Political strategists often say policy is for the desperate. Don’t roll out your election ideas until the campaign is actually upon you unless things are really bad and you need to change the channel, as they say.On May 4, 2015, that day had come for the federal Liberals. Limping along in the polls, the third-place party was only making waves for its proposal to legalize pot, and the brain trust figured it was time to show they were serious.They booked a photo op at a local restaurant in nearby Aylmer, Que., invited some supporters, and the three-point plan to help the middle class was born. Hike taxes on the rich, cut taxes for everyone else, and send lots more money to low- and middle-class families with children.The plan didn’t grab the public’s attention right away, but it gained momentum and eventually came to define the Liberals’ social policy and, inadvertently, the new government’s fiscal policy too, driving up the federal deficit by billions of dollars.Despite its boldness, Justin Trudeau’s middle-class makeover was experimental. At the time, policy experts around the world were hashing out the best ways to lessen income inequality and bolster the middle class, but there was no consensus and plenty of disagreement over what would actually work. Tax hikes on the rich were particularly controversial, since many economists believed rich people would take their money and run, or at least hide their wealth in a tax shelter somewhere.Four years later, with daily repetitions of the mantra about “the middle class and those working hard to join it” still ringing in voters’ ears, Trudeau is asking Canadians to give him a stamp of their approval for his overhaul of the country’s income security system.Was the middle-class makeover more than skin deep? Was it simply cosmetic? Or was it lipstick on a pig, clumsily glossing over the flaws that blemish Canada’s social cohesion?The Star has worked with S ...
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