Budgets? Who cares.

These days, voters mostly don’t. 

Polls consistently show distrust about everything government does and says – including budgets like the one released by the Trudeau government earlier this week. It’s the boy-cries-wolf effect on a grand, fiscal scale: citizens have been lied to so many times, they increasingly tune budgets out.

It’ll be noteworthy, in fact, if details about Chrystia Freeland’s 2023 budget are remembered by most folks by this time next week. If a majority of voters can recall a single salient factoid about this week’s federal budget – Freeland making some cuts, Freeland raising taxes (she actually did both) – it’ll be a political miracle.

Why? Because citizens simply don’t believe budgetary statements anymore. And not just in Canada. In Western democracies, everywhere, budgets are falling victims to what experts call the “fiscal illusion.” 

Keynesian types say “fiscal illusion” is created by some governments, and how they deal with ballooning debt. The creation of too much debt – and the Trudeau regime are recognized experts at that – can, sometimes, stimulate the economy. Yes. But that’s all short-term.  

The Trudeau approach creates a momentary illusion of prosperity, and thereby boosts consumer spending. But, sooner or later, the debt has to be paid – and that’s why Trudeau-style budgets are a fiscal illusion.

There are other reasons why Freeland’s budget won’t instill confidence. Here’s five.

1. What’s in a billion? A pollster once told this writer 40 per cent of Canadians don’t know how many million are in a billion. Even if that’s an exaggeration – and it may not be, by much – one thing is true: most of us have never held a billion of anything. Which tells you that governments (and corporations) are literally expressing debts, deficits and dollars in a way that most folks don’t comprehend. So they tune it out.
2. It’s never right. Going back to the Jean Chrétien/Paul Martin era – which was the last time, notably, that Ottawa actually made the cuts that needed to be made – the numbers that seep out of the Department of Finance, pre-budget, are often wrong. Martin turned this strategy into an art form – ensuring his budget day numbers would look better than the pre-budget leaks. After a few years of this sleight-of-hand, however, media and citizens tended not to believe any of the figures coming out of Finance.
3. Too much, too often. For years, federal budgets have tried to reach too many different audiences too often. And when you have 1,000 different messages, you don’t have any messages at all. It’s simply too much for the average voter to comprehend. So, voters regard all of it as data smog and carry on with their day.  Simplicity, repetition and volume work (ask Donald Trump). But too many federal budgets are too complex and convoluted.
4. Consensus is gone.  During the pandemic, many bad things happened.One of them was the collapse of consensus about certain basic truths – ie., public health is good, vaccines work, etc. The same phenomenon is at work with budgets: there too many opinions being offered, too often, by too many “experts” that are completely contradictory. Post-budget media coverage accordingly becomes a communications traffic jam. So, citizens choose not to believe any of it.  
5. It’s all B.S. As noted above – that Trudeaupian economics is based on a fiscal illusion – the one unassailable truth about budgets is this: there is no truth in budgets. Voters have been spun, or flat-out lied to, so many times that the budgetary credibility gap is bigger than Canada’s debt – by the time you read this, about $1,215,000,000,000 according to the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation. It doesn’t matter which party is in power anymore: an estimated 75 per cent of Canadian voters say they don’t believe in what governments say or do.

And that is the biggest problem of all: truth. For most of us, we don’t think budgets contain much. Debt and deficits, yes. Truth? Not so much.

Sorry, Chrystia Freeland. But it’s the truth.

Kinsella was Special Assistant to Jean Chretien

 

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Can he be charged with treason?

It’s a question many are asking. It’s a fair question.

Since Wednesday night, when Global News dropped a bomb on Canadian politics – that former Liberal MP Han Dong had allegedly lobbied China’s regime to keep two Canadians in prison there – that’s a question I’ve been asked many times: if the allegations are true, can Dong be prosecuted for treason?

It’s important to emphasize, here, that the Toronto-area MP hasn’t been charged with any crime. He’s resigned from the Liberal caucus to clear his name – as did a Conservative MPP in Ontario did earlier this month, for similar reasons – but no one has charged Han Dong with breaking any law.

And that may be because there’s no law to charge him with breaking.

In Canada, as with our allies, “treason” remains a serious crime. In the Criminal Code, it is defined in this way: “Every one commits treason who, in Canada, uses force or violence for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Canada or a province…

“[Or] without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada.”

We’ve got a criminal prohibition against “high treason,” too. But it’s a dramatically higher bar for prosecutors to clear. High treason is killing or attempting to kill our King or Queen – or waging actual war against Canada, or helping the enemy during a time of war.

But, as far as we know, we’re not at war. And, so far, the allegations against Dong don’t seem to fit a “treason” charge, either.

In the United States, someone facing similar charges might not be so lucky.

The Americans don’t mess around. There, treason is a capital offence – you can be put to death for it.

Chapter 115 of the U.S. Code: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years.”

Having sworn an oath to Canada, the allegations Dong faces would be a violation of a similar law here. And “giving aid or comfort” to the enemy – here, China – would easily describe the untried allegations against Han Dong.

