PLC National Congress | Debt makes Quebec activists nostalgic

(Ottawa) A wind of nostalgia may blow over the national convention of the Liberal Party of Canada, which gets underway Thursday in the federal capital.

Always adored for his electoral successes, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien will speak to party activists on Friday evening. This will be one of the highlights of this three-day Liberal high mass, which could be the last gathering of its kind before the next federal election.

Especially since Jean Chrétien, who celebrated his 89th birthday in January, remains an outstanding storyteller who knows how to please a crowd of supporters by wielding irony to put his opponents on the defensive. The one who will always be the “little guy from Shawinigan” for his admirers knows how to bring political issues back to the common sense of the challenges that ordinary people must meet on a daily basis.

Justin Trudeau will address activists on Thursday evening before flying the next day to London where he will attend the coronation of King Charles III.

Agreement with the NDP

In principle, the next federal election should not take place for two and a half years, if the agreement reached between the Liberals of Justin Trudeau and the NDP of Jagmeet Singh, last year, holds out until June 2025. This agreement ensures the survival of minority Liberals in the Commons during votes of confidence such as those on the budget, for example. In exchange, the Trudeau government has pledged to implement certain programs that are dear to the NDP, such as the national dental care program.

In Liberal circles, however, there is talk of the distinct possibility that they will have to board the campaign buses in the spring of 2024, after the presentation of the next budget.

“Sooner than later, the NDP will look for a way to get out of this agreement,” said Justin Trudeau’s entourage recently.

Blow bar

In anticipation of the next campaign, liberal activists want their party to give a slight push to the right. The Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada has indeed submitted a resolution which will be debated in an “accelerated” way during the national convention. The resolution is quite simple. It advocates the development of a specific plan to return to balanced budgets.

Clearly, these Liberal activists in Quebec are nostalgic for the management of public finances by Jean Chrétien and his former finance minister Paul Martin. The Chrétien-Martin duo sailed through stormy waters during the 1990s to eliminate the deficit, which had become a heavy financial burden at the time, and rack up tempting surpluses that made it possible to repay the accumulated debt, reduce the tax burden taxpayers and reinvest in social programs.

They thus want the party to adopt “a quantified and clear proposal for a return to a balanced budget” and they demand that this proposal be part of the party’s electoral program in the next elections.

The resolution points out that the federal government has incurred enormous expenditures during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the accumulated debt has increased “extraordinarily and unprecedentedly in times of peace”.

The accumulated debt has almost doubled since the Liberals came to power. The debt thus fell from 634 billion dollars in 2015-2016 to 1221 billion dollars this year.

The Trudeau government ran a record $327 billion deficit in 2020-21, at the height of the pandemic.

Ambient concern

In her latest budget, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland predicts that debt interest charges will also double over the next few years, from $24.5 billion in 2021-2022 to $50.3 billion in 2027- 2028. Minister Freeland has also postponed the return to a balanced budget. Over the next six years, it plans to add $174 billion to the accumulated debt.

Result: “This situation worries many Canadians,” according to Quebec Liberal activists, and voters will attach great importance to the sound management of public finances during the next campaign. They say they are confident the Conservative Party “will have a proposal to that effect” to woo worried voters.

Among the fifteen resolutions that must be examined as a priority, that of the Quebec wing of the PLC risks provoking heated debates. Especially since the Trudeau government has never presented a balanced budget.

BC Liberals propose a resolution to create a citizens’ assembly on electoral reform. Those in Saskatchewan believe that consideration should be given to making voting compulsory or face a small fine. Nova Scotia Liberals are calling for an “affordable, accessible, modern and convenient” rail system for public transit.

The Young Liberals, who succeeded in convincing party leaders to go ahead in the 2015 election campaign with the legalization of marijuana, are proposing the creation of a zone of free movement between Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. As for the Ontario Liberals, they are demanding that the Canada Labor Code be amended to grant workers four weeks of leave for each full year of work instead of the two weeks provided for at the moment.

Several of these resolutions could be adopted. But none of them are binding. Ultimately, Justin Trudeau and his close aides decide which promises are part of the platform. The fact remains that the resolution proposed by Quebec Liberal activists expresses a form of nostalgia for the Chrétien-Martin era.