For those Americans who have enjoyed their Thanksgiving turkey and college football, but just can’t digest Donald Trump, a message of hope from the Great White North: his days are numbered.
I say that because we have seen the same movie in Canada. For nearly 10 years, we had a leader who was neo-conservative, populist and authoritarian. The major difference between our two countries is that Canadians know how the movie ends, while many Americans are full of angst. They fear that the Orange One is not just an aberration, but the future. That turned out not to be true for ‘Harperism’ and it won’t be true for ‘Trumpism’ either.
The evidence is overwhelming that President Donald Trump is playing from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s doomed playbook.
On taxes, both leaders championed deep corporate tax-cuts, arguing that the benefits would trickle down to middle and lower-income families. That’s just shilling for the rich. All it did in Canada was allow corporations to hoard half a trillion dollars that they were too chicken-hearted or venal to invest, according to then Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney.
In Harperland, the corporate tax-rate was dropped to a rock-bottom 15 per cent. In Trumpland, it will go from 35 to 20 per cent if his new legislation passes. The only trickle down from these numbers in Canada was that the government voluntarily deprived the public coffers of staggering amounts of revenue, in return for the square root of bugger all—as the late great Rafe Mair would have put it.
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