up the supply and confidence agreement.

The video announcement accused Liberals of being weak, selfish, and beholden to corporate greed. And bizarrely, tried to cast the NDP as the alternative to Poilievre’s cuts.

For all of the silly theatrics, I still think the best approach is to embrace cooperation in our politics if it means getting things done that improve people’s lives.

Since the supply deal was struck, we’ve seen continued progress on climate action and reconciliation, a new disability benefit, a new dental care program, a new and serious federal housing plan, the beginnings of pharmacare, and more. 

Yes, the progress has been imperfect. And yes, there are many reasons to criticize different decisions.

But I didn’t see any substantive criticism to warrant ripping up the supply deal.

I also didn’t see Singh use his announcement to advance anything new. If I’d been in his position, I’d have put a few big ideas on the table this fall (electoral reform, restoring the per-vote subsidy) and made a continued deal conditional on seeing them through. Seems like a real missed opportunity.

Of course, cooperation can come in many forms. It can mean a formal supply deal or a less stable case-by-case negotiation. Hopefully we see a continued but different kind of cooperation on shared priorities this fall. 

Polievre supporters will, no doubt, keep demanding an election to kill effective carbon pricing, dental care, and the CBC. But most people just want the government to focus on governing - to address the serious issues that affect them personally and the challenges we face as a country - and they get tired pretty quick of the Ottawa-bubble posturing.

Which brings me to the Liberal government’s approach this fall, and everything depends on competence. Put aside the “historic” announcements, drop the ribbon cutting, and focus on the big challenges.

We need serious immigration reform, for example. Immigration remains essential to the well-being of our economy and to our humanitarian responsibilities. And it needs to be sustainable. Temporary immigration has grown unsustainably, especially since the pandemic. 

International student numbers have exploded - and you’ll often hear the blame pinned on private colleges. But that’s only a partial telling. It starts with provincial austerity in post-secondary spending, fueled further by provinces like Ontario actively promoting public college-private partnerships, while the feds welcomed the new labour force even if valued education was an afterthought. 

The provinces bear most of the blame, especially here in Ontario, but the feds could also have acted more quickly. Which we are now doing, with Minister Miller capping student visas, no longer granting post-grad work permits to international students who complete public college degrees outsourced to private colleges, and rolling back the number of hours international students can work in a given week.

Some problems are no one’s fault and we shouldn’t pretend that all challenges are easy to solve - asylum seekers have grown from 10,000 people to almost 150,000 people per year in the last decade, for example. We need action there too, and we should also ensure people are treated with dignity as we act. Faster claims processing is required across the board - and there’s been some funding on this front - and faster deportations are necessary in cases where people have illegitimately claimed asylum.

We also need to ensure people who are here are adequately housed, and where people have been here for more than 5 years and they are contributing to their communities in a positive way, we are all better off if they receive permanent status, insteading of working under the table, and living too often on the margins.

Other problems are the feds fault entirely. Now, including the expansion of the temporary foreign work program, which creates long-standing conditions for exploitation and has served to drive down low-income wages and upend entry level jobs for young Canadians.

As professor Skuterud has asked: “We expect workers to compete for scarce jobs when labour markets are slack. Why don’t we expect businesses to compete for scarce workers when markets are tight?”

And yes, then Minister Hajdu made some useful changes more than 5 years ago to step up monitoring, increase on-site inspection, and penalize abusive employers. 

But when a UN special rapporteur calls the program a breeding ground for modern slavery, and when government officers are told to skip fraud prevention steps when vetting applications, a serious overhaul is long overdue.

The government has rightly reversed its 2022 deregulation of the program - ensuring a firm is capped at using up to 10% of its workforce with TFWs and that firms in urban areas can’t apply if the local unemployment rate is above 6%. Not nothing.

In the words of Mike Moffatt: these changes are a good first step but do not go nearly far enough in addressing the harms caused by the program. He calls for open work permits, greater worker protections, and a real overhaul.

Or we could take these comments seriously: “The temporary foreign worker program needs to be scaled back dramatically over time, and refocused on its original purpose: to fill jobs on a limited basis when no Canadian workers can be found. I believe it is wrong for Canada to follow the path of countries who exploit large numbers of guest workers, who have no realistic prospect of citizenship. It is bad for our economy in that it depresses wages for all Canadians, but it’s even worse for our country. It puts pressure on our commitment to diversity, and creates more opportunities for division.” That’s from an op-ed written by none other than Justin Trudeau,  back in 2014.

All of that’s to say, we need the government to remain seized with serious reforms to ensure sustainable immigration, and showing a little humility is important too. 

And some problems aren’t the federal government’s primary responsibility, but the problems have become so acute that we need more serious federal leadership. 

Too many people don’t have access to a family doctor or health team. I heard it all the time last year in my provincial travels, and it costs us all in the long run. If primary care is the door to our healthcare system, we have closed that door for millions of Canadians.

And encampments, homelessness, and related mental health and addiction challenges come to mind too. I was at a Queen’s baseball alumni tournament over the labour day weekend, where I played very badly, and my old coach raised the issue with me in a friendly way. It’s visible to everyone. 

And some politicians will weaponize that to play on people’s fears. To make people struggling with homelessness and addictions into the other. To cancel health services and cost lives. 

And some politicians will say the right things, but fail to appreciate that the scale of our public health efforts is woefully insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge in our communities.

We need a more ambitious and comprehensive public health approach that expands treatment and harm reduction, but that also takes the social determinants of health seriously, including most importantly - income, housing, and opportunity.

Or, we could just spend hundreds of millions of dollars and expand alcohol access instead. I don’t know what I was thinking, actually, that would be way more popular.

I was asked by Metro Morning’s David Common recently what my message will be for caucus this fall. I can tell you what I said in Sudbury, at that swanky retreat at the Holiday Inn:

First, it’s all about competence in governing this fall. As I’ve ranted at length about already here.

Second, we need to educate Canadians about who Pierre Poilievre is and what he has stood for over a 20 year career in Parliament. Erin O’Toole may not have been conservative enough for their base, but Poilievre’s reform party brand of politics will be a harder sell for people when they get to know him as many of us have in parliament. And with a new campaign director, I expect that to happen in earnest.

Third and finally, with a more positive message, if Trudeau is going to be our guy in the next race, he needs to tell Canadians why he’s in it. What does he want to accomplish and how does he hope to improve people’s lives with another term. When his dad ran a final time, he identified five priorities.

Trudeau should tell us his.

He’s a dad, and has credibly delivered for kids. The Canada Child Benefit has lifted hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, and national child care has put thousands of dollars into the pockets of young families. Next up: a national school healthy food program to help kids succeed.

Trudeau cares, and has credibly expanded healthcare for millions. The dental care program is an early success and the beginnings of pharmcare will hopefully be in place soon. Next up: a family health team for everyone.

Or you could axe serious carbon action and kill the CBC. The choice is yours.