Geoff Russ: Pierre Poilievre is right, the ‘experts’ aren’t worth listening to

They keep advancing their own political agendas

Published Aug 29, 2024  •  6 minute read

Needles on the sidewalk near the Toronto safe injection site near Yonge-Dundas Square on Monday May 28, 2018. Photo by Dave Abel/Postmedia

So-called “experts” have weakened Canada’s political discourse far more than PIerre Poilievre ever has. Journalist and author Stephen Maher recently penned a column in the Globe & Mail titled, “By slamming experts, Pierre Poilievre and his staff are degrading political debate.”

Maher is an even-handed journalist, and his column should not be written off as the scribblings of a Liberal partisan. What his column misses is how the term “expert” has been abused, and the degree to which “experts” have thoroughly discredited themselves in recent years.

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Poilievre’s criticisms of the “experts” would not resonate if they lived up to the title bestowed upon them.

For example, the Doug Ford government’s decision to close 10 safe injection sites after implementing a ban on such facilities located near schools and child-care centres. The closures were lamented by “experts” trotted out by the CBC as putting peoples’ lives at risk.

The safe injection sites slated to be shut down are near schools and daycares, and there is demonstrable proof that crime rises near these sites wherever they are located.

Derek Finkle recently wrote that the critiques of the closures levelled by selected “experts” failed to note how community members had been threatened with rape, arson, and murder since the injection site in his Toronto neighbourhood had been opened.

These are reasonable grounds for a government to reconsider whether they should allow drug-use, supervised or not, to proliferate in neighbourhoods where families reside.

For all their alleged expertise, many “experts” seem unwilling to actually investigate what is happening on the ground, and often give plainly bad advice altogether, and this goes back decades.

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The “experts” failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis, they said the risk to Canadians from the coronavirus was low in early 2020, and they failed to prevent runaway inflation after the worst of it had subsided.

Was it not the “experts” who asserted that arming and funding of Ukraine prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022 was a bad idea? After the invasion began, was it not the “experts” who confidently predicted Putin’s army would conquer the whole of Ukraine in a matter of days, and not be bogged down in a years-long conflict that would reshape global trade?

The truth is that we live in a worse-off world because of the advice and predictions of “experts.”

There are few bigger culprits for our misery than groupthink among central bankers. In 2008, “experts” at the Bank of England dithered while Lehman Brothers collapsed, and continued to do so nine months after the United States entered a recession, and six months after other European countries slowed down as well.

Canada’s central bankers performed very well during the 2008 crisis and helped the country to weather it far more comfortably than our peer countries.

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Unfortunately, the Bank of Canada did not match the effort during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It may be true enough that Canada’s policy of quantitative easing during the pandemic only partially contributed to the bad run of inflation that began in 2021.

However, the now-infamous phrase spoken by BoC Governor Tiff Macklem in 2021 that inflation would be “transitory” turned out to be horribly wrong.

When Poilievre assailed the BoC governor’s poor predictions and promised to fire him, Liberal and NDP MPs added it to their hysterical narrative that Poilievre is some kind of authoritarian demagogue.

The cynical, mercenary nature of their defence of the BoC’s top expert was made very clear by how quickly progressives turned on the bank after a rate hike last summer that further strained the wallets of Canadians nationwide.

Accountability for the mistakes made by our top public servants should never be out of the question, even if firing Macklem would be a very drastic move.

Tiff Macklem is a very important expert. That’s why his words were taken far more seriously than some nameless blogger or commentator. Experts in a position like Macklem’s have a responsibility to be cautious and accurate, not overly-confident and prone to rash predictions.

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Whoever did their long term financial planning with the idea that inflation would be transitory is probably hurting very badly right now.

In a crisis like the pandemic, politicians, businessmen, and everyday people will make decisions because of statements from people like Macklem. When they are wrong, it affects far more than just their credibility.

Experts are also often showcased by the government for the sole purpose of advancing their agenda. Take the parliamentary committee hearings on the passing of Bill C-11.

Another crisis brought about in the past three years has been irresponsible immigration policies. Advised by “experts” and lobbyists from the Century Initiative, which aims to increase Canada’s population to 100 million people by 2100, the Liberal government threw open the gates of Canada in 2020 to pretty much anyone with a heartbeat.

“Experts” insisted that it would be good for the economy and drive innovation, and that Temporary Foreign Workers needed more pathways to immigration, without regard for unwanted side effects.

Words of the “experts” selected by the CBC for a news story in November, 2022 led to the following subheading.

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“New immigrants won’t impact home prices: expert”.

It was the title for a lengthy rebuttal targeted at those concerned over the consequences of half-a-million new people on the housing supply and affordability.

Fast forward to 2024, and the Canadian Press released a story with the following headline, “Immigration is making Canada’s housing more expensive. The government was warned 2 years ago.”

Can anyone give a serious look at the rise of fraudulent international student visas, slum houses stuffed with disillusioned young newcomers, and the further squeezing of the already dire housing crisis, and claim the “experts” had it right?

Everyone is still waiting for the benefits of mass-immigration to kick in while our existing infrastructure and housing supply is stretched wafer-thin by the demand caused by bringing in over 500,000 people per year. Furthermore, our GDP-per-capita has only decreased and Canada’s economy is still mired in slow economic growth, putting the lie to the idea that immigration is some sort of cheat code for nationwide prosperity.

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The most obviously experts are cultural “experts” whose knowledge is little more than ideology, but yet are still called upon to heap scorn upon entire races or ethnic groups. One of the most glaring offenders have been the critical race theorists and professors of “whiteness” studies.

Take Ibram X. Kendi. He posited in one of his books that the damages of racist discrimination can only be undone by anti-racist discrimination, which can only kindly be described as asinine.

Meanwhile, fellow critical race theorist and author Robin DiAngelo, who published a silly book titled “White Fragility”, to great celebration among urban progressives. Unsurprisingly, both Kendi and DiAngelo were feted by the CBC as intellectuals and the great experts of race relations in our time.

DiAngelo, who is white, was accused this week of plagiarizing by taking credit for the writings of non-white authors in her dissertation. The allegation itself is not shocking.

The work of DiAngelo and Kendi is little more than amateur pathology, but their alleged pseudo-scientific work now infects institutions across Canada, where deference to the written word and individualism are slandered as upholding white supremacy.

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Such is the quality of many of the “experts” presented to the public in recent years; buffoonish, delusional, and wrong. Experts are not neutral players, and nearly all have an agenda that they want to see advanced.

The cult of the “expert” is an epidemic that must be rooted out like a weed, for their frequently wrong predictions have exposed that their credentials have not made them any less clueless than the rest of us about the future.

In an ideal world, we can rely upon experts to provide measured advice to help guide and shape policy. When they fail in that consistently, their credibility is shot, and right now, a good deal of them could use a few slices of humble pie.

National Post

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