Leader of the Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre rises during Question Period, on Dec. 12 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
If you tried to imagine the narrative arc of Canadian social policy, you might guess that the dental-care program announced this week marks the peak of the current cycle.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has spent big on social policy, including a subsidized national child-care program. Now, the party’s parliamentary deal with the NDP is birthing a remarkably broad dental-insurance program that is expected to cover nine million people.
But even the Liberals’ own estimates tell us that federal finances are tight. And the Conservative Party that is way, way ahead in opinion polls right now is relentlessly targeting government spending and deficits – as the cause of inflation, high interest rates and everything that ails us.
Normally, one might expect that would bring us, in the second half of the Liberal government’s third term, to a classic political drama between big spenders and fiscal restrainers. But one of the actors is refusing to take up their part in the play.
Ask the Conservatives whether they are for or against the dental plan, and the answer is silence. At least, when The Globe and Mail posed the question, the response was that they’d get back if they had something to say, followed by crickets.
After three Liberal cabinet ministers announced the dental-care plan Monday morning, New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh took credit for it early that afternoon, and then Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre led off Question Period with queries about high rents, carbon taxes and deficits.
There’s a reason for that. Inflation and deficits are Conservative issues, and they are going gangbusters for Mr. Poilievre right now. Canadians care, a lot, about those things. Why talk about what the Liberals want to talk about? Social programs are their ground, not Mr. Poilievre’s.
But if the social-policy silence keeps up – and it seems to be a pretty rigid policy of Conservative communications – Canadians are in for a very odd two years of phantom social-policy debate.
Presumably, the Conservatives really don’t want to say if they would cancel the dental program – especially because by the time the next election rolls around, there may be millions of Canadians who have been receiving those dental benefits for a year.
“Imagine knocking on doors two years from now and telling a senior you’re going to take away her dental care,” said New Democrat MP Don Davies, the party’s health critic.
Mr. Poilievre’s party appears to understand such political conundrums. They bashed the Liberals’ subsidized child-care program for more than a year, but once big-money deals had been done with the provinces, the Conservatives voted for the legislation to enshrine them. Taking money from babies isn’t a good look in the politics business.
Now, we know that the Conservatives aren’t keen on federal dental-insurance programs – they opposed a limited first phase that paid sums to parents of children under 12, calling it inflationary spending – but not whether they would cancel it upon winning power.
The Liberals and the NDP aren’t too concerned about the distinction, however, and on Monday, both Mr. Singh and Mr. Trudeau accused the Conservatives of opposing dental care. They’d both like to see Mr. Poilievre talking about social policy. Which is why he doesn’t.
Political tactics aside, however, the consequential question for Canadians is what will happen to programs like these.
There is no certainty that today’s opinion polls will be 2025′s election results, but the Conservatives are now the oddsmaker’s favourites to win power. There is a whiff of fin de régime in Liberal Ottawa. Mr. Poilievre’s party has made reducing spending their main thing, and they are now the proverbial government in waiting. But apparently, the wait will be two years.
So is the Liberal government rolling out a dental-insurance program to nine million people – starting next May and gradually adding more and more people to the rolls – that will be kiboshed if the Conservatives win power a year later?
Or are the Conservatives pinned against their unwillingness to oppose established social benefits? If that’s the case, perhaps we’d see Mr. Trudeau propose more big social programs – the NDP wants pharmacare – and dare Mr. Poilievre to oppose it. The Prime Minister just might gamble on legislating some legacy items.
In the meantime, Mr. Poilievre’s party has decided that dental care, and things like it, aren’t what they want to talk about – so they are keeping their mouths shut.