Alright, fam.  You know the drill.  It’s a federal election, so between now and September 20^th, I’ll be looking at various party manifestos to see what they portend for our sector, and then finishing up with some comparative analysis.  I am not entirely sure how many parties I will do: I never do the Bloc for obvious reasons, so that leaves three and *maybe* a fourth if the Greens get their act together to release any policies and stop behaving like a circular firing squad (fwiw, my guess is they are going to just re-release their 2019 platform, which I excoriated for its extreme mindlessness back here).  We’ll see.

Let’s start with the Conservative Party, which surprised everyone a couple of weeks ago when, on day 2 of the campaign, it released a dense 160-page manifesto which was by far the most detailed Conservative policy document since the Stanfield era.  The document seeks to position Conservative leader Erin O’Toole in two ways: first, as bit of a policy wonk committed to an activist government, and second, as something of a one-nation Tory taking stands that will be seen favourably as pro-working class.  Hence, we see a lot of stuff about retaining or re-building manufacturing in Canada, better protection and for gig-workers, etc.  This is almost nothing like the manifesto we saw last election from Andrew Scheer: it is very definitely meant to project a softer, less fire-breathing, arguably less values-focused Conservative Party.

The Conservatives put a lot of emphasis on jobs: securing jobs, making more “good jobs”, creating “a million new jobs”, etc.  But if you’re looking for an over-riding philosophy of how jobs are created and sustained, there isn’t really a “there” there.  The manifesto contains a mix of investment incentives for small businesses (mainly tax credits), some large dollops of government spending (a promise to pay 50% of the salary of any new worker after the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy expires this fall, some incredibly vague promises on infrastructure spending), a ritual bow to more international trade, but only with “free nations” (some nonsensical crap about what amounts to a white anglophone free-trade zone that Boris Johnson will love but which the New Zealanders will mostly find ludicrous), plus a grab-bag of sectoral stuff – Hydrogen!  Carbon Capture!  Critical Minerals!  Small Craft Harbours! (really) – none of which really rise to the level of a coherent strategy.   At best, it’s “use power to give the private sector public money and get out of the way”.  There is very little sense of a unified theory of how knowledge, skills and capital combine to create thriving economies.

Now, that doesn’t mean the manifesto ignores knowledge and skills.  The main offer on the skills side is a $250 million/year for a Canada Job Training Fund which will “provide grants to employers, unions, post-secondary institutions and community organizations for projects which i) give laid-off workers access to training, ii) reach out to traditionally under-represented groups, iii) support small business and iv) focus on areas where there are shortages of skilled workers. I would argue that outside of IT, the last two are largely mutually exclusive, so this promise is probably going to end up supporting a lot of coding boot-camps.  There’s also a vague promise about supporting non-profit organizations which support training for women in the skilled trades and a very specific promise to create a Working Canadian Training Loan of up to $10,000 for people who want to upgrade their skills.  As a set of promises, it isn’t nothing, but it’s not very big, either.  And the training loan is a bit weird since Canada Student Loans (CSL) already does this: one gets the impression that what the Tories really want is a set-aside within the CSL program with less rigorous income-testing for older workers.  This would be interesting to see in action because at least officially the Ministry believes that an age differentiation wouldn’t survive a charter challenge. 

On innovation, the Conservative party platform basically has three prongs.  The first is to speed up approvals for Health Tech innovation (good, although you still need risk-averse provincial health systems to buy any new products for this to make a difference to health tech companies).  The second is a complicated plan to smash up and re-build the existing set of programs run by ISED, a mixture of ideas that are good, (reworking the scientific research and experimental development tax credit to make it less of a boondoggle), indifferent (“reviewing all innovation programs”, which the Liberals did three years ago) and unworkably nationalistic (“require that all recipients [of ISED funding] demonstrate that intellectual property, production, ownership and profits are likely to stay in Canada”).   

But the third prong is, God help us, a Canadian DARPA.  That is, a five-year $5 billion commitment to create a “Canada Advanced Research Agency” to be headquartered in Calgary, because reasons, aimed at making major advances in i) hydrogen technology, ii) small modular nuclear reactors, iii) private sector space innovation iv) electric vehicle and battery development and v) pharmaceutical research.  I mean, y’all know what I think of DARPA (but see here and here if you don’t): it’s a solution looking for a problem.  I think the best spin you can put on this is that the Conservatives know they have to look interested in science and technology in order to be credible on the economy, and this is the flashiest way they could think of the demonstrate such an interest.  But it’s not even clear from the Tory platform what the innovation mechanism is: “invest” how?  “invest” in what/who?  Under what conditions? 

Universities and colleges don’t get much of a direct look-in in the manifesto.  There’s a plan to create a dedicated budgetary envelope worth $30 million/year for minority francophone post-secondary institutions such as Moncton, l’Université de l’Ontario français, etc. (Laurentian and Ottawa are not mentioned, the first because of institutional difficulties and the second because presumably they may want to exclude Ottawa from the framework, since it would be very difficult to come up with a formula in which U of O doesn’t take 50%+ of the money).  There’s also a promise to “end bias” against western Canadian institutions to ensure they get their “fair share” of money from university research programs, something vague about Veterans educational benefits, and of course the now-ritual stuff about campus free-speech (a hold-over from the previous manifesto, though as before it’s hard to see what a federal promise on this would do when over half the system is covered by provincial free-speech policies). 

And on students, there is exactly nothing.  This seems like a very weird blindspot to me.  The platform makes a decent pitch to young people on issues of worker protection in gig companies, and on housing. But for their education?  Bupkis.  A missed opportunity, I think.

Overall, it’s hard to call this a bad platform.  There is demonstrated interest in the right kinds of things, even if the specifics are often goofy.  It is a whole lot better than their 2019 Manifesto.  To my mind what’s missing is a clear understanding about how knowledge and skills drive economic growth.  Their growth policies are all phrased in terms of handing out money and tax credits; and while they have policies on skills and innovation, these seem not to be connected with the growth agenda.  It’s like they are three separate things rather than one integrated whole.  The Tories are hardly alone in this, but it’s disappointing, nonetheless.