Political pundits can sound, at times, like baseball commentators. Both have a penchant for obscure statistics.
In the wake of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s major mid-summer cabinet shuffle, many pundits noted, for instance, that the new Minister for Small Business, Mississauga MP Rechie Valdez, was the first woman of Philippine origin appointed to the ministry.
Valdez was appropriately emotional at her swearing-in, as she tearfully recited the full oath in both English and French.
Liberal operatives take a more practical view of Valdez’s appointment. They hope it will help their party hang on to a suburban Toronto seat that’s on the Conservatives’ top target list for the next election.
Somehow the chattering class failed to notice another similar first: the first dual Canadian-Israeli citizen in the cabinet, Ya’ara Saks, a Toronto MP.
Saks takes over the Mental Health and Addictions portfolio from Carolyn Bennett, who just days ago announced she will not be running again.
The new minister has, in the past, been sharply critical of Benyamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Israeli coalition. She even flew to Israel in 2019 to vote against the current Israeli prime minister.
On the other hand, Saks considers herself to be a staunch Zionist, and, like many mainstream Canadian politicians, has characterized the movement for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel as antisemitic.
Saks’s Toronto riding is another one Pierre Poilievre’s Tories have in their sights. A seat at the cabinet table could help the MP, first elected only three years ago in a by-election, fend off the Conservative threat.
The same is true for the new Tourism Minister, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, who represents Hochelaga, a working-class riding in the centre-east of Montreal. That’s territory where the Bloc Québécois believes it has a good chance come the next election.
Outgoing Justice Minister David Lametti fell on his sword (or was he pushed?) to make room for Ferrada. He represents a much safer Liberal seat than Ferrada’s, Lasalle-Émard-Verdun, in western Montreal, where the Bloc has meagre prospects, and where the Conservatives did not place higher than a miserable fourth in the last four elections.
Similar political calculations seem to be behind giving the big job of Families, Children and Social Development to Jenna Sudds, a rookie MP and former Ottawa city councillor (and protégé of retired Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson), and the newly-created role of Minister for Service to Citizens to Burnaby North’s Terry Beech.
Sudds’ suburban Ottawa Kanata-Carleton riding neighbours that of Pierre Poilievre; Beech’s lower mainland British Columbia district neighbours NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s.
Is Sean Fraser up to the housing challenge
Political geography aside, there are two ministers with new portfolios we should all watch carefully.
They are: Nova Scotian Sean Fraser, who moves from Immigration to Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, and Pascale St-Onge, who leaves Sport and Physical Activity to take over the vast and complex Canadian Heritage department.
The Liberals have telegraphed that they want to do something about the current housing crisis facing millions of Canadians.
They know there are legions of Canadian families who will soon face big mortgage increases – if they are not already facing them – and legions of others who cannot pay their rent.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) reports regularly on the affordability of rental accommodation in Canada. It issued its latest report about a month ago and the news is all bad.
Almost everywhere in Canada, with the exception of three cities in Quebec, basic rental units are out of reach for Canadians earning minimum wage.
The situation is bad throughout the country, but Toronto and Vancouver are the “worst culprits.” In those cities “even two full-time minimum wage workers cannot afford a one-bedroom unit without spending more than 30 per cent of their combined income on housing.”
READ MORE: Tenants take back power from landlords through strike action
The new housing minister would be well-advised to read this report. It does not echo what market-obsessed industry lobbyists or many of his own officials will likely tell him.
The CCPA attributes the rental crisis to: “wage suppression policies; low supply of rental housing, especially purpose-built, rent-controlled, and non-market units; and poorly regulated rental markets that privilege profit-making over housing security and allow the use of rental accommodation as an asset class.”
The report then adds: “It’s also due to governments’ collective failure to build, finance, and acquire the right kinds of rental housing, which is compounded by landlords who use their political influence to weaken rental market regulations, allowing them to increase rents and profit margins.”
The kicker is this:
“Markets do not solve the problems they create. When the desired outcome is housing security rather than profit, governments must regulate markets and support non-market housing.”
The Conservative solution to the shortage of affordable housing is the polar opposite of the CCPA’s, not more regulation and government intervention but less.
In Ontario, Conservative premier Doug Ford is trying to eliminate as many environmental and planning constraints as possible and force municipalities to give virtual free rein to developers.
Pierre Poilievre echoes his Ontario colleague with his attacks on “gatekeepers” who, notionally, impede construction (and other) projects.
Powerful economic interests align themselves with these views, throughout the country.
It will take considerable fortitude and vision for a new minister to push back against this free enterprise dogma and champion a more environmental and socially responsible approach to community building – an approach that seeks a way to increase housing at a human scale, without engendering endless and destructive urban sprawl.
Does Sean Fraser have what it takes?
We’ll find out soon.
Assuring a healthy Canadian media ecosystem
As for Pascale St-Onge, her record as Sports Minister is encouraging. She was fearless in taking on the deeply entrenched sports federation establishment, which went to great lengths to sweep decades of sexual and other abuses under the rug.
Now, the new Canadian Heritage Minister will have far bigger adversaries in the global tech giants, notably Google and Facebook.
And St-Onge’s challenges will go way beyond the current conflict over internet platforms paying Canadian news media outlets for their content.
For instance, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada), the largest cultural and media institution owned by the Canadian people, is long overdue for a renewed and refreshed mandate – and for a stable, long-term funding formula.
Will a government already looking toward the next election have the patience and creativity to undertake that enormous task?
And will a new minister be able to get herself fully informed on the complex issues underlying the quest for CBC renewal – not to mention the corporation’s tangled history – in time to have a tangible and significant impact? It is one thing to tackle the relatively small world of sport; another, the global universe of media.
Pascale St-Onge should be prepared for a lot of seven-day, 18-hours-per-day work weeks.
Much of the immediate commentary on Trudeau’s July 26 shuffle is focusing on politics and optics, on polls, strategy, and what will happen in the next election.
No doubt, those are major preoccupations for the prime minister and his advisors too. They are, after all, political animals. You don’t get to stay in power for three terms if you are not that kind of beast.
Canadians, and the members of the new cabinet, should not forget, however, that, beyond politics, there are also huge and pressing policy challenges at stake.
Is it all possible that the road to political success might not be paved with mere image-enhancing gestures and rhetoric, but rather with actual policy achievements?
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Nick Seebruch, editor
