Remember When You Thought Trudeau Was Progressive?

If it isn’t his Finance Minister telling us to get used to job churn, or that the middle class isn’t a real thing with data and statistics [it’s just an aspirational ideal], it’s Trudeau outflanking the NDP in the 2015 election by going into a deficit.

While the NDP was trying to out-Liberal the Liberals, Trudeau out-NDP’d the NDP with the big deficit, something they knew the NDP wouldn’t embrace with Mulcair.

So today we have a plan to rebuild Canada’s infrastructure, but wait…NOT with the deficit, but by privatizing it to corporations.

So. Do you remember when you thought Trudeau was progressive? Now we see he’s following Harper’s economic and trade policies [remember, Harper ran deficits too], broken his electoral reform and Medicare expansion promises and now he’s sent Brian Mulroney to be our nation’s emissary to T$$$p.

But what about the infrastructure? Keith Reynolds covers it in exquisite detail [see a juicy bit below]. Read his piece and remember the bait and switch that the Trudeau family [remember wage and price controls, with no price controls?] is genetically gifted in.

So as we pivot to a new world of…let’s just say, honesty…we cannot let Trudeau go to Europe upon the signing of Harper’s CETA trade agreement, then expound on making free trade work for the middle class. The same middle class that his Finance Minister says doesn’t really exist as a thing. The same middle class that continually shrinks under neoliberal free trade deals since Mulroney’s free trade agreement with the USA, which, you should also remember, was kicked off by Trudeau’s father.

In the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party made some important commitments to Canadians regarding municipalities and infrastructure in their platform document.[2]

They promised, “The federal government can use its strong credit rating and lending authority to make it easier and more affordable for municipalities to build the projects their communities need.”  The new governing party campaign document promised to “establish the Canadian Infrastructure Bank to provide low-cost financing for new infrastructure projects.” They said further, “Where a lack of capital represents a barrier to projects, the Canada Infrastructure Bank will provide loan guarantees and small capital contributions to provinces and municipalities to ensure that the projects are built.”

With the October 2016 release of the report of the federal Minister of Finance’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth,[3] those promises appear to be moving in a very different direction. The Advisory Council is made up of 14 members representing a remarkably narrow point of view. More on this later.

The report itself identifies the demonstrable need for infrastructure investment in Canada. However, instead of focusing on the government’s own strong credit rating to provide support for infrastructure, the report called for greater participation from banks, pension funds, insurance companies, state-owned investment funds and other long-term investors. Instead of a new Infrastructure Bank providing low-cost financing and contributions, the Council recommended an Infrastructure Development Bank that would attract institutional capital and act as a centre of expertise “to minimize the tax dollars required.”

Did the federal government bait and switch when it comes to municipal infrastructure? And will we get real transparency? – CENTRE FOR CIVIC GOVERNANCE http://ow.ly/4KiC309piv4