The pandemic has exposed serious social and economic challenges that conservatives should be ready to address, and presents an opportunity to offer a relevant and expanded social conservative agenda.
I alignment is an underappreciated problem in this area. If you look at child care or housing, you need 3 levels of government (feds, provinces, cities) to work together to bring a lot of the changes to life. Each level has different reasons for why they may want to participate or not. Sometimes the reasons are political (e.g. no one level wants to unilaterally deal with the tent cities because of the risk involved) and sometimes it is economical/practical (e.g. the housing plan proposed by the Feds/Province doesn't align with a municipalities planning).
For a lot of issues, the cities seem to be the level that really blocks up process. Not intentionally, but because of the extensive bureaucracy and red tape that they have grown over decades.
In my opinion the Feds and, especially, the Provinces (who can actually have statutory authority over cities) need to lean on them to get things done. A national child-care plan cannot be created if it takes 3-4 years to obtain permits/zoning for those services to actually appear in neighbourhoods. Likewise with affordable housing. Feds and Province can throw as much money as they want at the problem, unless zoning reform takes place there is little hope for affordable housing in major cities.
Someone who isn't afraid of taking some political flak needs to win a strong mandate and impose their will on the political levels below them. It's the only conceivable way of resolving this alignment issue.
Thanks for writing this. Regarding the polling on child care, there are some recent numbers by think tank Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute you might find interesting. 67% of parents of a child under 6 years old would prefer to stay home with that child full-time until the child reaches school-age. You can see more here: https://angusreid.org/child-care-in-canada/
I have been waiting for this kind of thinking to emerge in Canada. It reflects the deep understanding of conservatism that ran through all of Sir Roger Scruton’s works.
Economies that depend on increasing birth rates are pyramid schemes and increasing birth rates ignore resource constraints. For a first principle guy you miss the mark. Simple solution devoid of ideology is no tax for mothers or their spouses. Bet you don’t hear that from your battle hymn composers. But I wager they have thought of it already, and ruled against it.
With regard to affordable and abundant housing, would tacking on more complicated development rules really be the solution? Wouldn't simply liberalizing zoning entirely be a better long-term play since if there is a demand for more family housing (especially in the "missing middle" category), you would expect to prop up "naturally"? Even better, if combined with a Singapore-style housing program.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention where I got these ideas from:
Great piece. Echos our discussion last week.
I alignment is an underappreciated problem in this area. If you look at child care or housing, you need 3 levels of government (feds, provinces, cities) to work together to bring a lot of the changes to life. Each level has different reasons for why they may want to participate or not. Sometimes the reasons are political (e.g. no one level wants to unilaterally deal with the tent cities because of the risk involved) and sometimes it is economical/practical (e.g. the housing plan proposed by the Feds/Province doesn't align with a municipalities planning).
For a lot of issues, the cities seem to be the level that really blocks up process. Not intentionally, but because of the extensive bureaucracy and red tape that they have grown over decades.
In my opinion the Feds and, especially, the Provinces (who can actually have statutory authority over cities) need to lean on them to get things done. A national child-care plan cannot be created if it takes 3-4 years to obtain permits/zoning for those services to actually appear in neighbourhoods. Likewise with affordable housing. Feds and Province can throw as much money as they want at the problem, unless zoning reform takes place there is little hope for affordable housing in major cities.
Someone who isn't afraid of taking some political flak needs to win a strong mandate and impose their will on the political levels below them. It's the only conceivable way of resolving this alignment issue.
Thanks for writing this. Regarding the polling on child care, there are some recent numbers by think tank Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute you might find interesting. 67% of parents of a child under 6 years old would prefer to stay home with that child full-time until the child reaches school-age. You can see more here: https://angusreid.org/child-care-in-canada/
I have been waiting for this kind of thinking to emerge in Canada. It reflects the deep understanding of conservatism that ran through all of Sir Roger Scruton’s works.
Economies that depend on increasing birth rates are pyramid schemes and increasing birth rates ignore resource constraints. For a first principle guy you miss the mark. Simple solution devoid of ideology is no tax for mothers or their spouses. Bet you don’t hear that from your battle hymn composers. But I wager they have thought of it already, and ruled against it.
With regard to affordable and abundant housing, would tacking on more complicated development rules really be the solution? Wouldn't simply liberalizing zoning entirely be a better long-term play since if there is a demand for more family housing (especially in the "missing middle" category), you would expect to prop up "naturally"? Even better, if combined with a Singapore-style housing program.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention where I got these ideas from:
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/housing-and-wealth-building
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/a-singapore-plan-for-public-housing