Shifra 🇨🇦 retweetledi
Avi Lewis sounds like a left Poilievre, opposing the government for opposition’s sake and proposing half-cocked ideas completely out of touch with the domestic situation. It’s not a good look. Good progressive policy challenges the status quo in a detail-oriented, informed manner. It doesn’t posture about how 2026 Canada should be like 1990s Norway in terms of tax collection, while also completely opposing Norwegian industrial policy from the period, which is at the heart of how Norway grew and fully capitalized on their energy sector in order to create the revenues the state could then tax to fund the Oil Fund.
We are not Norway. Our energy sector is not as well-developed as theirs was, and we cannot take advantage of the Hormuz crisis the way Norway capitalized on the Gulf War shock when they started the fund because we do not have the pipelines and infrastructure to get our resources to the people who want to buy it. Lewis openly opposes building that infrastructure but also wants to apply a windfall tax on the revenues our companies are structurally restricted from growing, which is performative bullshit at best, delusional magical thinking at worst.
We also can’t handwave about “invest[ing] in projects that benefit Canadians instead of a few wealthy investors and CEOs.” It’s the same handwavey lack of specificity the government makes, just with a left rhetorical valence. It’s not policy, and we can’t pretend it is.
We are in a crucial moment of opportunity when the entire identity and future of the country is being redeveloped. That takes a level of serious engagement with not just what kind of society we want to live in, but how to get there with the resources we have on-hand. We need plans, policy proposals, economic models, national accounting, and organizational and coordination effort. Not vague posturing, which will inflate politicians’ egos at the cost of catastrophic national failure.
Avi Lewis@avilewis
4/ I have an idea for the Prime Minister: why don’t we pull a Norway? Let’s put a windfall tax on oil and gas companies that are projected to make $90B in profits this year because of Trump’s illegal war in Iran. Then, let’s use that money to fill up the Sovereign Wealth fund — and invest in projects that benefit Canadians instead of a few wealthy investors and CEOs.
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