There’s a missing ingredient as the political party leaders inevitably turn to their promises of affordability and putting more money in your pocket in one way or another.

It’s economic growth and its close relative, business investment. Without them, the tax revenues that pay for programs shrivel. Without them, the need for government to step in and ease the pain mounts.

Left wing, right wing, off the spectrum — it matters little. Housing, cleaner water and government-funded pharmacare are a lot easier to finance when the economy is growing above 2 per cent and companies are reinvesting their profits into Canadian workforces rather than sitting on them or sending them abroad. Affordability becomes a lot more affordable.

But right now, there’s an undeclared contest among the parties to see who can be the most anticorporate, and it was on full display during the opening gambits of the campaign.

The NDP, true to its soul, was the most overt, with leader Jagmeet Singh lashing out at Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Telecom, lobbyists, money launderers and corporate insiders in general. He makes no secret about corporations and the wealthy needing to pay more tax so that the federal government can expand social programs. It’s at the core of his platform.

“I believe we can do better for people like Nancy, Jack and Jessica, but we can do that only if we have the courage to take on the powerful interests at the very top,” Singh told supporters at his campaign launch in London, Ont., referring to a retired couple and a cancer survivor he had met.

The Conservatives and the Liberals are more subtle. The contest plays out in the subtext.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, like Singh, stresses he wants government to do what it can to help regular people make ends meet. Of course, the Conservatives take a different approach. Scheer proposes cutting taxes on home heating, parental leave and carbon emissions, as well as eliminating the $20-billion deficit as the best path to a more prosperous life.

“We will balance the budget, lower your taxes, and in so doing, make your life more affordable,” Scheer told supporters in Trois-Rivieres, Que.

What’s absent is the discussion about how the non-government part of the economy — the private sector — will carry us along, since the Conservative approach of lower taxes and deficit reduction implies lower revenue and tighter government spending.

And like Singh, Scheer has made a point of showing his disdain for using government money for the private sector, vowing with a vengeance to cut subsidies and corporate welfare.

As for the Liberals, Justin Trudeau’s opening words to the campaign were actually all about growth of many kinds…in the past. He ran off a list of greatest hits, taking credit for wage growth, employment growth, economic growth over the past four years.

Indeed, during his term in office, the federal government put a considerable effort into courting foreign investment, designing infrastructure funding to bring in private financing and target productivity-enhancing projects, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on enhancing “superclusters” of strategic economic importance. Securing market access to the United States and Mexico through a renegotiated NAFTA is also well worth pointing out.

“Whoever you are, you deserve a real plan for your future,” Trudeau said.

There’s lots more to be done, he emphasized. But with the toxicity of his engagements with SNC-Lavalin hanging like a black cloud over his election call, there was not a mention or glimpse of a vision of how a Liberal government would steer the country into a rapidly changing and even menacing economy lurking just around the corner.

The International Monetary Fund has projected its lowest global growth rate since the Great Recession. Central banks in almost every developed economy — Canada is an exception so far — have been cutting interest rates in anticipation of a slowdown, partly driven by a vicious trade war between the United States and China, and a protectionist rash spreading around the world.

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At the same time, huge multinational powerhouses such as Amazon and Google have been dominating markets around the world, changing the way we shop, work, invest and communicate. Couple that with the spread of artificial intelligence, as well as the global move towards a decarbonized economy, and the growing preponderance of precarious work, and you have a Canada that will soon operate very differently than it does right now.

Perhaps the first days of a campaign are not a strategically appropriate time to discuss ways to confront slow growth, a pending global slump, trade protectionism, unreliable investment patterns and Canadian businesses’ propensity to hoard. There are five weeks and several policy-heavy debates left.

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