Every election is touted as ‘the most important election in the history of (insert name of country / province / state / municipality)’. But in the case of the upcoming Canadian federal election, that claim is actually true.
CYCLICAL MOVEMEMT
During the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, I heard about a book titled The Fourth Turning. The main theme of the book is the theory that major turning points in history recur after periods of roughly similar duration. Borrowing the Roman concept of saeculum (defined as a period between the points where, from the number of people who were alive at the start – from the oldest to the youngest – the last of them dies at the endpoint), the authors contended that the destiny of nations takes a major turn with each saeculum. It was generally understood that the saeculum had the length of between 80 to 100 years.
I found the idea a bit wobbly but generally true. For example, the period between the American Revolution to the Civil War is 87 years. Another 82 years later, the US emerged as a superpower. Similarly, in the Indian subcontinent, the British first acquired political power in 1757 (in the area that is present-day Bangladesh, the bordering Indian state of West Bengal, plus the adjoining regions of Bihar and Odisha). Exactly 100 years later, in 1857 a big portion of the locally raised British Indian Army rose in revolt and almost threw the British out. But the British won the war, which is still treated as war of independence by people of the subcontinent, but which the British called the sepoy mutiny (the word ‘sepoy’ is derived from the Urdu word ‘sipahi’, meaning ‘soldier’). However, the British East India Company, which had ruled large parts of the subcontinent until then, had their political control taken away by the British Crown, which established its direct rule, making the subcontinent a colony proper. Exactly 90 years after that, the British had to leave, and the two countries of India and Pakistan gained independence.
Elsewhere on the globe, in China the same British East India Company fought the first opium war in 1839-1842, and another one 1856-1860. These wars diluted seriously the authority of the Chinese sovereign. In the 20th century, the Chinese Civil war between 1945 to 1949 brought communist rule to mainland China roughly 9 decades after the end of the second opium war.
Canada was confederated in 1867, but its present geography was achieved 82 years later, when New Foundland and Labrador joined in 1949. As I said earlier, applying the concept of saeculum may be a bit wobbly, but there are instances where the timeline of history matches it too much to be dismissed as a mere coincidence.
SHARP TURN AHEAD
The sharp-eyed reader will have noticed that in the case of every country named in the previous segment, the latest saeculum is entering its ending phase. The recent tumultuous upheavals in the US, Pakistan and Bangladesh certainly match the pattern. On the other hand, India seems to be on even keel, and the CCP is still firmly in control of the affairs in China (I never take seriously talk about the imminent demise of the CCP / Chinese banking sector / real estate etc.; such talk always turns out to be clickbait from podcasters who, despite their repeatedly failed predictions, continue to be hugely popular).
The question is whether Canada will go the way of the former 3 countries or the latter two. Destiny is a blend of one’s past, one’s own choices in the present (and the recent past), external forces and random chance. As for the last one (random chance), the famous line by the legendary golf champion of yesteryears Gary Player comes to mind: “The more I practice, the luckier I get”.
The same can be applied, within limits, to external forces. Here, it is pertinent to note that random chance is also an external force, albeit with a lesser degree of direct human involvement. Other external forces are also influenced by our choices; other entities, including countries, respond to our choices with choices of their own.
On the other side, the past is what it is – it can only be lived with and learned from. That leaves us with our own choices, in the present and the recent past. I guess we can apply the term ‘agency’ here. How we have been exercising it shapes our destiny to a large extent. Let us examine our record from that perspective.
PRAGMATISM V/S IDEALISM
I recall a short story in Gujarati that I read in my childhood. I will not narrate it here in the interest of brevity, but the gist of it was that hunger is a stronger force than meditation. I think this is a most apt lens through which we can analyze the federal policies of the Trudeau era. In a nutshell, ideology (often of a vacuous kind) prevailed over the material welfare of Canadians. All major polices – immigration, extraction of natural resources, defense, foreign relations, fiscal discipline, criminal law, assisted dying and more – were hijacked by (often tiny) special interest groups that somehow had vastly disproportionate influence in the corridors of power. We are afflicted by what I call Canada’s Pakistan syndrome: sharing a long border with a neighbour that has a population and an economy several times the size of ours, where that neighbour boasts achievements in diverse fields ranging from technology and defense to business and entertainment, while our only claim to fame is that we are ideologically purer than them. I have been offering my analysis of this worrying phenomenon for a while, but the most brilliant summary was provided to me recently by an X user:
“Easy, the (false) sense of moral righteousness makes Canadians more accepting of nut jobs who convince them there’s only one way to be a good person”
Over the past several years, I have been talking about the phenomenon of ‘competitive piety’. When it comes to Canada, we once again see the Pakistan syndrome; in that country, we have witnessed over the past few decades how people are trying to portray themselves as more ardently faithful to their religion than others. And just like in Pakistan, in Canada also this race for greater ideological purity has not only reached the highest echelons of politics but in fact permeates it. Even though Canada is (still) more prosperous and peaceful than Pakistan, I believe that is largely – if not exclusively – owing to our past. Remember, that is one of the factors affecting our destiny. The question is, at what point does the relative weightage of this factor become insignificant?
