Preston Manning is the former leader of the Reform Party of Canada and a former leader of the official opposition in Parliament.
“What’s a million?” was a phrase allegedly uttered in 1945 by the federal minister of wartime production, C. D. Howe, to casually dismiss fears concerning wartime overspending by the Liberal government of the day. It was seized upon by John Diefenbaker to paint the government as fiscally irresponsible, resurfaced again in the great Pipeline Debate of 1956, and was used very effectively by Diefenbaker in the 1957 federal election campaign to bring down Louis St. Laurent’s government.
Fast forward to today when, according to its own fiscal update, the federal government will have added $1 trillion – that’s 1,000 billion dollars – to Canada’s debt between the end of the 2019 fiscal year and 2024. “What’s a trillion?” now describes the attitude of the current federal finance minister in dismissing growing fears concerning federal overspending in response to the COVID pandemic.
Will that attitude and its implications be ignored by Canadian voters and taxpayers? Or could it contribute to the defeat of the Trudeau government in the next federal election? Relevant questions begging answers, but first a little historical background.
My father, Ernest C. Manning, became an Alberta cabinet minister in 1935 and premier of that province in 1943. As such he attended numerous federal provincial meetings throughout the Second World War – a global crisis that forced Canada’s government under the leadership of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to borrow and spend at unprecedented levels.
During this period my father got to know James Lorimer Ilsley, Minister of National Revenue from 1935-1940 and Minister of Finance and Receiver General from 1940-1946. My father claimed that Ilsley was well named because he literally made himself “ill” worrying about the enormous increase in federal spending and borrowing to meet the war effort.
During this same period, my father also came to know and greatly respect Clarence Decatur Howe as the strongest and most competent minister in the King government. When the Second World War broke out he became King’s “Minister of Everything” – vastly expanding and streamlining Canada’s capacity to produce and transport the munitions, equipment and essential supplies urgently needed to support the war effort. Howe had quickly become exasperated by the incapacity of the pre-war federal bureaucracy to meet the challenges of the wartime crisis. He therefore established several dozen crown corporations under his personal direction to carry out various essential functions.
But fast forward back to 2021. Contrast the experience and ability that cabinet ministers like Howe brought to organizing Canada’s war effort, with the inexperience and ineptitude of the current federal cabinet in coping with the COVID crisis. Howe moved heaven and earth to transport food and military supplies to Europe via the North Atlantic convoys through submarine infested seas, while today’s federal government can’t seem to efficiently organize the production and/or importation of one product – the vaccines needed to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Regrettably, there was more crisis management capacity among federal ministers like Howe and Ilsley than appears to exist among the entire front bench of today’s Trudeau government.
Contrast the attitude of Finance Minister Ilsley to the wartime overspending of his government, with the attitude of the current finance minister to today’s overspending. Whereas Ilsley readily acknowledged the enormous repayment and taxation obligations such overspending created, and worried himself sick over how to meet them, todays finance minister claims there is no reason whatsoever for alarm. What’s a million has become what’s a trillion – but so what, don’t worry, be happy.
In today’s virtual political world, does Canada actually have a real prime minister and a real finance minister capable of effectively managing a crisis or anything else? Or is it sadly true, as is being whispered in more and more quarters, that in reality what Canada actually has is a former drama teacher playing the role of prime minister and a well-meaning journalist playing the role of finance minister?
Does any of this matter at all to Canadians, and if so, how will voters respond in the next federal election? Will the next election be one in which millions of Canadians – weary of how the politicized COVID crisis has dominated political discourse – simply shrug it off with “What’s a trillion?” Or will the next election be the one in which Canadians begin to insist as never before on higher levels of ethics, experience, and competence on the part of candidates for elected office and our next federal government?
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