Terence Corcoran: Pierre Poilievre’s not-so-free trade ideas

Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to news media outside the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa

Now that Pierre Poilievre is leader of Canada’s Conservative party, voters can begin seriously assessing the man and his policies, especially those associated with a concept that has dominated his public career for decades. It is reported that in 1999, as a 20-year-old finalist in an essay contest titled “As Prime Minister I Would …”, Poilievre set his top priority for the role he now seeks. “The most important guardian of our living standards is freedom. As prime minister I would relinquish to citizens as much of my social, political, and economic control as possible, leaving people to cultivate their own personal prosperity and to govern their own affairs as directly as possible.”

The new Conservative leader ended his acceptance speech last Saturday with words consistent with his 1999 views as he pledged to uphold a “heritage of freedom” once outlined by former Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker. He has also cited former Liberal prime minister Wilfrid Laurier, who said, “Canada is free and freedom is its nationality.”

For those of us who plow the thinly-populated fields in the remote libertarian precincts of Canadian ideology, the focus on individual freedom is a welcome starting principle for a prospective Conservative government. In much of his scripted rhetoric, and in his self-portrayal as an individual whose personal life is a demonstration of Canada as a land where anyone can rise above race, ethnicity and personal circumstance, Poilievre seems dedicated to the fundamental principles of economic and personal freedom.

In Poilievre’s application of freedom principles to economic policy, however, a few gaps appeared in his Saturday acceptance speech.

Appropriately, he said a Conservative government would “cap spending and cut waste” and reverse inflationary deficits and taxes, including “axing” the Liberals’ carbon tax and other new taxes on paycheques, gas, heat and other essentials.

In one section of his speech, Poilievre seemed to be referencing a classic free-market theory, which is that growth and prosperity are a function of production and supply, rather than demand created by more money and spending. According to the theory, “Production comes first, and demand follows the wealth created from production.”

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In Poilievre’s example, he asked his audience to imagine $10 in cash and 10 loaves of bread. Doubling the cash raises the price of each loaf to $2, but it does not produce more bread. “Instead of doubling the money, let’s double the bread,” he said. Then he carried the message forward by advocating for policies to “build more homes, grow more food and produce more energy right here in Canada.” To do that, he said, we need to remove “government gatekeepers” from the economy.

At this point, however, Poilievre seemed to lose the free market aspect of his freedom model. To get more homes built, he plans to move in with the same big government methods he criticized. “The Poilievre government will require big cities that want federal infrastructure money to speed up and lower the cost of permits — and to approve affordable housing around all transit stations so that our young people can live there and don’t need to afford a car.”

Another housing supply method would be to sell off “under-utilized federal buildings and turn them into housing and use the proceeds of the sales to reduce our deficits.” While this is good political rhetoric, it does act as an extension of the gate-keeperism Poilievre opposes. The gatekeepers will attempt to determine how under-utilized government assets are used, rather than just sell them off into the market.

On trade policy, Poilievre moved further off track. “We must make stuff here at home, here in Canada.” Trade, he said, is “just great, but we’ve learned … during COVID that we can’t count on the rest of the world to take care of us.” Therefore, Canada needs to stop importing oil from “dictators” and instead become oil self-sufficient within five years. But if it is cheaper to import oil into Eastern Canada than lay pipeline from the West, the plan makes no free-market sense.

On food, Canada should begin “repatriating food production by standing with our farmers here at home.” At this point, Poilievre is flirting with supply management. Poilievre said his government would repeal taxes and Trudeau’s fertilizer mandates “to get out of the way and off the backs of our farmers so we can grow affordable food, feed our people and be the bread basket of the world.”

With these trade policies Poilievre seems to be wandering off the economic freedom trail and into managed trade. Under the free-market model, trade takes place outside the control of government and beyond the gatekeepers who have ideas on how, when and where imports and exports cross borders. By calling for greater domestic production of food, Poilievre is pandering to food production nationalists who see imports as an economic negative.

Under free market principles, imports — of food, energy, or any other product or commodity — are the prime benefit of trade, the reason for doing it. The free market objective of trade and exports is to get access to imports, the stuff we don’t have in Canada (oranges and bananas and lower-cost oil).

Those of us in the remote regions of Canadian free markets await clearer and consistent policies from the new Conservative leader of Canadian freedom.