Careful, Canada: Your Patriotism is Being Exploited

Unity, or vulnerability?

We might try to put a positive spin on our reactions—call it patriotism, unity, fighting back, or whatever—but the reality is, these are reactions arising from anxiety and panic. And those are feelings that leave us open to manipulation.

When we desperately need to hear that there’s some kind of plan, it’s easy to accept the first one we’re given without checking the details. This haste creates an opening for dishonest actors to push ideas that go against our interests and our values.

That’s why, in times like this, we need to be politically vigilant.

Yes, we do need to respond to the Trump tariffs. But when every proposal is wrapped up in slogans about “strength” and “resilience”, we need to make sure we’re sorting the genuine ideas out from the trojan horses. The people who want to fleece us aren’t going to helpfully point out which ideas are scams—we have to figure it out ourselves.

So, as the tariff situation and the federal election continue, here are three areas to keep your eyes on:

Megaprojects

Politicians love to promise a big build. It makes them sound like they’re responding to a crisis boldly and decisively.

Already this year we’ve heard proposals for new natural gas facilities, high-speed rail, mines, an east-west energy grid, and massive housing builds.

But a megaproject that will take years to complete can’t possibly affect the tariff crisis today. Shovels won’t even break ground on these projects until long after our economic response to the tariffs has succeeded or failed, so there must be something else going on.

Sometimes, it’s just political hot air: an insincere commitment or half-baked idea designed to get votes by touching on the theme of economic strength.

Usually, though, these projects serve corporate interests. When you look closely, they aren’t about building something that empowers average people, or creates a valuable public asset. They’re about giving private companies—including foreign companies—exclusive access to our resources and markets, and letting them keep the profits.

We should be asking, where is the sovereign wealth fund for the proposed oil and gas projects? Who will keep the profits from the proposed rare earth mines? Who will own the infrastructure projects? If the idea is to strengthen Canada’s economic sovereignty, we don’t accomplish that by giving away our resources and profits to private companies. Economic sovereignty comes from public wealth, because only public wealth is under the sovereign control of citizens.

Megaprojects have economic and social impacts that last decades, and they deserve to be thoroughly debated in full view of the public. When they’re being shoehorned into a short election campaign in a crisis, you should be suspicious.

Tax tinkering

In an economic crisis, more income and lower expenses are two very appealing things. When you’re barely making ends meet, it’s hard to ignore a politician who is offering you “tax relief”.

The problem is, most of the tax changes that get proposed are designed to help the wealthy, not average Canadians. There are four common tricks that come up over and over again:

1. The first trick is to cut taxes for average people, but cut them even more for wealthy people. For example, both the Liberal and Conservative parties have pledged to cut the income tax rate for the lowest income bracket, calling it a “middle-class tax cut”. But in reality, a person with an average income might pay $900 less in taxes per year, while someone with an above-average income would pay $1400 less. In other words, it’s a $500 subsidy to the person with the higher income.
2. The second trick is to cut taxes in one place, but cut benefits even more somewhere else. For example, the Conservatives and Liberals have both pledged to end the consumer carbon tax, saying it will make gas and other essentials cheaper. But everyone also loses the rebate cheque they were getting, and for the bottom 80% of households, that rebate was bigger than the tax savings will be, while only the top 20% paid more than they got back. Cancelling the carbon tax is another subsidy to wealthy households.
3. The third trick is to openly cut taxes for wealthy people, but claim that it will stimulate the economy, “trickling down” money or jobs to everyone else. However, there is overwhelming evidence that tax cuts for the rich don’t stimulate economic growth, or raise employment but do increase inequality.
4. The fourth and final trick is to cut taxes “for everyone”, but do it in a way that only wealthy people can actually take advantage of it. There are plenty of examples: raising the TFSA limit (who can afford to max out their TFSA, rich people or poor people?), deferring capital gains tax (who makes their money from capital gains, rich people or poor people?) cutting GST on new homes (who can afford to buy a home right now, and who can’t?), and cutting GST on new cars (who buys new cars, and who buys used?)

The irony is, we actually do have the power to give a tax cut to people with lower incomes, without cutting services, and while stimulating the economy at the same time. All we have to do is raise taxes on wealthy people. When you hear a politician offering to do that, then you’ve found the real tax cut.

Ignoring the bigger issues

You wouldn’t think it from listening to the news, but the tariffs are nowhere close to being the biggest threat to you, your family, or your community.

For example, climate change has already unemployed, impoverished, and killed far more people than Trump’s tariffs, and will keep doing so long after the tariff crisis has passed. Wildfires, heat waves, flooding, and droughts are life-threatening events and are getting more severe. Even when we’re fortunate and the loss of life is minimal, repair and recovery costs are in the billions of dollars every year and rising.

As another example, the COVID pandemic killed more than 60,000 Canadians. History and science both tell us another pandemic is certain to happen, and because of globalization and urbanization, the time between pandemics is shrinking.

The problem is, there’s no short-term profit in fighting climate change or preparing for the next pandemic.

To stop you thinking about things that aren’t profitable for private corporations, there are two lies you’re told: “we don’t have time to discuss that in the middle of a crisis”, and “we can’t afford that in the middle of a crisis”.

But if time and money are limited, shouldn’t we focus on the biggest issues first? If all we worry about is defending ourselves against Trump, we leave the door open to what the Director-General of the World Health Organization has called “attacks from invisible enemies“.

Unlike the Trump tariffs, natural disasters and pandemics can’t be rescinded by an executive order, nor can we negotiate for a lower death toll. Our only option with these threats is to be proactive: to take action today that will make good outcomes more likely tomorrow. But to be proactive, we need to keep the big-picture issues on the political agenda in the first place.