Welcome to Corridors. We’ve been sharing this space with contributors as obsessed as we are with policy and Canadian politics. Today’s guest host is Sean Speer, editor at large at The Hub (thehub.ca), a new digital media platform focused on Canadian policy and governance. He is also the PPF Scotiabank Fellow at the Public Policy Forum and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Sean previously served as a senior economic adviser to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Over to you, Sean. — Sue Allan, editor of POLITICO Canada.

DRIVING THE WEEK

I’m not quite a young person anymore. Although I’m technically a millennial and only became eligible for my first vaccination this week, the truth is I’m now much closer to age 50 than I am to age 20. My tastes, preferences and experiences are more closely aligned with the Gen Xers ahead of me than the Gen Zers behind me.

But this doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the challenges facing the younger generation or the potential political consequences of Canada’s growing intergenerational inequities. For all of the talk about income inequality these days, the bigger problem may be the gap between younger and older Canadians when it comes to wealth, opportunity and the bias of government policy.

The kids aren’t alright. They’re facing a series of separate yet linked issues (including student debt, housing affordability and exorbitant child-care costs) that are contributing to increased financial precarity, diminished expectations and delayed family formation. And, of course, these challenges have only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Take housing. The country’s average selling price was up by more than 30 percent year-over-year in March 2021 to reach a record high of C$715,000. Prices were over C$1.1 million in Vancouver and C$1 million in Toronto, which now have the dubious distinction as two of the world’s most unaffordable cities.

A household must now earn as much as $185,000 per year to afford the median house and $130,000 to afford the median condo in Toronto. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. The median total income for Canadian households in 2019 was less than $100,000.

It’s no surprise therefore that, according to the Angus Reid Institute’s Housing Pain Index (which aims to measure how people feel about housing costs now and in the future), nearly 40 percent of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 are “miserable.” What’s striking, though, is that almost the same percentage of those aged 65 and older are characterized as “happy.”

This sets up a zero-sum dynamic that manifests more broadly in public policy and governance. The evidence is pretty overwhelming: younger Canadians are the losers in the competitive arena of “age-based politics.”

Consider a 2015 study that estimated Canadian governments spend between C$33,321 and C$40,152 per person age 65 and over and just C$10,406 and C$11,614 per person under age 45. Or a 2013 report that concluded Canada was among the “least intergenerationally just” countries in the OECD. Even the ongoing Covid-19 lockdowns have essentially (and mostly understandably) traded off the economic and social well-being of younger Canadians in order to protect older citizens.

An obvious question is: Why do our politics and policy tilt in favour of older Canadians?

The answer is simple: They vote. In the 2019 federal election, for instance, voter turnout for those aged 55 and older was 73.7 percent, compared to 67 percent overall and just 56.2 percent for those aged 34 and younger.

American conservative columnist George Will, who himself recently turned 80 years old, has described this interrelationship between voting patterns and policy outcomes as the “politics of gerontocracy.” He’s right.

How else does one explain the recent federal budget’s boost to the Old Age Security program by nearly C$3 billion per year even though Canadian seniors have never been better off financially and the cost of these elderly benefits is already set to increase nearly 70 percent by 2030 due to aging baby boomers?

The political power of the baby-boom generation isn’t going anywhere any time soon either. They’re now55 percent of Canada’s seniors population and will soon start to demand more public spending on health care, long-term care and other age-based entitlements.

My advice to politicians: Resist the powerful temptation to appeal to this political constituency in ways that worsens intergenerational inequities.

My advice to younger Canadians: Get active, get involved and vote.

My advice to Gen Xers (and late millennials like me): Hold onto your wallets. Things are about to get really expensive.

Over to the Corridors crew, Andy Blatchford and Sue Allan.

Who's Up, Who's Down

Who’s up: Vaccine Hunters Canada.

Setting aside all the reasons a volunteer team of information specialists have emerged as the undisputed leaders of Canada’s vaccination campaign, it was both charming and reassuring to watch them in conversation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday afternoon. With earned authority they’ve advised the PM that Canada is going to need a messaging shift to get out the vaccine hesitant — especially after a year and more of telling people to stay home.

— Related listening: Vaccine hunters Josh Kaplin and Sabrina Craig appeared on Tuesday’s edition of The Star’s This Matters podcast.

Who’s down: The Canadian Armed Forces.

The latest investigation — involving 30-year-old allegations about Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin — raises still more questions about the way National Defense handles misconduct cases. Fortin had been overseeing the rollout of Canada’s vaccines, a role that will now be filled by Brig.-Gen. Krista Brodie.

