The declining political fortunes of the federal Liberal party — the latest polls suggest they trail the Conservatives by as much as 10 points — is good news. It suggests progressive fantasies about government spending, regulatory initiatives, social engineering and climate policy have finally run into the brick wall of reality. Slamming into a wall is of course painful, so the Liberals are doing their best to carry on denying reality. Their effort to do so is unlikely to continue fooling Canadians, however.

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Matthew Lau: Polls suggest Trudeau Liberals are hitting the brick wall of reality Back to video

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Under the guise of increasing affordability, the Liberals have pumped money into Canadians’ bank accounts with numerous programs and handouts in recent years. But the financial relief the money was supposed to provide has proved to be a mirage. Far from increasing prosperity, bigger government has left the Canadian economy in a growth crisis. All that’s left to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars in excess spending is more debt, higher interest payments and a decline in affordability resulting from high inflation. Home ownership is out of reach for large segments of the population and the general consumer price level is today nine per cent higher than it would have been if inflation had continued at its pre-2021 pace.

A defining initiative of the current Liberal government is its economy-altering climate program, which it claims is a win-win for the economy and the environment. The program includes an annually escalating carbon tax, inefficient regulation, bans on single-use plastics, over $120 billion in spending since 2015, plus billions more this year in subsidies for plants to build batteries for electric vehicles. This top-down economic management supposedly reduces global warming and increases prosperity by supporting strategically important industries. But the plastic bans have aggravated consumers; Canadians reject the Liberals’ claims about the carbon tax enriching most households (with two-thirds saying in a recent poll it is a bad time to increase the tax); and torching billions of dollars on batteries is unlikely to improve the equanimity of Canadians struggling with rising costs of living.

Another policy the Liberals often boast about, again claiming it delivers widespread economic benefits, is their takeover of childcare. But even the NDP, which unaccountably continues to prop up the Liberals, acknowledges there is a childcare crisis. “In many parts of the country,” an NDP news release earlier this year stated, “parents can’t go back to work because they simply can’t find a child-care space for their little one.” The federal childcare policy involves separate deals with each provincial government, but whatever the province the descriptor that appears again and again is “crisis.” A reasonable person might conclude the problem is with the federal program.

On the issue of crime, too, the Liberals deny reality. Arif Virani, the new justice minister said on his appointment that “I think that empirically it’s unlikely” Canada is becoming less safe from crime. But that is wrong. Statistics Canada’s Violent Crime Severity Index fell by nearly 30 per cent from 2006 to 2014, while the Conservatives were in power, but under the Liberals this progress has been reversed, with a 38 per cent increase in violent crime from 2014 to 2022. After reaching a low in 2014, non-violent crime has also risen under the Liberals, although not by as much.

As a result of preoccupying itself in undertakings it has no business being involved in, including reorganizing industries and meddling in business affairs best left to the free market, the Liberal government has failed to perform the roles that are its proper responsibility, which in addition to public safety include national defence. Last month a Wall Street Journal editorial declared Canada a “free-rider” that belonged at the “junior table” at the recent NATO summit. “Canada’s military,” the editorial said, “is so degraded that even its role in peacekeeping missions has waned.” This was followed by an article in The Economist whose headline labelled Canada’s defence spending “increasingly embarrassing.”

The decline of the Liberals, if it persists until the next election, is likely to make Canada’s economic stagnation and government mismanagement less embarrassing. That is, as long as the beneficiaries of the Liberal decline continue to be the Conservatives and not the NDP. Under newly elected mayor Olivia Chow, Toronto, a city not known for its wise political choices, is getting a taste of how the NDP deals with unaffordability and crime: by doing nothing to solve these problems while instead wasting $8.6 million to rename Dundas Street — because a street named after a Scot who died over 200 years ago offends the sensitivities of a handful of complainers.

Matthew Lau is a Toronto writer.