From housing to dental plans, gun bans to foreign affairs, Trudeau is all sizzle and no steak
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In 2015, Justin Trudeau promised a new way of running the federal government, saying his new Liberal team would embrace “deliverology.”
This was a philosophy of government that looked to measure outcomes for citizens in government policy and action.
This past week, as the prime minister travelled the country promoting his budget, there were real questions about whether he can effectively deliver on any of his promises and programs.
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We’ve come a long way from those early days when Trudeau paid out big bucks to bring in high-priced consultants to teach his cabinet how to deliver results for Canadians. Now, it seems, the announcement of a policy or program is all that matters, not ensuring that what is promised will work or materialize.
On Wednesday, Trudeau was in Oakville, Ont. promoting his government’s new idea to review federal land holdings “to rapidly identify sites where new homes can be built.” That new promise, though, is an old one that he’s made time and again since the 2015 election campaign.
“We will conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed, and make some of these lands available at low cost for affordable housing,” the Liberal platform read in 2015.
Ever since he was elected, Trudeau has claimed building more homes, and affordable homes, was a top priority for his government and instead, the opposite has happened.
The average price of a home in 2015, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, was just about $400,000. That doubled to an average price of $800,000 in early 2022 before falling back down to around $700,000 now.
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Rent prices have also gone up by about 50% in that time, according to Statistics Canada.
That figure may be misleading, though. StatsCan suggests the average one-bedroom rental in Toronto is just over $1,500 per month. A search of available rental units in the core of the city shows the only housing available below $2,000 per month are rooms for rent in multi-unit apartments.
“Rising housing costs have put a tight squeeze on middle-class Canadians and young people are worried about ever owning a home,” the 2021 Liberal election platform stated.
The Liberals promised in that election to start making housing affordable again. They announced the Housing Accelerator Fund in the spring budget of 2022, but they didn’t start handing out money until the fall of 2023, that’s not exactly moving quickly.
This year, fewer homes are expected to be built and prices are predicted to rise by nearly 9%, according to Royal Lepage.
The Trudeau government is good at announcing they will do something, but they fail on the follow-through time and again – and it’s not just housing.
The government has been promoting their so-called national dental plan for seniors.
“This is going to make a huge difference,” Trudeau said of the program last month in Calgary.
It would make a huge difference if Trudeau could deliver, but his plan has been poorly executed with most dentists declining to take part in the program and many seniors who registered unable to find care.
“I was so excited, but after calling my dentist’s office I am troubled,” Teresa Hains, a 76-year-old retired teacher, wrote in an email earlier this week.
Teresa’s dentist of many years has opted out of the federal plan for seniors and the receptionist told her most dentists in the area were not participating.
“I called over 10 dentists yesterday and sadly she was right,” Teresa wrote.
She did find one dentist who was participating, but that office wasn’t accepting new patients.
It’s typical Trudeau – he made a grand announcement, he promised care to seniors, but his plan doesn’t work.
On Wednesday, Trudeau spoke in Saskatoon, Sask. about another of his failures as if it were a success. The prime minister was asked about his almost four-year-old gun ban and promise of a so-called gun buyback program.
On May 1, 2020, Trudeau made an announcement with great fanfare that he was enacting new gun control measures and banning what he called “assault-style” firearms. He banned 1,500 gun models that day but promised to compensate legal licensed gun owners.
Four years later, not a single gun has been bought or returned to the government and they have no plan on how to run such a program. They have asked Canada Post to be the drop-off point, a request Canada Post has refused based on safety concerns.
A big announcement, but no plan to deliver, and yet millions of tax dollars spent.
That’s par for the course with the Trudeau government, a government that is all sizzle and no steak. Surely, part of deliverology must include delivering a program and not just announcing it.
With Trudeau, though, details and outcomes don’t matter as much as optics. We are living with the results of electing the first Instagram prime minister.
SAFE SUPPLY: Under the Trudeau government, certain areas of the country have either embraced or had so-called “safe supply” thrust upon them. These programs provide free drugs to addicts but too often the drugs are then sold on the street for addicts to purchase fentanyl. The resold opioid pills are creating new addicts. Despite mounting evidence of the negative impacts, the Trudeau government refuses to change course.
CRIME: The crime severity index has risen dramatically under Justin Trudeau, more worrisome is the violent crime severity index tracked by Statistics Canada, which has risen by 30% since Trudeau took office. Auto thefts, a particular scourge in the Toronto area, have risen by as much as 500% over the last several years with no tangible response from the government.
MIDDLE CLASS: Trudeau was elected promising to work for “the middle class and those working hard to join it.” Trudeau even had a minister for “middle-class prosperity.” He’s not only gotten rid of that ministry, he’s working hard to get rid of the middle class as home ownership becomes a pipe dream, wages stagnate and productivity tumbles.
HOUSING: Trudeau has promised to build 3.9 million homes over the next seven years to solve the housing crisis. This amounts to 552,857 new homes per year, or more than double what the country is currently building annually. It amounts to a new home every two minutes for seven years straight. Perhaps Trudeau will build the homes among the two billion trees he promised to plant but never delivered on?
IMMIGRATION: The Trudeau government has somehow done the unthinkable and killed off the Canadian consensus on immigration. They not only ramped up the annual intake for permanent residents from around 275,000 per year to 500,000 per year, they have also dramatically increased the number of temporary residents – foreign workers and international students – to more than 900,000 in a year. In a nine-month period, Canada added more than one million people to its population. Trudeau said recently that we are bringing in more people than we can absorb, but he isn’t slowing down the rapid intake of newcomers, which is impacting housing, health-care access and other features.
FOREIGN RELATIONS: Trudeau was elected with a slogan of “Canada is back” even though we never left the international stage under the Harper years. Nearly nine years later, we have strained relations with growing economic powerhouses like India and China and we have a diminished presence and stature in Washington. Our allies in NATO and other organizations don’t take Canada seriously like they used to and our voice has been reduced to a whisper.
blilley@postmedia.com
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