Former MLA Shannon Phillips presents context to current political climate

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on February 21, 2025.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs hosted former Lethbridge West MLA Shannon Phillips to give a presentation on “With the threat of US trade tariffs, are Canada’s political leaders responding effectively?”
More than 70 people gathered at the Senior Citizens Organization on Thursday afternoon to listen to Phillips, who is now a partner in a firm that gives public policy advice to a variety of clients in the private sector, charitable, nonprofit sector, unions and Indigenous people.
“We provide context for folks to understand what is happening within our current political environment on any given day and these days it changes on any given day,” said Phillips.
 She said during her presentation that she wanted to provide an overview of where the government of Canada is at right now by providing political context and information on what Canadians can expect from tariffs and economic effects.
 “Inflation has given rise to affordability and what we referred to as social disorder concerns, poverty, homelessness, mental health and addictions. Those kinds of issues are animating the electorate across Canada,” said Phillips.  
She added that is it within those contexts that incumbent governments have been significantly challenged. And certainly, it accounts for at least part of the historic drop in the polls for the Liberal Party of Canada and their fortunes, but not entirely.
“Even though the fiscal picture is tightening for industrialized countries around the world and things are getting a lot more unstable. The demand side function in the economy remains very, very strong,” said Phillips.
She added that there remains a lot of demands from the electorate around housing, health, and defence certainly is becoming more of a salient issue in Canadian politics, meeting that NATO defence spending target.  
“Which everybody talks about as if that money is just going to magically fall from the sky. I can assure you that a $20 billion annual commitment is a very, very large commitment and there are trade-offs in making budgets,” said Phillips.  
She said that for context, the early learning and childcare investments that is bringing childcare availability down to $15 per day, is an $8 million investment.  
“What kind of scale we’re talking about when politicians bust out with Oh yeah, no problem, the 2 per cent. It is going to be a problem; it will involve trade-offs. I’m not saying that those trade-offs are not worth it in the current security environment, but they are nevertheless there,” said Phillips.  
She said there are deep effects on what they like to call transactionalism, which it is essentially Trumpism. Authoritarianism that proceeds along a different track than the usual expected rule of law.  
“There’s a transactionalism that pervades politics, even getting your exemptions for trade or for tariffs. Essentially returns us to the early 20th century in Canada,” said Phillips. “Where it was the competing captains of industry coming out of Ontario, Quebec and Winnipeg that would go in to make their case under the national policy that they should have an exemption to the tariffs.”
She said that returning to that world is not great for democracy. Phillips shared a graph with the audience she said showed what American president Donald Trump is doing to scramble Canadian politics.
 Phillips explained that the departure of Justin Trudeau has completely scrambled the current political environment, which is now having multiple possible scenarios. Which includes a Conservative Party of Canada majority, but that requires a significant pivot and Quebec is a big factor.
 Another pathway that Phillips mentioned is a CPC minority with Bloc Quebecois holding balance of power and would be unclear if they could hold government. Another is a Liberal Party of Canada minority, but with less emphasis on Ne Democratic Party cooperation, or what she believes to be the least possible scenario, a majority Liberal Party government.

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