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Holding the TRUDEAU Govt accountable; 92% Record

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October 7, 2019

Holding the TRUDEAU Govt accountable; 92% Record

By Andrew Cardozo

THE TRUDEAU RECORD: PROMISES KEPT AND BROKEN
THE HILL TIMES |
MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2019
Andrew Cardozo
Opinion

To the surprise of all, a group of independent academics evaluated the Liberal record of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government and they concluded that the government had kept 92 per cent of its promises.

OTTAWA—Populists on the right are the best communicators we have ever seen. They boil complex issues down to bumper sticker slogans which voters can remember. Liberals and progressives, well that’s another story. They seem to translate bumper sticker slogans into paragraphs, pages, or PhD theses, making sure to address all the nuances and to use the most politically correct (and inoffensive) language possible. Guess who wins?

In this election, voters are left with the sense that the only thing the Liberal government has done in the past four years is get into trouble over the SNC-Lavalin and brown face/black face controversies.
To the surprise of all, a group of independent academics evaluated the Liberal record of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government and lo and behold they concluded that the government had kept 92 per cent of its promises. A whopping 92 per cent. The book is Assessing Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Government: 353 Promises and a Mandate for Change, edited by Lisa Birch and François Pétry.
Yet myth would have us believe that the Liberals wilfully broke all their promises. The Pearson Centre did its own review, looking for the most important promises by surveying a number of observers, with a view to identifying the top 20 promises kept, the response was much more than 10, at least of the moderate and major issues.

So here’s the record that the Liberals are not telling you about very much and neither are the other parties or the media. Keeping promises doesn’t make headlines; breaking them does.
Go back to the precocious “Because it’s 2015.” Trudeau was referring to his gender equal cabinet, the fi rst ever federal one— although not the fi rst in Canada—Jean Charest had done so in Quebec. Today, his cabinet is also the most ethnically diverse cabinet we have had.

Here’s a quick rundown of some 65 promises kept, and frankly if there were not a good number, one would wonder what they were doing for four years:

ON THE ECONOMY:
• Increased Canadian world-market access by becoming the only G7 country with trade agreements with all the other G7 countries.
• Negotiated the new NAFTA (CUSMA) with a very unpredictable U.S. administrations, using a comprehensive Canadian federal-provincial, multi-party, and government-business-labour coalition within Canada, to engage with U.S. federal and state governments and Congress.
• Negotiated the new Asia-Pacifi c trade deal (CPTPP—they might want to stop using that ridiculous acronym) despite the U.S. pulling out. They were able to add in progressive labour and environmental sections, which is key to ensuring that trade deals do not only reward the rich and the big corporations.
• Completed negotiation on the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe, completing what the Harper Conservatives had begun.
• Ensured removal of steel and aluminum tariffs by the U.S. government, a longtime irritant between our two countries.
• One million jobs were created over four years—mostly full-time.
• Focused on decreasing the debt to GDP ratio as promised, although they have run a larger defi cit than promised.
• Largest infrastructure program.
• Creation of fi ve Innovation Super Clusters across the country focused on: digital, protein, advanced manufacturing, supply chains, and oceans.
• Increased support for fi rst-time homebuyers.
• Lowered taxes for middle-income people benefi tting nine million Canadians, one of the early changes enacted in 2015.
• Increased the tax on the top one per cent. • Reduced the small business tax rate from 11 per cent to nine per cent.
• Bought the Trans Mountain Pipeline to help Alberta and Saskatchewan oil to western ports for export.

LABOUR
• Repealed the Harper government’s Bills C-377 and C-525 which were designed to weaken unions by forcing redundant fi nancial reporting, and by making it diffi cult for Canadians in federally regulated workplaces to join a union.
• Created the Union Training and Innovation Program to enhance union ability to train apprentices.
• Brought in a complete ban on asbestos, strongly advocated by labour unions.
• For the fi rst time, there was formal labour involvement in key initiatives: the NAFTA advisory committee; the Just Transition Task Force to address the transition plan for coal workers and communities; and a new advisory committee to help promote apprenticeships and skilled trades.

