Now that we’ve all had a chance to pick through the entrails of a fairly low-key federal budget, let’s ask the questions: What does it tell us about the next election? How do we place this budget within the evolving political landscape? What does this fiscal plan reveal about broader changes to our society and democracy?

Finally, how does this connect to what we believe to be the most fundamental political challenge of our age — the diminution of the middle class and the collapse of the ethic of progress? In a nutshell, Canadians (and Americans) no longer feel that upward mobility is the inevitable reward of effort and skill. There is pervasive sense that stagnation is turning to decline and that the future is very dark for the coming generations.

Apart from the glaring disconnect between public outlook on the economy and the cheerful economic narrative of the government, how can this rather unremarkable budget — politically workmanlike yet numbingly banal in terms of economic policy — shed light on these big-picture questions? What do major clawbacks to health coverage for retired public servants and reining in ‘out of control’ sick leave benefits for current public servants really tell us? Beyond outraged public service unions — now unified in an unprecedented common front — who else really cares? Will octogenarian federal pensioners really evoke much sympathy from an inattentive and hunkered-down citizenry?

The simple fact is that the agenda of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is no longer about an incremental, gradual shift away from a progressive state to a model of minimal government embodied by neo-conservative Reaganism or Thatcherism. The public may now see trickle-down economics as a cruel hoax — but it still seems to be the theory informing the current government’s approach to the economy.

Stephen Harper has led nothing less than a profound transformation of the federal government. The ratio of federal government revenue to GDP is now down to 14 per cent — the lowest level seen in over 50 years — and the current budget makes it clear that this is a work in progress. As Eugene Lang noted in a recent column in the Toronto Star, that same ratio stands at 19 per cent in the U.S. and 21 per cent in Australia. The drop has been dramatic and coupled with continued emphasis on the importance of fiscal discipline and dealing with government waste.

Is this emphasis on ratcheting back the role of the state mirroring shifts in public attitudes? Is it transforming Canadian core values?

Take a look at the chart below, which shows the positioning of various values and how they have changed over the past 15 years. It suggests Canadians’ values have stayed fairly stable, which should come as no surprise.

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The change we see happening seems to be in the realm of small-c conservative values. As the government has shifted right, the public has shifted away from conservative values. This is especially true of younger Canadians, who are less likely to vote than other citizens — a fact that goes a long way in explaining the paradox of a government and an electorate going in different directions.

Let’s consider one specific value — ‘statism’, a term coined by Seymour Martin Lipset to describe what he saw as one of the most important and enduring value differences between Canadians and Americans. Minimal government — clearly favoured by the Conservative party — is at the bottom of the tested values list. And the meagre emphasis on “minimal government” as a core value has declined further over the past 15 years.

In Europe and the United Kingdom, commentators have noted that while the younger generation is the most socially progressive, it is less collectivist and statist. It would appear this is not the case here, where younger citizens are much more likely to rate minimal government as a value lower today than they did in 1998 (those the under the age of 25 give “minimal government intrusions” a mean rating of 42, compared to 62 in 1998). At 42 on a scale to 100, this means that minimal government as a political value has virtually no relevance for younger Canadians. The only place it continues to resonate is in older, conservative Canada and the Langevin building.

We’ve updated our tracking on whether Canadians would prefer a larger government with higher taxes and more services or a smaller government with lower taxes and fewer services. The chart below shows an important trendline. Many have claimed that the recent political success of the right points to a ‘blueing’ of Canadian attitudes. The time series data, however, continue to show that Canadians are now less likely to prefer smaller government than they were in the past.

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They still want government to play a positive role; they want it to cost less, not retreat. This probably reflects the continuing belief that government is wasteful rather than any new belief that government is less important. Of course, ideology matters here — and attitudes seem to be polarizing. As we would expect, self-declared ‘conservatives’ are more supportive of cuts to taxes and government than ‘liberals’. However, there is no evidence of a fundamental shift in Canadian attitudes on the importance of government.

