{"id":53195,"date":"2015-10-20T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=53195"},"modified":"2015-10-20T01:53:56","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T05:53:56","slug":"lorinc-trudeau-canadas-next-urban-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/10\/20\/lorinc-trudeau-canadas-next-urban-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Trudeau and Canada\u2019s next urban agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If I had to pinpoint a moment when this exhausting election made an important but subtle shift \u2013 the place where the ocean liner\u2019s captain turns the rudder\u00a0ever so slightly \u2013 I\u2019d scroll back to August 26, and an op-ed<\/a> in The Globe and Mail<\/em> by Kevin Lynch<\/a>, a former deputy minister of finance and later clerk of the Privy Council during the Chretien\/Martin era.<\/p>\n

At that moment, the Liberals had fallen to new lows and the NDP were perched on a peak of public opinion that reflected how much they\u2019d benefited from the Conservative\u2019s bid to define Trudeau as ill-prepared for high public office. The Not Ready ads were in constant rotation, and seemed to be working in much the same way as earlier ad campaigns had boxed-in Stephen Dion and Michael Ignatieff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is fiscal policy sitting on the sidelines?\u201d Lynch wondered, surveying the riddle of kick-starting an economy that had stalled for much of the year. At other moments, his column would have tracked like the sort of thing that Ottawa\u2019s policy elites love to bat back and forth, generally with little impact beyond the political classes.<\/p>\n

But Lynch, a deputy BMO chairman, continued the column with stronger statements than one might associate with a top former bureaucrat:<\/p>\n

Simply put, it is time to engage fiscal policy to provide demand support to the economy in a way that also raises our competitiveness\u2026. One obvious fiscal measure\u2026would be a longer term program of strategic infrastructure investment by the federal government, with transparent criteria to distinguish economically strategic investments from politically opportune spending. Borrowing at low interest rates makes such investments attractive now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Within a day, Justin Trudeau had taken Lynch\u2019s policy-ese and translated it into a pledge to embark on a deficit spending campaign as a means of reigniting the Canadian economy. In that one gutsy gesture, Trudeau sharply distinguished the Liberals from his two rivals and simultaneously re-established the party\u2019s long-standing political alliance with Canada\u2019s influential municipal sector, and key figures like Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi.<\/p>\n

I have no inside information about whether the Liberal war room had orchestrated Lynch\u2019s op-ed and Trudeau\u2019s subsequent\u00a0response; it felt like an elegantly choreographed call-and-response number. But the sausage-making is much less important than the impact it created. Suddenly, Trudeau and the Liberals were offering up an economic solution that had a serious imprimatur (Lynch), precedent (in the form of the Conservatives\u2019 own stimulus package), and punch.<\/p>\n

They were also following Jack Layton\u2019s best advice about politics: it\u2019s always better to propose than oppose. Hope, not fear, etc.<\/p>\n

In the coming weeks and months, Trudeau will have to go through all the predictable\u00a0tangles and expectations that await a new leader \u2013 cabinet making, priority-setting, damage assessment. He\u2019ll face intense pressure to make some bold\u00a0symbolic gestures, such repealing the Harper government\u2019s most loathsome pieces of legislation (Bill C51, barbaric cultural practices, racist citizenship laws, election rules designed to limit participation) or re-instating the long-form census. Trudeau will also have to come up with a plan to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis, and deliver on his promise to sharply increase the number of claimants admitted to Canada this year.<\/p>\n

But the deficit spending promise seems poised, as Lynch proposed, to become the centerpiece of the Liberal government\u2019s economic recovery program, and so it will become the focus of intensive policy and political attention.<\/p>\n

We know former Toronto city councillor and re-elected MP Adam Vaughan has spent much of the past year crisscrossing the country, talking to municipal leaders about housing and transit and advising Trudeau. The Liberals, in turn, made transit pledges during the election, including one to mayor John Tory’s Smart Track. And there will, of course, be political favours to return, not least to the residents of some of Canada\u2019s largest cities, who collectively sent both the Conservatives and the NDP packing.<\/p>\n

Those with longer memories will also remember that a previous generation of Liberals swept into office in the early 1990s armed with ambitious national housing and daycare strategies that ultimately withered on the vine, victims of Paul Martin\u2019s bid to eliminate an out-of-control deficit.<\/p>\n

Those with more recent\u00a0memories will also recall that when the Conservatives found religion on infrastructure spending, back in the aftermath of the 2009 recession, they soon discovered that all those capital dollars could be effectively spent on pet projects in Conservative ridings. The Conservatives did allocate tens of billions of dollars to infrastructure and even topped up the federal gas tax. But in the end, they always played politics with the selected projects advanced by their provincial counterparts, and then took pains to make sure the pork was suitably distributed.<\/p>\n

When he takes office, Trudeau will not be encumbered by a crushing deficit. He will also presumably have a succinct critique of the Conservative\u2019s mis-use of their own infrastructure funds. And he\u2019ll be able to negotiate with several friendly provincial regimes.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, in fact,\u00a0the planets seem\u00a0properly aligned for a Trudeau government to formulate, for the first time in over a generation, a rational, policy-driven urban infrastructure investment plan that will direct this new tranche of spending on demonstrated need like affordable housing, and long-range goals aimed at dealing with pressing big city\u00a0concerns such as congestion.<\/p>\n

Indeed, if Trudeau wants to make a clean break from Harper\u2019s hyper-partisanship, he\u2019ll begin by listening to his experts and then creating transparent, outcome-oriented processes for allocating the funding to places where those dollars will create the most significant economic updraft.<\/p>\n

Canadians can all thank Kevin Lynch for offering up his game-changing policy advice in the dying days of the summer. We must now hope that Trudeau is, well, ready to continue listening.<\/p>\n

photo by Joel Bedford<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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