Send us your nominations: [email protected]

YOU TELL US

Corridors is a new weekly newsletter for MPs, lobbyists, executives, activists and any readers who are interested in what’s going on around Parliament Hill. Every Wednesday we will look at the people pulling the levers of power in Ottawa and the questions that are influencing decisions on Parliament Hill and in the provinces. Join the conversation! You can email us at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

What We're Watching

CROSS-BORDER FIXATION: Will Canada’s one-dose summer include an open border? Trudeau said Tuesday that restrictions won’t ease until at least 75 percent of Canadians have been vaccinated with at least one dose. The latest update from the Public Health Agency of Canada with data up to and including May 8 suggests 38 percent of Canadians have received at least one shot.

— One way in: PHAC confirmed to The Canadian Press that cross-border jaunts for a jab are permissible. So maybe that will speed things up? Read the fine print before you head out.

— In case you missed it: The Star’s Stephanie Levitz uncovered that it was the PM himself who came up with the phrase““one-dose summer, two-dose fall.”

THE BATTLES OF STEVEN GUILBEAULT — The parliamentary committee tumult over the Liberals’ Bill C-10, fueled by freedom-of-expression fears, has stalled the legislation under a political spotlight for weeks now. The bill proposes to compel foreign streaming platforms like Netflix to follow the same rules as traditional broadcasters in promoting and putting money toward Canadian arts and culture. The clashes over C-10 could be a sign of things to come as it’s the first of three bills Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault plans to use to confront what the government calls the “web giants.”

— What’s next: POLITICO asked Guilbeault on Tuesday if the charged debate over C-10 has had any influence on the way he will approach his forthcoming bill to address online harms. “We knew from the get-go that tackling web giants would be controversial for a number of reasons... We’re seeing that it’s controversial all around the world,” Guilbeault said during a press conference about a bill he noted would be coming soon. “There are some people who believe there should be no regulation whatsoever when it comes to social platforms or web giants — we disagree.”

— What’s not: The government is also working on a bill to ensure “fair compensation” for domestic news publishers that would force large online platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay local outlets for their digital material. The legislation was due to be introduced this spring, but Guilbeault said Tuesday that he’s no longer sure it will be ready.

TAI’S TAKE — U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai provided Canada with another reason why forcing major tech platforms to cough up more money won’t be easy. Tai used her meeting Monday with International Trade Minister Mary Ng to make it clear that the Biden administration has concerns about Canada’s plan to introduce a digital services tax. The Trudeau government has said it will start imposing the digital tax, which would mostly hit U.S. tech companies, in January if international talks aimed at finding a global regime fail to reach a deal.

Ng told reporters late Tuesday that she explained to Tai the Canadian tax, if applied, would only stay in place until a common approach is agreed to at the multilateral level. “I shared with her our government’s commitment to ensure that businesses in all sectors, including digital corporations, pay their fair share of taxes,” Ng said. “But this is also why Canada has been working with its international partners at the OECD [on] a multilateral approach.” OECD negotiations are expected to yield a digital-tax agreement this summer.

— Retaliatory tariffs?: Youmy Han, a spokesperson for Ng, said that Tai did not discuss U.S. tariffs against Canada as a potential response to any eventual digital tax. Last week, the USTR concluded hearings on potential retaliatory tariffs on products from six countries imposing digital services taxes on U.S. firms. The Trump administration launched the Section 301 investigations into Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom in early June 2020.

MAC TALK: The Toronto Sun’s Bryan Passifiume found an image on the Liberal Party website that appears to show the prime minister using an HP computer with an Apple sticker covering the logo. Partisans were quick to draw zingers. Former Financial Post journalist James McLeod noted: “if you live by the immaculately-crafted-image-conscious sword, you die by it too.”

HALLWAY CONVERSATION

This week, Corridors asked: Does Canada need an inquiry into its pandemic response?

Professor Vivek Goel, president-designate, University of Waterloo: Without a doubt we will need some form of enquiry or commission. It is important that the process be arms-length and independent. Ideally, experts from outside of Canada would be engaged so we can have an impartial assessment.

A comprehensive evaluation is needed across all levels of government and sectors — our response has been fragmented and we should avoid the investigations also becoming fragmented.

It is also worth exploring how we can ensure that public health officers are able to share, confidentially, the advice that they provided to political leaders. Some of the most significant advice will likely be privileged, such as with Cabinet confidentiality. Breaking this privilege is challenging, but the commissioners could be empowered to hear such testimony in confidence so it can inform their deliberations.

— Further reading: From the archives, here’s our Q&A with Goel.

Dr. David Fisman, professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto: I have no doubt we’ll have one or more inquiries into our pandemic response. As to whether we need them — that depends on what we’re going to do with the information.

