Income inequality, the income gap that is said to be increasing between the wealthiest people in society and the lower and middle classes, has become a hot topic in Canadian politics.
Commentators like journalist Linda McQuaig, economists Armine Yalniziyan and Miles Corak, and think tanks like Canada 2020, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Broadbent Institute have all warned about the dangers that inequality has for Canada. These dangers include it being harder for lower-income people to get ahead in life, slower economic growth overall as people who don’t make as much money can’t afford to spend as much, growing resentment of the wealthiest “one per cent” of people who make the most money, and decreasing support for economic and political systems that are seen as making inequality worse.
Politically, all of these sources are left-leaning and progressive. Many of the solutions they propose to address the problem involve further government support for lower-income Canadians, and changing the tax system to take more money from sources like financial transactions and corporations. This isn’t too surprising as progressive commentators and organizations have been criticizing our current economic course for a while now.
What is surprising, though, is the number of commentators and organizations that would be more typically seen as right-leaning and conservative who are also worried about increased income inequality. The Conference Board of Canada, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the Economist magazine, CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney are not known for their Marxist street cred, but all of them have expressed similar concerns about inequality. Carney, especially, was critical of those politicians and economists who stubbornly clung to the ideology of what he referred to as “market fundamentalism.” More than that, many of them have also expressed support for some of the same solutions that the progressive commentators and organizations have advocated.
This is not a left-versus-right issue. There’s a remarkably high level of agreement, both in Canada and elsewhere in the world, that something is clearly off with our current economic model. People and organizations who can be associated with the political left and the political right are saying many of the same things about the dangers of inequality and ways to address it.
All of this points to a need for change that incorporates the perspectives of both left- and right-leaning Canadians. If you listen to political discourse in Canada, it often sounds as though we can only choose to have the government or the marketplace handle things, and that choosing one means we can’t have the benefits of the other. But who says we can’t have the best of both worlds when it comes to progressive and conservative ideas, and government action and market solutions, complementing each other’s strengths and compensating for each other’s weaknesses?
That may prove to be the best solution to inequality in the long run.
Jared Milne is a St. Albert resident with a passion for Canadian history and politics.
