Juno News - Does family have a place in politics？

00:00:00.000 Very pleased to be sitting down right now with Jenny Roth, who is a partner at Crestview Strategies, also one of the preeminent conservative commentators of the era.

00:00:17.840 You see her work all over, including in The Hub, you see her on TV panels, and we are pleased she is gracing us with her presence today.

00:00:24.920 Jenny, good to talk to you. Thanks for sitting down.

00:00:26.860 Very nice to be here.

00:00:27.660 So I wanted to talk to you as someone who has written about some pretty complex and sometimes controversial issues, but someone who's also worked very much in mainstream politics about how we navigate what is often seen as a third rail, which is family policy, and there are a lot of places to go within that in the current political context.

00:00:46.440 And I'll ask you first off, what a conservative policy on family would look like that you would champion that would also be viable within the political confines we have today?

00:00:57.660 Sure, yeah. Look, there's no question. Regular people get a little bit nervous when you start talking about family because it feels like something that's kind of private.

00:01:04.680 It's people's own personal decision. And ultimately, if you, like me, believe that we should err in the direction of sort of freedom and letting people choose things for themselves and not imposing things from on high, then you have to be thoughtful about family policy.

00:01:18.960 Look, I think there's cultural things conservatives can do, like make the argument for families, make the argument for a culture that supports families.

00:01:26.760 But that's a little bit high minded. There are also practical things we can do.

00:01:29.880 So at the federal level, the liberals are doing their own family policy. And I think it's bad. I think their childcare, very, very one size fits all. It has to be between nine and five. There's a massive shortage of supply. So there are all these subsidized spaces, not enough supply to actually give, give families spots in most neighborhoods.

00:01:51.900 It's just not going to satisfy people in the long run. But, you know, the Harper era subsidizing people and giving them checks if they have kids, which, you know, to Trudeau's credit, he actually, first he leaned into that policy.

00:02:07.320 Then he went with this one size fits all childcare. I think if we can go back to that, this idea that money follows the family and that you're not, not certainly that you're not penalized for having kids.

00:02:18.480 And there are some penalties that we should remove, but also that you're encouraged to and you're going to be supported if you do, because it's hard. And especially in the cost of living crisis, it's, it's especially hard.

00:02:28.040 So there are a couple of things I think we do other levels as well.

00:02:31.140 So to go back to some of those Harper policies, I mean, the one that comes to mind immediately is the child fitness tax credit.

00:02:36.920 That's a very family oriented policy. It makes things easier for families.

00:02:40.840 Income splitting, which was a bit more contentious than the Harper government. That's, again, an issue that makes things easy.

00:02:45.360 But these, a lot of the problems with these issues is that they don't actually go to the core of, of building families.

00:02:49.860 They certainly don't encourage people to have families. And, you know, on one hand, the idea of government centrally planning family just terrifies me as much as government centrally planning anything else.

00:02:59.080 But on the other hand, we do have a problem. I mean, we do have a birth rate issue in Canada.

00:03:02.820 And I don't think there's been a time that I can recall a Canadian politician talking about it, but it is a factor there.

00:03:08.660 So what role should government have, if any, in correcting that?

00:03:12.340 And if so, what's the mechanism you can get there that doesn't necessarily look like government trying to, you know, go around and manage people's family compositions?

00:03:21.240 Sure. Well, I actually think income splitting does, could make a huge difference.

00:03:25.520 And the reason I think income splitting is powerful is because it tells families, we're going to tax you as a family unit, not as individuals.

00:03:33.540 And I don't know about other people, I find when I go to file my taxes, it's weird to file taxes as an individual.

00:03:38.300 That's not how we run our household. We run our household as a family, and we should be kind of taxed that way.

00:03:42.380 And if there's a way you can structure your family because one of you wants to stay home part-time or full-time, and that means someone has a disproportionately lower income,

00:03:50.200 being able to not be penalized for that effectively and making that choice just a little bit easier for people, I think could actually be pretty powerful,

00:03:58.160 not just for the literal political outcome or policy outcome, but because of the cultural message it sends, which is as a government, as a country, we value families.

00:04:07.900 I think that you see hungry experimenting with, I think it's like after a certain number of kids, it's either four or five or something, they just pay no income tax.

00:04:16.860 That I think is meaningful, right? You may choose to have four kids just because if the government's going to make it that easy for me, maybe it's worth doing.

00:04:25.300 And I wonder if if you were to do things like that, it would have trickle-down cultural impacts so that you'd end up being in environments that are more kid-friendly.