We had the Naylor and Campbell commissions after SARS in Ontario and we still haven’t followed the precautionary principle that those commissions emphasized during the current pandemic.

It only makes sense to do the autopsy if you’re going to learn from it, and implement what you learn.

Sabina Vohra-Miller, founder of Unambiguous Science and co-founder of the South Asian Health Network: This wasn’t our first pandemic, and it certainly won’t be our last. It is unfortunate that a lot of our key learnings from the original SARS outbreak have been forgotten.

An impartial, external review of how Canada and each of the provinces responded to the pandemic is absolutely necessary so we can learn and improve, and be far more resilient and prepared when — and not if — the next pandemic hits.

Importantly, this should only occur at the end of this pandemic to ensure all our current efforts are being focused to manage the pandemic.

— For the record: Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, tells the Star’s Tonda MacCharles that a rigorous, independent examination is in order.

The Reading Room

How did everywhere become Toronto and Vancouver? Answer: “The pandemic has left Canada housebound and surprisingly housing-crazed,” writes Maclean’s Jason Markusoff in a long read that explores how real estate wars have spread to towns across the Canada.

In The Logic, Murad Hemmadi considers what 3M’s new plant in Brockville signals about attempts to revive manufacturing in Canada.

Writing in the Montreal Gazette, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says there are a few problems with Section 159 of Quebec Premier François Legault’s Bill 96.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole sat with CBC Frontburner’s Jaime Poisson for an in-depth interview. You can catch Part 1 here.

And here’s the IEA’s net-zero by 2050 road map for the global energy sector. POLITICO’s Kelsey Tamborrino shares the highlights.

Pro Zone

— Justice minister says Charter statement on C-10 offers ‘framework,’ not legal opinion.
— U.S. Supreme Court orders more scrutiny of legal venues for climate lawsuits.
— Congress eyes hack reporting law after pipeline disruption.
— Biden wants to curb U.S. building emissions. An infrastructure deal could undermine that goal.

ON THE NOTICE PAPER

Spotted: Dr. Supriya Sharma, Health Canada’s chief medical adviser: Jabbed. … The PMO’s Alex Wellstead booting it. … Avi Lewis seeking the NDP nomination for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. The Globe’s Ian Bailey and Erika Ibrahim have a preview of the election battle to come there. … Toronto Mayor John Tory’s hair.

Birthdays: HBD to Conservative MP James Bezan. He’s 56 today. … Former Conservative finance minister Joe Oliver will be 81 and Conservative MP Andrew Scheer turns 42 on Thursday … On May 21, former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne will be 68. … On May 23, Conservative MP Ted Falk and Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant will be 61 … Senator Mike Duffy turns 75 on May 27, the same day British Columbia MLA Fin Donnelly will be 55.

Movers and shakers: “The most well-known Liberal in Alberta” is running to be Edmonton’s next mayor. Amarjeet Sohi is a former Liberal Cabinet minister and city councilor in Alberta’s capital. He told the Star he plans to be a bridge builder between Edmonton and Ottawa.

We’re also watching current mayor Don Iveson. So far, he’s not said what comes next when he leaves office after eight years. In conversation with POLITICO a bit earlier this year, Iveson told us he’ll be looking for another way to contribute. “I’ve learned too much about infrastructure and learned too much about governance and learned too much about housing that I will look for opportunities to use that experience and that privilege,” he said. (Translation: He’s almost certainly running.)

— Further reading: Earlier this month, the National Post’s Tyler Dawson wrote on the imminent departure of Iveson and fellow progressive Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who played guest host to Corridors a few weeks ago.

Media mentions: Allison Baker and Viviane Fairbank will spend the next year with The Walrus. Aaliyah Dasso is headed to the same newsroom as an editorial fellow. … Jordan Lim announced Monday that he’s leaving iPolitics to return to Toronto with more updates to come.

Send us your social notes: [email protected]

TRIVIA QUESTION

Last week first: Who sends tulip bulbs to Ottawa each year — and why? During the Second World War, Dutch Princess Juliana and her two daughters fled to Canada. A third daughter was born at Ottawa’s Civic Hospital in 1943. After the war, the princess sent thousands of tulip bulbs to the capital as a show of thanks. The gesture is now an annual tradition in which the Dutch Royal Family and the Netherlands send 10,000 bulbs to Canada’s capital.

Props to Michael Read, Alyson Fair (who notes where you can order bulbs now on display at Ottawa’s tulip festival), Arthur Drache, Pierre Morin, Fred Sagel, Ryan Billingham, Christopher Hyde and Paul Gillett.

This week’s question: Where is the halfway point on the Trans-Canada trail?

Send your answer to [email protected]

With thanks to Luiza Ch. Savage and editor John Yearwood.

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