QUALITY OF LIFE
• Enhanced the Canada Pension Plan (from one-quarter to one-third of one’s average income). This is major for an aging society, but rarely discussed.
• Reduced the age to receive Old Age Security from 67, enacted by the Harper government, back to 65.
• Strengthened income security for single seniors and improved the fi nancial security of about 900,000 single seniors across Canada.
• The new “Canada Child Benefi t” of up to $6,400 per child—lifting 300,000 children out of poverty—one of the most signifi cant social policy development in recent years.
• Passed our fi rst national Accessible Canada Act to work towards a barrier-free society for Canadians with disabilities.
• Legislation to protect trans rights.
• First federal support to LGBTQ service organizations.
• First National Housing Strategy focused on affordable housing.
• Reopened nine Veterans Affairs service offi ces across Canada to provide better services to our veterans. Health care
• Enacted the Canada Health Transfer with its basic escalator for infl ation, plus individual agreements negotiated with each province for additional funding earmarked for home care and mental health.
• First steps on pharmacare and bulk buying, plus an advisory committee on creating a pharmacare system for Canada (the Hoskins Committee).

INDIGENOUS ADVANCEMENT
• Established the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and committed to implement the recommendations.
• Have ended 85 on-reserve drinking water advisories and are on track to end all advisories by March 2021. • Passed the Indigenous Languages Act.
• Increased funding for First Nations education with an investment of $2.6-billion.
• Implemented Truth and Reconciliation Commission call to action to include Indigenous recognition in the oath for new citizens and in the citizenship guide.

IMMIGRATION
• Brought in 35,000 Syrian refugees to Canada within weeks of taking offi ce in 2015/16, who were sponsored by church and other citizens groups across Canada.
• Continued to increase immigration, increasing family reunifi cation while maintaining a focus on economic migration. Culture and Diversity
• Signifi cantly increased funding to the Canada Council and other cultural agencies.
• Created a new federal anti-racism strategy, fi rst created in the Pierre Trudeau era and phased out by the Harper government.

GENDER EQUITY
• Implemented a gender parity federal cabinet.
• Introduced gender-based analysis (GBA) for all aspects of the federal budget.
• Implemented a feminist foreign aid policy on the premise that focusing on women and girls lifts the society at large.
• Appointed more women as judges and to other boards and agencies.
• Provided support for some 40,000 new affordable child care spaces.
• Provided new funding for shelters and transition homes to help women and their families.

YOUTH
• Increased the Canada Student Grant by a significant 50 per cent.
• Established the Prime Minister’s Youth Advisory council.

ENVIRONMENT
• Signed on to the Paris Climate Accord.
• Instituted a price on pollution.
• Reducing single use plastics.
• Increased national parks and protected areas.

LEGAL AND RELATED ISSUES
• Legalized and regulated cannabis.
• Created right-to-die legislation, controversial as it is.
• Created the Air Passengers Bill of Rights.
• Created the House of Commons all-party Oversight Committee on National Security.

DEMOCRACY & PARLIAMENT
• Ensured that all Canadians have the right to vote including those living abroad.
• Created the independent commission to organize leaders’ debates.
• Restored the voter ID card as an acceptable form of voter identifi cation, and removed other new restrictions brought in by the previous government.
• Reformed the Senate appointment process to remove partisan appointments. The Senate now has a majority of independents, for the fi rst time in Canadian history.

SCIENCE AND STATISTICS
• Created the chief science offi cer position.
• Un-muzzled federal scientists.
• Restored the long-form census—one of the fi rst announcements back in 2015. • Increased the budgets of the research granting councils (CIHR, SSHRC, NSERC).

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
• Increased interaction with the UN and multilateral bodies.
• Established the peacekeeping mission in Mali.

PROMISES BROKEN
• The most oft-cited is electoral reform, for which they claim there was not suffi cient political consensus for any one model.
• The budget defi cit of $10-billion in year one with no defi cit by year four was not met. Rather, defi cits will continue for the foreseeable future. The Trudeau government claims that reducing debt-to-GDP ratio is more important.
• Have not phased out subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

BEHIND SCHEDULE
• Most notable is the long list of calls to action regarding Indigenous equality and advancement, sometimes a result of lengthy or inadequate consultations.

Andrew Cardozo is president of the Pearson Centre. The Hill Times