A man cycles past federal election signs in Ottawa on April 28.Shannon Vanraes/Reuters
Remember recess? Your eight-year-old self thought it was the best 15 minutes of the elementary school grind. Chained to that sweatshop desk since 9 a.m., you could finally get up from your chair, go outside and blow off all that pent-up energy by running around the school yard. I also seem to remember that my mom sometimes packed me a snack of crackers and Cheez Whiz. Who didn’t love recess?
Our politicians just had a 37-day recess, officially known as an election campaign. Campaigning is the most fun politicians can have. They can promise everything, and say yes to everyone. It’s like going to an infinite stream of cocktail parties, and trying to make as good an impression on as many people as possible.
Maybe 37 days in a row of non-stop glad-handing and ingratiation doesn’t sound like fun to you, and fair enough. That’s why you weren’t running for office.
Election campaigns are tiring for those involved, just like playing soccer at recess was the most physically demanding part of the elementary school day. But elections are the fun part of politics, while government is the work. A campaign is like a job interview, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Governing is the job.
Each of the parties made big and at times fanciful promises during the last 37 days of job interviews. And can we, the hiring committee of Canadian voters, be honest? We all discounted at least some of what they were pitching. You did it especially with the party and the leader you voted for. You cut the politicians, at least your preferred politician, a certain amount of slack. You let some nose stretchers go, because an election, like a job interview, involves grading on the curve.
Elections often come down to “who do you trust?” more than “which of the drive-thru menu of platform promises would you like to order from?” Especially this election.
In their 1993 platform, the legendary Red Book, the Jean Chrétien Liberals railed against the new and unpopular Goods and Services Tax. Economists called the GST, introduced in 1991, a revenue-neutral improvement on the old, hidden manufacturer’s sales tax, but voters were in no mood to hear it. The Red Book instead said what voters wanted to hear: that the GST had “undermined public confidence in the fairness of the tax system,” had “deepened the recession,” had led to “difficulties” in federal-provincial fiscal relations, had “stimulated the underground cash economy,” and was “costly for small business to administer and very expensive for the government to collect.”
The Liberals promised that, if elected, they would “replace” the GST.
As you may have noticed, the GST is still very much around. The Chrétien government suffered no long-term political damage from fudging its promise. Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps had to step down in 1996 — she had pledged to resign her seat if the tax was not abolished —but she was promptly re-elected by the people of Hamilton East. And the Liberals won two more majority governments.
In the election campaign just concluded, Liberal Leader Mark Carney basically promised to cut taxes like a Conservative while spending more than a Trudeau Liberal. It’s not an equation that easily sums, even if you have a PhD in economics. His plan to divide spending into two buckets – spending-spending and investment-spending – is perfectly reasonable, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the equation.
If you voted Liberal – this column was written before the ballots were counted, but the polls had for weeks pointed to a Liberal majority – were you really voting for Mr. Carney to do each of the specific things in his promise-laden platform — everything from Windsor-to-Quebec City high-speed rail to a new government home-building agency? Or were you voting for the party and leader you believed could be trusted to make the best choices in an uncertain future?
The 1993 Liberals quietly walked back their GST pledge, and voters largely accepted it. They also slew the budget deficit, something their Progressive Conservative predecessors had failed to achieve, through spending cuts they’d never campaigned on. Voters rewarded them for it.
Today is not 1993, and the main problem facing the next government is not the size of the annual fiscal shortfall. But it is passing strange that, after Chrystia Freeland forced Justin Trudeau to take a walk in the snow with a resignation letter that accused the government of debasing the fiscal coin for the sake of politics, the Liberals ran an election campaign in which they promised to spend even more, while taxing less.
It would be nice if the next government levelled with us about the gap between campaign dreams and earthly reality. Starting a new mandate with some honest talk would be welcomed.
To campaign is to promise, but to govern is to choose. Campaigning is all about saying yes. Choosing always involves saying no.
It was a fun 37 days, but recess is now over. The hard work of governing begins.