I keep hearing about these changes that Carney is making, but I have yet to see a real smoking gun.
Yes, the changes he’s bringing in could cause real problems. But they also could be exactly what he says he’s doing—making it easier for the government to actually get stuff done. A lot of regulation that’s come down the pipeline since the 1960s has been about giving various parties the ability to oppose and slow down action by both business and the government. The problem with this type of regulation is it has the opportunity cost of making everything more expensive and a lot slower to do—even if it is meant to, and actually could be a good thing for everyone.
The most obvious example of this is housing. We’ve made it really easy for existing home-owners to get Councils to refuse new housing construction. The result is a housing crisis. I suspect it’s much the same thing with regard to environmental regulation and working with the First Nations too. It’s understandable, there has been a lot of bad-faith bargaining by both business and government. But this adds a lot of costs to everything in society–and that’s money that doesn’t end up in social programs or worker’s pockets. (Yes, and profits too. But they can–at least in theory–be taxed. But that’s another issue.)
If we are going to build a carbon-free, sustainable, and just society, we aren’t going to do it by slowing everything down to a crawl and giving lots of people a veto. We shouldn’t go back to the capitalist free-for-all either. But there needs to be some sort of ‘third option’ on the table. I don’t know if Carney’s the person to do it—but I still don’t see anything from him that says for sure he isn’t.
The tone of Gilmore’s comment was pretty hot. But the interview with Guilbeault seemed a little less—he is still a Liberal MP after all. I’m still waiting to see more from Carney before I make up my mind about him.
Did you miss the memo that by destroying our environment the costs of goods go up and the fact the profits are going towards the rich.
And this was the least worst option. Proportional representation could not come soon enough.
Can you pass ranked choice or proportional representation through the provinces? Do you have ballot referendums, where citizens get a number of voters to sign and force the issue on the ballot?
No ballot referendums, but we could in theory push citizen initiative petitions. Thus far though, none have those have passed because most Canadians don’t feel strongly enough to go through the very protracted process that electoral reform requires.
It’s supposed to be hard to change so we’re not switching systems every other election. It’s not technically impossible, but the combination of systemic friction and social inertia means you have to have a lot of people, feel very strongly about it, and make a lot of sacrifices of time and money, for a very long time to actually make it happen.
