, Kevin Yin writes.Kevin Yin is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail and an economics doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley.
Despite serious friction about the soundness of his policy decisions with two consecutive finance ministers, which culminated in Chrystia Freeland’s resignation on Monday, it does not seem that this possibility has occurred to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The GST holiday, like the home-heating-oil tax exemption before it, is poor policy and an obvious hail-mary attempt at resuscitating Mr. Trudeau’s political chances for the next election. Our economy does not suffer from lagging demand, and the tax break does not address the real issues in the Canadian economy, like productivity stagnation or the lagging investment. It runs contrary to Ms.
Whatever their individual failings might be, Ms. Freeland and Mr. Morneau had remarkable private sector careers, are highly educated, and have scores of policy experts around them. They are at least more qualified to consider the economic needs of the nation than Mr. Trudeau himself. That both have levied the same criticism of the Prime Minister’s fiscal policies from within his own government is a good indication that those policies were bad.