It would be a rare person who is entirely immune to the blandishments of Madison Ave. to unload his family fortune for some article or service that might increase community or financial status, or allow said person to blissfully ignore the storm of miscreants and their misdeeds that seems to surround us all. As if Madison Ave., and its lesser equivalents in the hinterland, was not enough, we now have internet influencers to fill in the gaps and create new cravings, with the same assurances as to quality and utility of goods and services provided. Perhaps somewhat more pernicious from operating mostly out of public view are the lobbyists who troll the halls of government and like bodies to ensure that corporations can flourish and, optimally, feed copiously at the public trough. Influencers, lobbyists and their benefactors also tend to form up in institutions called think tanks, where much brain power is focused on whatever the central theme of the think tank might be. One of my favourite tanks is the Canadian Centre For Policy Alternatives, who pool their ganglions in support of building a society that benefits the broadest possible spectrum of citizens and whose prescriptions seem to be best received by politicians identified with the left, though they themselves are not overtly political. They are distinguished from their opposite numbers by the question of whose interests they serve. There  are many of them, one of which, The Fraser Institute, falls on the opposite end of the social and political spectrum. In my adult life, I have seen more credits to the FI in the press than all other tanks combined, possibly because their greatest influence might be in our region and their greatest impact therefore at the level of provincial, regional and municipal politics. The influence exerted by these organizations becomes problematic when it moves from politics to policy and when the privileged few directing the Think Tanks get to translate their desires into legislation. The little screen capture at the top of this screed, and which is its inspiration, was from Libération, part of the daily read-around. You can find it here.

Montaigne has been chosen as a symbol of rational thought, an iconic figure of the Renaissance in France, to legitimize the view of the institute and to ensure the widest acceptance of the policy that stems from the institute’s influence. It would seem that there really isn’t anything all that original, apart from reference to contemporary challenges, but that the answer for those challenges is likely to result in More Of Same, emerging from pandemic restraints into as close a mirror of “before” as possible.

…un agenda à faire rougir de plaisir les entreprises : assouplissement du marché du travail, subventionnement de l’investissement, libéralisation des soldes, augmentation de la durée du temps de travail, réduction des dépenses publiques structurelles…

 

… an agenda to make businesses blush with pleasure: loosening of the labour market, subsidizing of investment, loosing restraints on remuneration, extending work hours, reduction of structural public spending…

Nothing to displease the FI crowd, nor the CD Howe bunch or any of their analogs. French President Macron has much in common with our PM in this, and so many other ways. Rien de nouveau sous le soleil.