Liberals took up a progressive mantle when the NDP failed to project a vision of environmental and social justice – now it’s up to the public to bend them to their will

On Monday night many Canadians breathed out a sigh of relief. Then they breathed in a whiff of apprehension. The ousting of the Conservatives was a victory, a rejection of Stephen Harper’s politics of fear and racism. But Canadians now confront a Prime Minister gifted in the art of warm, fuzzy claptrap. They won’t be offered what they dreamed of: that was never an option in this election.

The election’s most revealing poll was scarcely reported by the media. Those voting against Harper – sixty to seventy percent of Canada, a progressive majority holding steady through his decade in power – were asked in late September what kind of change they desired. They answered overwhelmingly: not moderate but ambitious, not incremental but immediate. In other words, most people didn’t just want Harper out: they wanted plentiful jobs, a healthy environment, indeed a far more just and fair country.

The poll’s second finding was just as fascinating. The electorate had decided the best vehicle of change was not Thomas Mulcair but Justin Trudeau. This mandate was always the New Democratic Party’s to seize or abandon. They had risen to the top of polls by boldly opposing a draconian Conservative spying bill that the Liberals jointly supported. They crashed to third place by deserting that sort of vision.

With rising anger about obscene levels of inequality, what did the NDP propose? No tax hikes on the wealthy and a scant raise on corporations. As we lived through the hottest summer in recorded history – with freak climate-change fires in BC, floods in Alberta – what did Mulcair promise? That he would be a greener proponent of climate-torching pipelines. Mulcair modeled himself a cautious administrator of the economy – a slightly less boring version of Harper. The result was predictable: he turned off his base and failed to excite Canadians that would have rallied to his cause.

Into that vacuum stepped Trudeau chirpily, creating the perception that he was the progressive alternative. He pledged to tax the 1% and invest massively in transit, housing and renewable energy. The NDP’s slide in the polls started the exact moment they promised to balance the budget – a right-wing austerity fixation that economists the world over reject as reckless, and a pledge that made the NDP’s child-care and minimum wage promises seem suspect. The Liberals immediately promised to stimulate the economy with deficit spending. “Mulcair’s signed on with Harper’s budget” soon became Trudeau’s refrain. Suddenly the Liberals seemed like a people’s party.

But the Liberals have always been the other face of Canada’s corporate power: less mean and divisive, more skilled and savvy. Most of their signature policies give only the impression of progressivism: a tax hike for the very wealthy shuffles tax breaks to the next richest; infrastructure spending will transfer billions of public dollars to multinational companies chasing low-wages and privatization. They wage their war on the poorest not with spite but a smile. This absurd theatre reached its height when Trudeau trotted out Paul Martin – who as Liberal Finance Minister honed austerity economics – to criticize Mulcair for supposedly adopting the same line.

This cynical strategy – of talking left, then governing on the right – has paid off for the Liberals before. The last time the Liberals swept away a Conservative government and came to power in 1993, they did so waving the Red Book, an ambitious social policy plan. They proceeded to light it on fire. Their slashing of funding to healthcare and housing, unemployment insurance and women’s groups laid the foundation for the ruthless downsizing of the Harper era. But it wasn’t Harper who implemented the deepest cuts in Canadian history: it was the Liberals of the 1990s.

Nor should we have any illusions about the Liberals’ current climate plan. The campaign’s co-chair was a TransCanada lobbyist, the chief-of-staff an ex-lobbyist for BP. As the world looks to the UN negotiations in Paris for some ambition on emissions targets, Trudeau simply refused to set any. And what did he describe as “one of the most important infrastructure projects of our generation”? Not a renewable energy spree that would spawn hundreds of thousands of good jobs. Not high-speed rail lines to drive down car use and bind together the country. The Keystone XL pipeline. World-renowned climate scientist James Hansen argued that building it to fully exploit the Alberta tar sands would mean “game over” for the climate. Trudeau claimed instead that critics were “not scientific.”

This is the task for the millions in Canada who hunger for a different kind of country: force the Liberal government to turn their feigned progressivism into actual policy. It will not be easy, but nor is it impossible. Unlike the Conservatives, the Liberals are not unyielding: they bend in the winds of popular pressure. For a start, hold them to account where they have pledged to do good: rolling back Conservatives measures; ensuring that electoral reform means proportional representation; implementing an inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women and the UN declaration on rights of Indigenous peoples.

But we need to go further. Canada’s electoral politics have been captured by an ideological consensus that has lowered our political expectations and diminished our ability to dream. Major governmental policy has been ceded to the market. But a vision to build a better economy through climate action – launched during the election by a coalition of artists and social movements in the Leap Manifesto – can unleash our imagination once again. A new leader of the New Democrats – whom party members must demand, if Mulcair refuses to step aside – should bring this sort of vision into the party.

The eviction of Harper has liberated Canada of an authoritarian regime that ran its economy to the ground and its climate to breaking point – while muzzling its officials, smearing its critics, and criminalizing its opponents. The political terrain has shifted and opened. Taking advantage will require a profound renewal of popular movements and the NDP’s return to its progressive roots. Trudeau’s promise of bold change may have been a ruse. But Canadians now have a fighting chance.

On twitter: @Martin_Lukacs