Mark Carney: belief

Transcript context

…Why is there so little populism in Canada? You have plenty of immigrants, right? Arguably, in Ontario, you’ve had some local populism, but nationally it doesn’t seem to have taken off. Well, I think it’s a good observation. It’s partly, populism, the way I think of it is, it moves into an “us versus them, the people versus the elite” type approach. Part of what determines populism, in my way of thinking, is how much do people believe that there is equality of opportunity or an ability to move through the system? How much should people believe that there is equal access? A couple of things that underscore that in Canada: universal healthcare. Virtually everybody sends their kids to the state education system, so you have universal on that. One of the things which has slowed our response, and actually on the pandemic, is application of that universality, for example, for vaccines and universality for lockdowns and other requirements in a way that meets equality but is not as effective as it could be on a risk-management basis. Give you an example: it would make more sense to go and vaccinate the teachers and vaccinate those who are working in meatpacking plants and Amazon warehouse and other hot spots for the disease, but that’s not the approach. The approach has been very rigorously equal working down through age cohorts. I think that has its downsides, but it reinforces “We’re all in this together” and therefore weighs against the populism possibilities. Are the Toronto Raptors doomed to be, on average, a subpar NBA team due to higher taxes?…

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