Will the new Trudeau Liberals be the old Progressive Conservatives?

[Joe Shlabotnik]

".....In essence, the formula is this: The Liberals should stick with the Mulroney/Chretien/Harper economic consensus. Caricaturing only a little bit, it amounts to the strange idea that whatever is in the short-term interests of global investment markets must also be in the best long-term interests of Canadians.

Forget the market crisis of 2008 that plunged the world into economic turmoil. Forget the inequality and insecurity that is gutting the middle classes. Forget the fact that climate change, building slowly but inexorably, is on a completely different time scale from that of the executive pay and bonuses which are the embodiment of short-term economic thinking."

"......A Liberalism shorn of its willingness to use the apparatus of the state actually dodges two of the greatest challenges we have in Canada today: inequality and climate change, both of which will require a revival of the willingness of governments to act even in the face of contrary winds from the marketplace.

This flavour of Liberalism may constitute an electoral strategy, one that might help the Liberals survive another election by finding a niche among voters. But it is not a progressive economic or environmental plan for a future government."

More at: http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/01/20/will-the-new-trudeau-liberals-be-the-old-progressive-conservatives/