HUNGER
The primary human needs are of a material kind. Back in my teens, I heard a wise person say that a starving man cannot be interested in music. One of the primary duties of a government is to enact policies that improve the material well-being of its citizenry. In that regard, the Trudeau government has been an undeniable failure. It has shunned economic opportunities and embraced policies such as the one on drugs and crime with religious zeal, filling the resulting void in Canadians’ welfare by (a) sowing division among Canadians such that they are fighting each other on ideological grounds, and (b) offering financial ‘help’, which has only further exacerbated fiscal indiscipline. But there are natural limits to how long these two tactics can be sustained. At some point, a course correction (more like a 180 degree turn) becomes impossible to avoid. The question is WHO can bring about this change in the most satisfactory or effective manner.
CHANGE
The newly minted leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Mark Carney, is being presented as the most qualified person for effecting this change. This presentationn is being accepted at face value by a lot of Canadians. But is this claim true? Arriving at the answer this question requires us to examine two aspects: (a) PM Carney’s past actions and (b) the composition of his would-be caucus, from which he must choose the lieutenants to implement his policies. Neither of these provides reason for optimism.
We know that for many years, PM Carney has been a dedicated (even aggressive) proponent of net-zero and decarbonization while at the same time benefiting handsomely from fossil fuels including coal. His stern disapproval of fossil fuels seems to be limited to the resources located in Canada and does not extend to those in the UAE or Australia. In that light, his recent promises to the Canadian electorate regarding piepeline projects in Canada appear to be opportunistic rather than sincere. Also, given the statements and promises that he has made so far, it appears highly unlikely that he would be able to reduce the budget deficit, let alone have a balanced budget. In fact, the deficit is most likely to be higher than it has been under the profligate Mr. Trudeau.
Speaking of his caucus from which he would select his cabinet, there are serious questions: who will he appoint as his finance minister? The same Chrystia Freeland who was unable to exercise fiscal restraint over the past few years as PM Trudeau’s finance minister? How about Steven Guilbault? Would he be the environment minister? Or if not, would his views dominate the policy on environment and the resource industry? Are we to accept the idea that the same cast of characters that brought us disaster over the past 9 years-plus will bring us succor from those very same disasters?
This brings us to a deeper question: Was our dimished status in the international community caused solely by Justin Trudeau and his (often juvenile) antics? Personalities apart, how other countries view Canada is a function of the policies of the Canadian government. The focus of political debate right now is on the US and President Trump, but there are other countries with which our relations have deteriorated markedly over PM Trudeau’s tenure. Among the more important ones, both in the economic as well as the geopolitical sense, are China and India. How would PM Carney go about mending the fences with these two countries (representing economies that are among the top 5 in the world) if his policies are not going to be materially different from those of ex-PM Trudeau? In personal lives, we know that money can’t buy you love (but personality can). But in geoploitics, it is the other way around – personality has a limited value in establishing friendly relations with other countries. Specifically, in the absence of policies that benefit the other side, the value of personality gets negated.
DIRE STRAITS
In January 2023, I did some calculations from official data and arrived at the conclusion that over the decade from 2012 to 2021, inflation adjusted per capita GDP in Canada had grown at a compounded annual growth rate of a measly 0.67%. When I posted my work in my article ‘Immigration Does NOT Increase Prosperity’, there was furious disagreement by many people on X – but subsequenty, my finding were confirmed by OECD (which showed growth rate of 0.80%). Recently, we learned that the TOTAL growth in inflation-adjusted per capita GDP over the last 10 years was an insignificant 0.5%. My assessment is that unless we work on a war footing on multiple fronts, our future prospects are doomed for at least 30 to 40 years. But here is the thing: the world is not static, and our competitors’ governments are not imprisoned by dogma. They will keep chugging ahead towards more and more progress (and have been while we were stagnating). We risk becoming globally insignificant unless we can turn this ship called Canada around in quick time. Can Mark Carney deliver on that?
Given his past activities and the likely composition of his cabinet in case he gets to form the next government, any optimism in this regard appears to be counter-indicated. In my view, the need of the hour is a clean break from the governance of the past decade. Believing that Mark Carney and his caucus can effect this clean break is like believing that a leopard can change its spots. We need completely different ideas to inform our policies, from the economy and foreign relations, to social issues like drugs and assited dying, to how we deal with crime, if we are to survive as a prosperous and peaceful country. The current saeculum is entering its terminal stage, and how we come out at the other end will hinge on the choices that we make in this election. So, yes – this IS a make-or-break election.
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