OTTAWA, ON ― A new survey of political scientists found broad consensus that financial giveaways are a both arrogant and very successful strategy to curry the favour of voters too shortsighted to put on winter tires, let alone make national decisions that reverberate for generations.
Among 125 experts across Canada, 88% agreed that cheques would be better as targeted relief, 76% that rebates and temporary tax cuts will exacerbate inflation while creating bureaucratic headaches, and 96% that such measures are taking the place of real and complex solutions to real and complex problems.
Of those who affirmed all three statements, a full 100% concurred that the politicians fully understand those issues, and that their choice to ignore them is quite sensible, politically.
“Are these bribes an implicit insult to voters’ intelligence? Absolutely. Are most voters better than that? Absolutely not,” commented Vicki Cheung of the University of British Columbia.
“If I were Trudeau, I’d probably devote at least ten seconds to considering the optics of handing $250 to those making $149 999 a year while excluding those on disability, rather than wait to be prompted by the Bloc and NDP. Or I’d take concrete actions earlier, like the NDP’s permanent GST cut offset by a wealth tax, so I never needed to buy voters with their own money at all,” mused University of Ottawa professor Guillame Arsenault.
“But details aside, in the situation he’s in now, I too would 100% send out some sort of rebate cheques, because there’s no reason to think this thinly-veiled political ploy won’t work.”
“And if I were Doug Ford, with his weird Teflon political luck? I’d send out two thousand dollar cheques. Just blow the budget entirely! After all, no matter how much he fucks up, the only Ontarians who vote, apparently, are his developer buddies and some weirdos whose entire personality is being completely enraged by cyclists’ mere existence.”
Studies of ordinary Canadians back up these findings. Last fall, Ipsos polling revealed that the average price to buy a Canadian voter is just $129, though values ranged widely by province, from a low of $17 in Alberta to a high of $3834-plus-a-family-doctor in Québec.
