The politics of the Liberal circus

Cue Entry of the Gladiators, as Chrystia Freeland tumbles out of the clown car throwing pies at ring master Trudeau, while Dominic LeBlanc stumbles along trying to catch up. As enjoyable as the zany chaos this week at the greatest show in Ottawa was, it reflects a deeper and more serious crisis. Neither Freeland nor Trudeau have any solutions for the problems of affordability, housing, healthcare, and the climate emergency. Trudeau's token reduction of the GST and $250 cheques are minuscule compared to astronomical food and housing costs.

These circus antics are a reflection of the instability of capitalism. Similar, if less clownish, instability is plaguing governments around the world. The coalition government in Germany has fallen, the Prime Minister of France has been deposed by their parliament, and the South Korean President has been impeached after his attempt at imposing martial law was defeated by mass mobilizations. All of this is due to the combination of the depths of the problems facing workers around the world and the scratching the surface nature of the solutions on offer.

All Liberals agree on wasteful spending

The spat between Freeland and Trudeau is not due to any real disagreement. They both still firmly agree on the need to defend profit and keep down our standard of living to do so. What they disagree on is how best to do this. Freeland's resignation letter outlines her dedication to using debt and deficits as pretext for austerity measures, "That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war." The fall economic statement that she wrote and is criticizing predicts a deficit that as a fraction of GDP will be be the lowest in the G7 economies. But that is beside the point, spending is out of control in Ottawa. The Fall Fiscal Update includes $17 billion in subsidies for businesses between now and 2030.  The 2023 -2024 budget for the RCMP is $5.5 billion and $2.8 billion goes to the Canada Border Services Agency. The Fall Update adds another $1.3 billion on top of that to border services the RCMP and other policing. The second largest federal budget item is money spend on war and preparation for war, consuming more than 6% of spending. Over $24  billion is wasted on war machines and the personal to operate them every year. And the Liberals have promised to increase this amount every year for twenty years. There is $50 billion of the $60 billion deficit right there. If we trim all of that waste, and keep the deficit as is, we would have $50 billion a year to spend on housing, healthcare, the climate emergency and all the real problems that we face.

The dead end of electoralism

Watching the Liberals tear themselves apart is an enjoyable, rewarding, and increasingly frequent  break from our regular routines. But you may be concerned that all of this is only aiding Poilievre and his convoy conservatives. No doubt it is, but there is no version of a ruling party at this stage in capitalism that can avoid aiding its rivals.

Any reforms that will make our lives better will require attacks on profits or taxes on profits to fund them. The parties of the centre, Liberal, NDP or whatever, will never voluntarily put people before profit. Instead they will fail to deal with these problems while grasping at scapegoating migrants and otehr opressed groups. This strategy only makes the policies of the far-right sound more legitimate.

The Liberals and Conservative agree on much more than what divides them. They agree on wasting billions on war machines and police. They agree on forcing workers back to work at the docks, the airlines and now Canada Post. They agree that wages should stay down while prices and hence profits are allowed to rise. They agree on scapegoating migrant workers for successive governments' failures in housing and healthcare. 

In the lead up to the recent election in BC, we saw the rise of the BC Conservatives lead the BC NDP to adopt more and more of the conservative policies around the opioid crisis, homelessness and so on. At the same time the NDP continues to refuse to spend the money needed on healthcare or social housing orto  implement rent control. The federal Liberals have already started down this same path with their plans to deport 2.3 million migrant workers and students.

Defending one of the most hated prime minister in history won't save his government, it only makes it easier for Poilievre to lump progressive policies and the left in with the fun house mirror versions of those policies that the Liberals present.

Beat the Liberals in the streets

The opposite of the Liberals isn't the Tories, it's mass mobilization and strikes. Pickets to defend CUPW's right to strike could throw the Liberals into even more turmoil. And in this case there is no benefit to the Conservatives, because they also won't support our right to strike. Building actions and mobilizations against Trudeau's attacks on migrant students and workers will increase the pressure on, and dissension in, the Liberal ranks, without benefiting Poilievre. Now that the Liberals are in such disarray it's time for every union and community organization to ramp up the pressure and give them not a moment's rest.