In Britain, the law against treason has been around for nearly seven centuries. It’s one of the oldest statutes in the United Kingdom

Though amended many times over the years, The Treason Act 1351, as in Canada, distinguishes between treason and high treason. High treason is killing the King or Queen – but also, originally, less serious offences like making counterfeit currency.

Ironically (given their origins), Americans seem to have borrowed the “aid or comfort” idea from the Brits. There, the allegations against Dong would arguably amount to high treason. The last Briton executed for treason – collaborating with wartime Germany – was hanged in 1946.

For those who remain livid about the allegations against Han Dong, we’re sorry: he can’t be charged with high treason or even mere treason.

He wasn’t a cabinet minister or a senior bureaucrat or a member of the military, so he isn’t easily caught by the new version of the Official Secrets Act, the Security of Information Act. Did he – as the Act says – harm “Canadian interests”?

The interests of the two Michaels, to be sure. But were those identical to Canada’s? That’s less clear.

What’s clear, however, is this: while Han Dong may not be in any legal jeopardy, he sure is, politically.

CSIS is not his friend. And CSIS has apparently decided he needed to be removed from the Trudeau government.

And he has been.

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When in a hole, stop digging.

That’s advice my former boss Jean Chretien used to give us. In life, as in politics, it’s good advice.

The denizens of Parliament Hill — which is essentially 22 square acres surrounded by reality — often forget that. They often forget, or don’t care, that what seems smart or strategic to them looks completely insane to Joe and Jane Frontporch.

The Meech Lake Accord. Hotel rooms costing $6,000 a night. Eighteen dollar orange juice. And on and on: These are just a few of the things that elicit disinterested shrugs by folks in Ottawa. And which cause everyday Canadians to reach for their pitchforks and torches and, sometimes, a sturdy tree branch.

The latest example: The Liberal Party of Trudeau — because, rest assured, it is no longer the Liberal Party of Pearson, Chretien, Turner or Martin — has been in a deep, deep hole over the burgeoning China election interference scandal. Their collective response?

They kept digging.

Here’s what is known: China criminally interfered in our elections in 2019 and 2021. Documents authored by intelligence agencies have made clear that the interference included payoffs, manipulation and disinformation.

Ominously, there has been a suggestion that Justin Trudeau and his office knew all about the interference, and did nothing. Most seriously, the implication has been that the China-friendly Liberal prime minister and his senior staff covered it all up.

The opposition parties, and those of us in the media, have accordingly wanted answers to one key question: What did the prime minister and his chief of staff know, and when did they know it?

Oh, and this question too: What did they do about it, if anything?

Those are not unreasonable questions. But what the Tru regime has been doing in the past few weeks has been unreasonable in the extreme.

Stonewalling, fibbing, prevaricating. Delaying and denying information. And, until this week, doing all that they could to prevent Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff, from being called before committee to answer a few predictable questions.

Full disclosure: I knew Telford in her previous life, when she was simply a lobbyist. She worked at a Toronto lobby firm, and she was decidedly not the boss.

If she did anything of significance in her political life span, it was one thing: Glomming onto Justin Trudeau’s cape, and riding a 2015 wave with him into the Office of the Prime Minister.

This writer has known practically every prime ministerial chief of staff over the past generation. Of all of them, Telford is the least noteworthy. If she ever devised some brilliant innovation or some important policy, nobody knows what it is.

However, as the most senior aide to a prime minister, she would have been briefed on national intelligence matters. Which is why the Opposition want to question her. That is obvious.

What is less obvious — what is completely and totally inexplicable — is why the Liberals are turned into a Nixonian stonewalling operation to prevent Telford’s testimony. That makes no sense. Why?

Three points.

One, their filibustering and fibbing had precisely the opposite effect: By looking so terrified about Telford testifying, they dramatically increased opposition efforts to get Telford to testify. Their stupidity invited the very thing they wanted to avoid.

Two, they had nothing to worry about. Because the Chinese election interference story entirely concerns national security, Telford could not meaningfully answer questions — even if she wanted to. She just needed to say that she was not permitted, by law, to discuss national security matters, and she would be right to say so.

Three, the PMO-led machinations did nothing to prevent their biggest problem: Namely, leaks by anonymous CSIS agents who are alarmed by the Chinese threat to our democratic institutions. As the Liberal efforts to prevent Telford’s testimony grew, so did the leaks.

And the leaks haven’t stopped: Wednesday saw the stunning Global News revelation about former Liberal MP Han Dong — that he allegedly pushed the Chinese regime to hold onto the two Michaels, to help out the Liberals. CSIS, it seems, has now assigned itself the role of the Official Opposition. (Perhaps because they feel the Tories aren’t doing the job.)

So, after spilling pints of political capital all over Parliament Hill, the Trudeau regime finally had to do what everyone knew they were always going to do. Namely, let Katie Telford testify.

And so she will. And she will not be able to say anything meaningful. And the Liberals will have lost oodles of credibility for no reason at all.

In Ottawa, sometimes they are not being strategic. Sometimes they are just being stupid.

This was. So: When in a hole, boys and girls, stop digging.

— Warren Kinsella was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant and ran his successful War Rooms

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