00:04:32.080 It wouldn't be so weird if your kid's crying on a plane. The idea you apologize if your kid's crying, what kind of society is that?

00:04:37.900 Yeah, and there's also, I don't want to put the blame squarely on government here, even predominantly on government, because there's a tremendous cultural and societal problem.

00:04:45.580 I mean, you certainly don't have big role models and popular culture figures that are speaking up and bolstering the idea of family.

00:04:52.340 If anything, it goes the other way. You get, you know, Meghan Markle does an interview or something and talks about how children are terrible for climate.

00:04:58.560 So you do see these cultural forces that try to discourage and disincentivize.

00:05:04.000 And that's, I guess, the big problem is that you don't have anyone that's really leading the charge and saying families are important.

00:05:10.020 And historically, that's been the domain of, I'd say, a subset of the political class that's often not really all that mainstream.

00:05:17.200 That's right. And, you know, when you think about the subtle influences that culture has, there is a role for public policy to play in that.

00:05:23.060 I think about schools and curriculum. You know, our kids are spending hours and hours, you know, the huge portion of their day in schools being taught curriculum by teachers.

00:05:32.060 And today, I think they're being taught, you know, climate change is threatening the planet.

00:05:36.080 And if you have kids, you're contributing to that. And so just letting parents choose what schools their kids go to and therefore what curriculum they consume.

00:05:44.660 I mean, I'm from Ontario. We don't have that option.

00:05:46.880 In Alberta, at least, if you're a parent who wants your kids to be exposed to the kind of values that would support family formation, you can choose to do that.

00:05:53.460 You can send them to a classical school. You can avail yourself of school choice.

00:05:56.260 We don't have that option in Ontario and a number of other provinces across Canada.

00:06:00.120 And I think that could make a big difference.

00:06:01.340 I don't want to do like the safe, safe, conservative leader thing of making everything about the economy.

00:06:05.440 But I also do think that economic policy can be and often is family policy.

00:06:09.840 Like if you're looking at inflation, cost of living, all of these things, that is a very real consideration.

00:06:15.200 If you've got a family with two kids that's struggling to put food on the table as it is, the incentive to have a third kid is just not there.

00:06:21.580 Absolutely not. Yeah.

00:06:22.740 Look, the birth rates crowd would resist that argument a little bit because a lot of the research they do says that people fundamentally, it's not about economics, it's about culture.

00:06:32.220 Having said that, I think economics impacts culture.

00:06:34.220 It does. It does.

00:06:34.840 And so, you know, Pierre Pagliot spoke earlier today and he said, I can't remember what the percentage was, but there's a huge, terrifying percentage of young people who've just given up completely on being able to have a home, a house.

00:06:46.220 A house and maybe therefore a home, right?

00:06:48.080 And if you are psychologically accepting that you will never be able to afford a house, at what point do you say, well, I'm probably not going to be able to have time to have kids?

00:06:57.640 Which means like, is there really a point in getting married?

00:07:00.160 Is there really a point in dating and having serious relationships?

00:07:03.480 Like, I think that has a really corrosive impact on even the really early stage choices you make around potentially having a family.

00:07:10.020 And it concerns me that today we don't even know yet, I think, what Gen Z is going to do when it comes to childbearing.

00:07:16.180 Yeah.

00:07:16.780 And I think we could see birth rates plummet even more.

00:07:19.320 Well, and Paulie has joked about it, but there's a serious point here.

00:07:22.400 I mean, if you're 25 and living with your parents, your dating life is probably going to be a bit cramped.

00:07:27.460 I mean, I would love to have been able to blame my dating issues on that when I was single, but I had myself to blame.

00:07:32.600 But there is a real thing about if you're delaying your entry into adulthood in a way, you're delaying everything else.

00:07:39.740 And then at a certain point when you might be married and have a house and have a career, oh, you're 35.

00:07:44.160 And sure, you can have kids at that age, but it's a much different calculation internally than if you're there 10 years earlier.

00:07:49.820 That's right.

00:07:50.260 If you're a woman in her late 20s and you're trying to date and you're dating pool, these men are living in their mom's basements.

00:07:56.160 And who can blame them?

00:07:57.240 They can't afford to live anywhere else.

00:07:59.540 That's not conducive to the kind of becoming an adult, going through those life stages, dating, successfully getting married.

00:08:07.020 That would then go on to, and to your point about this sort of fertility window question, it's awkward, I think, for people to talk about.

