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Kelly McParland: No wonder Canadian politicians are so popular. They keep giving away 'free' stuff

Canadians block out any nervousness about public expenditures, as long as their hydro bills don’t go up and they can still afford the cost of filling up their vehicles

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If you want to make it in big-time politics these days, you have to learn how to give stuff away.

Mostly you have to give away money, though usually in the form of benefits, grants, subsidies, tax breaks, or expenditures forced on private firms whether they can afford it or not. The need crosses party lines. The main difference between left-wing giveaways and right-wing giveaways usually lies in the complexity. Left-wingers like to keep it simple; Conservatives tend to get over-immersed in detail in their desire to meet certain doctrinal benchmarks.

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On the weekend, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer tweeted about his party’s Supporting New Parents Act, one of those periodic attempts to show that Tories are just as good-hearted and caring as people who call themselves “progressives,” if perhaps not as self-congratulatory about it. I confess it took me several readings to sort out just what the Supporting New Parents Act had on offer. Turns out it would offer a tax break on the benefits people receive when they take parental leave after a child is born. The Liberals or NDP would probably just promise to cancel the tax, without explaining quite how. Not the Tories. Scheer’s party is pledging to create a “a federal non-refundable tax credit for any income earned under EI maternity leave or EI parental leave benefits.”

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Forgive me if I suspect the plan won’t resonate with the force of the Liberals’ Canada Child Benefit, which just fires off payments directly to families to help with the kids. Getting a nice, reliable cheque in the mail as a reward for having children is a trick the Liberals copied from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, though the Liberals send even bigger cheques.

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But it’s in line with what passes for the modern notion of government in Canada, which increasingly leans towards the belief that the best way to produce a desired outcome is for the government to take it over and offer it to the entire populace.

At the Trudeau Liberals’ recent party get-together in Halifax, the delegates’ top priority was a call for a universal pharmacare program in the 2019 re-election platform. It was a straight steal from the New Democratic Party, which had promised a universal drug program in February. In March, Ontario’s provincial Liberal government pledged it’s own program — free prescription drugs for seniors — only to be outdone by the provincial NDP, which is pledging “Pharamacare for Everyone” should it win the province’s June election.

Free drugs may be the flavour of the week, but it’s not alone. When Kinder Morgan’s chief executive forced a reluctant Ottawa to finally do something — other than talk — about the company’s struggling plan for a pipeline to the Pacific, discussions quickly centred on the easiest and most expensive approach: just have the government buy the project and take all the risk. It could either be a national pipeline project, or a joint federal-provincial endeavour with Alberta kicking in some cash as well. It remains to be explained how Canada expects to impress the world as an attractive business location if the only way to get anything done is to nationalize it, but the plan reflects the evident belief among Canadians that if something is important, the government should be in charge.

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Pharmacare and pipelines are just two examples. Ontario’s two left-wing parties — the Liberals and NDP — are in a fierce bidding war for votes as the June election approaches, competing over the richness of the offers they’re willing to make to a province that is home to almost 40 per cent of the country’s population. Premier Kathleen Wynne is dangling “free childcare,” though it wouldn’t start until age 2 1/2, and would be limited to licensed daycare centres, the kind favoured by the government’s union allies because they can be organized and start demanding higher wages and benefits. NDP leader Andrea Horwath countered with a plan that would be free of age restrictions and would be free for the lowest incomes, but cost $12 a day for most families. Such was the pressure to join the bidding that Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford — whose main pledge is to contain government excess — unveiled a Tory plan for a tax rebate to cover up to $6,750 in childcare costs.

Ford’s proposal amounts to less than half the cost of care in much of Toronto, but has the benefit of including less formal options — nannies, babysitters and independent operators — rather than the strict institutional approach of the Liberals.

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If pharmacare and daycare are to be free, it’s easy to see the next target of universality. Horwath has already added universal dental care to the her party’s array of offerings, along with a promise to solve student debt by turning loans into grants. Free money, free university, free dental care, free daycare, free pharmacare … who wouldn’t want to live in a country where are all your needs are paid for? It’s not clear how any economy could cover the cost of so many added benefits when both Ontario and Ottawa already rely on deficit budgets to meet existing expenses. But any good salesperson will tell you it’s not wise to dwell on cost when you’re busy trying to hook the buyer.

The ultimate national program is already being discussed. Ontario has a pilot program for a basic guaranteed income, an idea that has also been debated in Quebec. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer recently calculated the costs of a basic income program on a national level at $76 billion, reduced to $43 billion if Ottawa cancelled existing benefits. No one should assume that would happen — when was the last time any government cancelled any expenditure to which voters were accustomed?

It sounds like a lot of money, but Canadians have shown they can easily block out any nervousness about public expenditures, as long as their hydro bills don’t increase substantially and they can still afford the cost of filling whatever number of vehicles they choose to own. Canada is a generous country, especially when giving things to itself.

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