Chris Selley: Canada’s new, unearned decadence

Ontario can choose to spend billions on building a tunnel underneath Highway 401, or spend the nonexistent funds on expanding its nonviable high-speed rail plans. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post; Alto

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Donald Trump has hatched many threats to Canada’s prosperity over the years, both short-term and long. One of the greatest long-term threats, however, is largely of our own device: the threat that when Trump finally leaves, Canada will slump back into its favourite proverbial easy chair at the cottage (as if anyone can afford to buy a cottage nowadays) and relax.

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“Cancel the military spending. Probably no need for that LNG pipeline. Normal service has resumed.”

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In fact, we already did it once: The disbanding of the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations after Joe Biden’s election, as if Democratic administrations have always been friends to Canada, remains one of the lower-key astonishing moments of the Justin Trudeau era.

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In a lot of ways we now seem to be doing it again, perhaps lulled into a sort of medium-income catatonia by Mark Carney’s technocratic resumé and bafflegab. Except Trump’s still in office, and more unpredictable than ever. The amount of pure fantasy that’s passing for politics in this country nowadays is really quite extraordinary.

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Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim wants a Major League Baseball (MLB) team. He has asked for very rich people to come forward who might want to own said team. That seems backwards, no? Shouldn’t billionaires be petitioning City Hall, not vice versa? (Amusingly, in a story about MLB expansion candidates published Wednesday, Forbes reported “repeated requests (for comment) to Mayor Sim’s office went unreturned.”)

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There are credible owners kicking the tires, we are told. (Ryan Reynolds! Squeeee!) But it’s difficult to see why MLB would be interested in Vancouver, as opposed to similar-sized U.S. markets that have solid and confirmed ownership candidates, far more corporate money flying around (and in U.S. dollars), and taxpayers who are scandalously willing to shell out to build stadiums for billionaires.

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When the final bill for the World Cup in Vancouver gets tallied — at least $625 million for seven soccer games, at last report, so $1 billion certainly isn’t out of the question — one imagines the notion of subsidizing a stadium for a league where the average salary is US$5.4 million might wind up even less popular. (Alas for Canadian taxpayers, some politicians’ brainless sporting fantasies come true.)

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Quebec politicians have gotten behind bringing back the Montreal Expos too, at least in theory, but most have insisted — quite rightly — that it must come at no public expense. With an election coming up in Quebec, however, there is no shortage of other fantasy on offer.

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A Léger Marketing poll conducted April 12 found the Parti Québécois and Liberals nearly neck-and-neck among decided voters, at 31 and 28 per cent, respectively. But if the PQ were to abandon its promise to hold a third sovereignty referendum in its first mandate, the poll suggested, PQ support would surge to 39 per cent and the Liberals’ would drop to 25.