00:08:13.340 But I think culturally we cover that up a little bit too much.

00:08:15.880 You know, if you go to a doctor's office as a woman, you know, they'll bend over backwards to tell you how to avoid getting pregnant. 1.00

00:08:21.240 Right.

00:08:21.420 And that's fine for many women in many situations. 1.00

00:08:23.800 I'm not saying that shouldn't be the case.

00:08:25.800 But there's almost no education you get as a woman about how to get pregnant. 0.99

00:08:30.860 God forbid, you know.

00:08:32.300 And then a lot of women find themselves at 35 sort of, you know, maybe grateful they're able to have one child or in unfortunate situations really wishing that they'd been able to start earlier.

00:08:42.680 So, you worked with Pierre Polyev in his leadership campaign as his director of communications.

00:08:47.240 He's certainly been unafraid to tackle some bigger issues.

00:08:50.100 I've not heard him go down the birth rate road.

00:08:51.960 But I'm curious, do you think, to put on your pundit hat here for a moment, is he capable of having that conversation?

00:08:59.480 And it's not even just a him question.

00:09:01.960 Is Canada capable of having a politician talk about this?

00:09:04.800 So, it was interesting.

00:09:06.200 In his speech today, you know, I think he's very careful to stick to the big, tough problems for which there are solutions, right?

00:09:14.740 And for which he can, if he were to win and become prime minister, he can kind of work his way through solving some of the basic problems.

00:09:21.420 Because I think he has some faith that if we, I mean, take crime, right?

00:09:24.860 We talked about housing.

00:09:25.560 We talked about the economy.

00:09:27.000 Well, there's a family policy for you right there.

00:09:28.720 Imagine if you could, I live in a neighborhood with lots of families, and they're frankly up in arms because we have a so-called safe injection, I don't think it should be called that, a consumption site in our neighborhood.

00:09:38.960 And kids are picking up fentanyl patches in the playground.

00:09:42.420 So, I think his view is if we can get some of those basic things right, everything else will kind of work itself out.

00:09:48.800 And I think he's careful to be consistent in being that kind of conservative.

00:09:52.120 And I think he knows that if he gets sort of too prescriptive about, and it's because I want people to have more kids or because I want to have some sort of top-down solution that's going to drive family formation, that's going to narrow his appeal.

00:10:05.020 And that's not what he wants.

00:10:06.000 He wants to be able to win the kind of mandate where he can actually make a difference in people's lives.

00:10:09.640 And I think that's wise, right?

00:10:11.400 Honestly, it's why I'm glad that CSFN has this and why True North exists, right?

00:10:16.600 Why we have all these players in the movement so that we can have some of the conversations that maybe are appeal to a narrower group of people and start to drive some public demand.

00:10:25.060 Like, what I would really love to see is if in a few years we can tell a story to the public where they go, yeah, actually, I'm concerned about birth rates, and there starts to be that demand, then politicians can respond and meet that demand with solutions.

00:10:37.400 Yeah, it's that old downstream of culture attitude, right?

00:10:39.860 And so let's let, you know, Polyam should let us impact culture.

00:10:43.300 You and me, Andrew, we'll do it.

00:10:44.320 Just the two of us.

00:10:44.760 All right.

00:10:44.900 And then he should tackle politics.

00:10:47.640 All right.

00:10:48.000 Yeah.

00:10:48.200 And that's the thing.

00:10:48.840 A lot of people will look to politicians.

00:10:50.300 I don't want to let politicians off the hook entirely, but a lot of people will look to them and say, why aren't you doing this?

00:10:54.300 And, you know, they can turn back and say, well, why aren't you doing it?

00:10:56.220 That's right.

00:10:56.420 Why don't you prove there's some support for this?

00:10:58.060 And then I can go there.

00:10:59.240 So, all right.

00:11:00.040 Well, glad you're not afraid to take this on.

00:11:02.200 Jenny Roth, always good to talk to you.

00:11:03.760 You too, Andrew.

00:11:04.620 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:11:06.540 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:11:14.900 Hmm.

00:11:18.200 Oh, God.

00:11:19.820 Oh, God.

00:11:20.340 Oh, God.

00:11:20.440 Oh, God.

00:11:20.960 Oh, God.

00:11:21.500 Oh, God.

00:11:21.880 Oh, God.

00:11:22.580 Oh, God.

00:11:23.500 Oh.

Juno News - May 11, 2024

Does family have a place in politics？

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