Under Avi Lewis, the NDP is entrenching itself as a grievance party. The party is running against the rich, against AI, and against any expansion of the oil and gas sector. This sets up clear villains for the NDP to target, all of whom happen to be linked to the most productive sectors of our economy, or the sectors that will be most important in raising per capita GDP growth in the future. At a time of economic uncertainty, the search for quick and easy villains is tempting for politicians and political parties, no matter how economically illiterate the resulting policies end up being.
Grievance politics trends towards a hostile approach to private sector ambition. From the left, this is expressed as the NDP is expressing it, with the ‘rich’ lumped into one category, and ‘the people’ in another. On the right, grievance-based rhetoric often speaks broadly in support of the private sector, but targets specific sectors or individuals, and lauds those who ‘work with their hands’ over those who ‘work with their minds.’ The ‘wrong’ kind of private sector experience is called ‘elitist’ or ‘out-of-touch,’ and somehow separate from the nebulous and always-undefined ‘real people’.
Mark Carney’s education
The unifying principle of grievance politics is the ‘elites vs the people’ narrative. And while it’s no surprise to see it from the NDP, the Conservative Party of Canada is increasingly heading in that direction. The CPC’s latest criticism of Prime Minister Carney’s economic education – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Carney was “very badly educated” on economic issues – is the kind of grievance-based ‘elites vs the people’ rhetoric that is a hallmark of populist movements.
Carney holds degrees from Oxford and Harvard, not exactly bastions of poor education. Of course, knowledge is not conferred by pieces of paper, and the name of an institution alone does not imbue someone with magical wisdom. However, neither is there some sort of magical ‘common wisdom’ in ‘the people,’ since ‘the people’ is ultimately an empty phrase referring to individuals, each of whom has their own strengths and weaknesses.
This isn’t about the freedom to criticize the Prime Minister. Our leaders are temporary office holders, and we must defend our right to freely criticize them. Rather, this is about what such criticism says about those issuing it. To say that Carney is “poorly educated” on economics is difficult to defend, given that Carney was appointed to run the Bank of Canada by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper (someone who is well-educated in economics) and the Bank of England by the Conservative Government in the United Kingdom. Did Stephen Harper and George Osborne think Carney was poorly educated when they appointed him? Carney also has significant private sector experience – much more than many of his critics – something once seen as praiseworthy on the right. Does that not count because the companies he worked for were ‘too big’? Further, the claim that Carney has been “wrong about every major economic issue of the last decade” ignores the fact that Carney warned about the economic damage of Brexit – warnings that have been vindicated.
Appealing to the lowest common denominator
Grievance politics is an appeal to the lowest common denominator. These appeals are often used by leaders in desperate circumstances. Justin Trudeau did this when he feared for his political future, with unvaccinated people and Western Conservatives often being useful political targets for the then-Prime Minister. There has been no such scapegoating from Carney (who has embraced individuals like Marilyn Gladu, who would have been denounced as ‘extreme’ by some Liberals in the Trudeau era), which is a key reason he is much more popular than Trudeau. For Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, the increasing embrace of populist and grievance-based politics reflects his own weakening position. After all, it’s far easier to blame sneaky ‘elites’ for the CPC’s inability to hold on to its own MPs and its declining popularity despite raising immense sums of money from its membership, than to look at why people are heading for the exits and why the CPC is struggling to hold its 2025 level of support.
Note, pointing out real issues (a rational assessment of U.S. hostility to free trade with Canada makes it clear that such hostility is damaging our economy, for example) is not a grievance. Rather, basing your politics around an ‘elites’ vs the ‘real people’ approach – as both the populist right and populist left do – is what defines it.
The politics of grievance are opposed to the politics of the heroic individual. Rather than encouraging personal strength and bringing out the best in people, grievance politics tells people that all of their struggles are the result of shadowy forces conspiring against them. This robs people of their agency and makes true improvement much harder, since it blunts our understanding of reality. It’s also a sign of intellectual regression, and – no matter how much peddlers of grievance-politics may say otherwise – ultimately results in more state control and less freedom. It would be quite a disappointment if the Conservatives followed the NDP in that direction.
Spencer Fernando
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You make good points regarding Lewis and Poilievre, however your comment “Note, pointing out real issues (a rational assessment of U.S. hostility to free trade with Canada makes it clear that such hostility is damaging our economy, for example) is not a grievance.” , which I believe is what Carney is banking on, is incorrect in the context of your essay.
Carney has played the Liberal voters, and the Mainstream Media, like a fine tuned fiddle. He plays on Trump Derangment Syndrome (TDS), then gives a table side talk on Sunday again emphasizing the his estrangement from the US. His key words play to the anti-American and in particular, anti Trump sentiment of both his supporters and the MSM.
He is simply setting the stage for his failure to do what he promised in the election a year ago, a deal with the US by the first of July, Canada Day. He is setting Canada up for a huge fall, just so he can keep getting the Liberals re-elected. Plus, he is setting Trump up as the bogey man, to deflect his own failure to be able to get a deal done.
Other countries have been getting deals. Other countries have been figuring out a way to negotiate with Trump. Mexico is very close to a deal, that is excluding Canada.
To learn recently that there haven’t been any meaningful meetings in 5 months, is something that I think you should be railing against ,Spencer, in stead of almost continually taking shots at Poilievre.