We also find significant variations in attitudes to taxation and role of government depending on age, gender and, to a lesser extent, region and locale. By far the biggest effects are linked to political ideology and party choice. These differences become clearest when we are talking about the issue of taxation as it connects to the size and role of the state. Conservatives clearly lean towards smaller government; support for reducing government is twice as high among them as it is among NDP and Liberal supporters. This parallels the similar (although deeper) ideological divide in the United States.

Let’s take another look at the question of smaller government versus more public investment. Here we see a very different result but the same trendline, with the number in favour of smaller government falling somewhat (which mirrors the pattern on the last indicator and the values change test).

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Once again, we see a very large gap between support for tax relief and lower deficits versus support for social investment. The concentration of support for smaller government in the unified Conservative base seems, at least, to electorally offset greater support for a more active state and trendlines showing increasing resistance to the lower government/lower taxes program.

One of the most important sources for the revenue Ottawa is using to balance the budget and bring in an election year surplus is clawbacks to public service benefits. Fair or not, targeting current and former public servants is politically effective — there’s not a lot of sympathy for the bureaucracy. In fact, this constitutes high ground for the government, particularly with their base. That political advantage may evaporate, however, given that the public tends to trust public servants far more than politicians.

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While trust in public servants is only moderately positive, trust in politicians is virtually extinct. In our most recent poll, trust in politicians dropped into single digits for the first time.

But there are some areas of push-back that don’t seem to be about simple self-interest. The number of Canadians who think the federal government’s priority should be improving pension benefits for everyone is more than double the number who want public service pensions clawed back.

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There are many voices out there — including the Government of Ontario — calling for increases to CPP premiums to guard against an affordability crisis for Canada’s rapidly aging workforce. The Conservatives have staked out an austerity position, arguing for holding premiums where they are. Although about a quarter of Canadians support this position, this minority is dwarfed by the large majority favouring increases to the plan. Once again, we see the familiar divide over whether government should be taking a larger or smaller role in economic and social investment — reflected in sharp differences among Conservative supporters and everyone else.

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We see a similar divide on the question of whether recent efforts at austerity are necessary or damaging. While a slight majority are offside with the austerity position, the 40 points lined up with the government look really attractive compared to their current position in the polls. The austerity position is favoured by the majority of the Conservatives’ available constituency and ‘stop the gravy train’ politics remains a powerful hook for candidates on the right. At a time when the government’s cheerful economic narrative is ringing hollow with most Canadians, a campaign focused on the bogeyman of federal waste and abuse seems more plausible.

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Virtually everyone agrees that a top goal for the country right now should be to kick-start the moribund middle class. This will be a defining issue for the 41st election and an area where we can expect vivid differences between platforms. We believe that the issue of the role of the federal government in planning and delivering solutions to middle class angst will be critical to winning the next election. But beyond the consensus — that we need a new blueprint for growth — there is considerable disagreement about what that plan should look like and who should shape and execute it.

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We can see that most Canadians favour a plan with a number of authors — but prefer to see government leading the attack. Of course, how you see that labour being divided depends very much on which party you support. Conservatives see the private sector as best-equipped to lead the blueprint. Supporters of other parties want to see government in the driver’s seat. For Liberal supporters, government is the clear choice to lead — even more so than among NDP supporters. NDP supporters see a relatively trivial role for the private sector, while the Liberals see the private sector having a much more important — albeit subordinate — role.

All of which gives you some pretty broad hints about how the three major parties can be expected to frame the argument in 2015.

Frank Graves is the founder and president of EKOS Research Associates, Ltd.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

Methodology

This study was conducted using EKOS’ unique, hybrid online/telephone research panel, Probit. The panel offers exhaustive coverage of the Canadian population (i.e., Internet, phone, cell phone), random recruitment (in other words, participants are recruited randomly, they do not opt themselves into our panel), and equal probability sampling. All respondents to the panel are recruited by telephone using random digit dialling and are confirmed by live interviewers. Unlike opt-in online panels, Probit supports margin-of-error estimates.

The field dates for this survey are January 22-27, 2014. In total, 1,501 Canadians aged 18 and over responded to the survey. Of these, 1,277 were collected online, while 224 were collected by computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI). The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, education). All the data have been statistically weighted by age, gender, region, and educational attainment to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data.