Thursday May 28, 2020 ~ COWICHAN-MALAHAT-LANGFORD
EDITORIAL by Mary Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
This is a significant time in Canadian history when even people who don’t normally follow politics are realizing the powerful impact of having the right leadership in place in times of trouble.
We’re in a pandemic, afterall, and decisions being made on nearly a daily basis are impacting the lives of most if not all Canadians (including businesses and communities) — for the short term, mid-range and long term.
Following the October 2019 federal election, many Canadians chattered about what a minority government was about, and pontificated about how some or each of the Opposition parties would posture themselves or even survive in a split scenario. Some political pundits got into the weeds, debating how the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, and even the three-seat Greens, would try to bargain or negotiate each piece of legislation, one by one. Any movement forward in the House of Commons seemed to be destined for a slow grind.
Last fall, the Liberals leading government but with fewer seats than the Conservatives looked like a rocky boat ride for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his second term of office.
Most people thought the NDP had failed to win enough seats and were in a weakened position. The Bloc was blatant in its interest to defend all things Quebecois but with the eloquence of their leader Yves-Francois Blanchet there is fresh intellectual balance in the House.
Trudeau had taken a long vacation over Christmas 2019 in Costa Rica and came back in 2020 with a quieter edge. He then took off for what turned out to be a quick overseas jaunt to pitch for a seat for Canada on the UN Security Council in order to deal with the Canada-destined Iranian plane crash, then met headlong with the indigenous land rights protests in February, and by early March had fallen deep into COVID-19 pandemic management.
Then came COVID-19:
Then along came COVID-19. To say everything changed is a huge understatement. Canadians needed fast changes and the minority government has been forced by necessity to collaborate and act quickly in order to try and stave off economic disaster.
Job losses or lay-offs in the millions, business closures in the thousands, and service-oriented non-profits (such as the Red Cross and food banks) facing unprecedented demand arrived like a tsunami. Almost daily, changes by the federal government became necessary to produce deliverables not seen or conceived of before. Emergency benefit programs rolled off a deficit-building assembly line, with remarkably short planning time frames.
As often happens in emergencies, things happened in the past few months during COVID-19 that were never considered before. What’s the old saying?: “Necessity is the mother of invention”.
The federal government has also tried to lean on banks and credit card companies to ‘do the right thing’, but it seems even a pandemic cannot do much to budge the profit-motive. A few wrinkles of support have popped up by various institutions (like a few free Interac transactions per month, or allowing for deferred payments — sometimes without interest penalty) but otherwise there is little room for any individual or business to find favour with a financial institution… still the same types of paperwork, and sometimes more, have been loaded on the shoulders of business.
And good luck if in any way you weren’t Internet and/or app-enabled. Wireless and virtual technologies have become in and of themselves essential services.
Many people talk about silver-lining impacts of COVID-19 and that’s one of the big ones … it’s almost as if the minority setup was custom-made for progress during an infectious pandemic. The boots-on-the-ground awareness among the NDP, Bloc and Greens regarding how everyday Canadians live and work has been a huge win for Canadians during the pandemic.
Collecting the political capital:
The NDP have lucked out with Jagmeet Singh as their leader during the pandemic. He has clearly put politics-for-the-people ahead of politics for personal gain or for big-business affiliation.
This week the NDP — which sometimes has a problem with tooting its own horn in a way that shows their true impact in the political system — sent out this summary of their most recent achievements. Local Member of Parliament for Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Alistair MacGregor, put it like this:
The NDP decided to negotiate, and we secured:
- A firm commitment to pursue paid sick leave for all
- More time for questions with broader scope each week than a regular House sitting – allowing ALL MPs to participate
- Sittings in July & August to hold government to account
And before that, they got the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) bumped up to $2,000 and succeeded in getting application hurdles reduced or eliminated for people who are contract workers, gig workers, students or self-employed.
The NDP also pushed for the wage subsidy (available to eligible employers) to be bumped up from 10% to 75%.
Both of those achievements indicated how the NDP are more in touch with the needs of the majority of individuals and small businesses. Their pressure on the Liberal government for many of those changes has improved the lives of just about every Canadian during the pandemic, which helps set the stage for economic recovery. It wasn’t just about dollars but about appropriate levels for reasons that would succeed for the objective — i.e. surviving this unprecedented storm.
The Liberals did increase the child tax benefit to families without much of a nudge, that’s very much in their framework of supporting the middle class. And while they did eventually send additional support to seniors who already get CPP and OAS, it did take a while and again with details from the NDP about new types of COVID-related circumstances costing more for seniors such as delivery fees for groceries and taking taxis instead of public transit.
The Bloc and Greens were for the most part supportive of the changes that have benefitted Canadians in these important ways, but it’s been the NDP leading the charge and — with the 35 seats that they were effectively teased about not having much political punch — have proven in spades the power of politics-for-the-people.
The voters are always right:
In politics there is a phrase (often used if a politician loses) that ‘the vote is always right’. In this case, every politician can be happy with the October 2019 federal election outcome. It was almost designer-made for dealing with the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19.
And we are reminded — as is always the case — be thoughtful about who you vote for. In the case of October 2019, Canadian voters ‘got it right’ with producing a minority parliament which became — in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic — just what the doctor ordered.
===== RELATED ARTICLES on the political aspects of managing the soceioeconomics of COVID-19 ~ by Mary Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
- NDP makes a big difference during COVID-19 (April 3, 2020)
- Direct money to everyone during COVID-19, says NDP (April 6, 2020)
- Drop the means-test for federal help during COVID-19, says NDP (April 7, 2020)
- NDP Leader presses for student inclusion in job support during COVID-19 (April 26, 2020)
- Trudeau has confidence in Canadians to bounce back (April 30, 2020)
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