We need more leaders, fewer politicians

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/12/2023 (663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We need political leaders.

We need politicians to become political leaders. Here is the difference.

Politicians do polls to determine public opinion on policy, then they run to the front of the parade advocating for some ill-conceived or uninformed position. Politicians broker deals, trade favours, play people off each other, deflect from the real issues with personal attacks and false accusations. Politicians detract from important issues, divide, and conquer, make misguided promises to get elected or make promises they have no intention of keeping. These are the things people can’t stand about politicians.

Political leaders on the other hand have a vision for progress and know how to engage people to address the serious challenges we face. They don’t need polls to tell them what’s popular, they rely on research evidence from science, including social sciences. Political leaders understand the lived experience of people struggling to make ends meet — to find and keep a decent job so they can feed themselves and their families, keep a roof over their head and have a decent quality of life to remain healthy.

Political leaders don’t encourage magical thinking that we can cut taxes, balance the budget and still increase investment in public services. This political fantasy is dispelled by political leaders who are so serious about addressing our challenges, they don’t just say what people want to hear. Leaders understand in our climate context the key is wealth redistribution and how to leverage government and economic development to do it.

We need political leaders who have the courage to explain the reality of public budgets as clearly outlined in the new CCPA document “Funding Our Way.” In 44 pages this report shows that the accumulated tax cuts annually are eliminating $1.6 billion from the Manitoba provincial treasury each year. An amount we need to create the child-care spaces parents need to work, or social housing to address homelessness, the support for children to learn, the healing programs for people experiencing abuse, gender-based violence, or investment to repair our crumpling infrastructure.

Borrowing money for tax cuts or the education property tax credits is unconscionable, as is using federal transfers for health and child-care for tax cuts. It will be irresponsible to continue these unsustainable tax cuts and the underfunding of our social safety net, public services and infrastructure. The CCPA paper is a must read for any Manitoban who cares about the future of our province. It makes clear that if there is a change in the federal government reducing federal transfers, as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is suggesting, the Manitoba budget would lose the source of revenue it has relied on and will not keep up with inflation.

Manitobans need to decide if they want to live in communities where people are sleeping in parks, and dying in bus shelters? Can we live with escalating drug-induced crime, can we tolerate the number of people dying of overdose, or suicide? Do we want to live with neglected infrastructure like abandoned bridges, long wait times for health and social services, larger class sizes and rising tuition debt for post secondary education?

If we don’t want to live in this reality, we need to pay for the changes necessary. We need to end the austerity in public budgets. And instead support people in an ecologically sustainable way, realizing when we do there is a huge return on the investment. We need political leaders, who refuse to blame individual people for the poverty they face and act on the fact that poverty is the result of poor public policy like an inadequate social safety net and economic failure, like low wages and structural exploitation. And educate on how poverty is not just the personal failure of people experiencing poverty.

We need political leaders who understand and can explain the realities of climate change and who have the courage to tell the driving public that you cannot continue to idle your SUVs in the drive-thru to get coffee in disposable paper cups. It is not sustainable. Neither is the poor urban planning and the budgets that subsidize these excesses of the fossil fuel economy.

We need political leaders that don’t just talk about collaboration but create the new structures and procedures to engage leaders from diverse sectors to work together, especially in new structures like intersectional participatory budgets.

We need political leaders who are capable of mobilizing the assets we have to address the interconnected and compounding ecological, social and economic challenges we face. To think long-term, not in election cycles, to plan for the world we want to leave our kids. We need to reject the politics of division and optics, of scoring cheap political points. We need political leaders and government committed to progressive change, not just keeping the other guys out to staying in power and as a result protect the status quo.

Marianne Cerilli is a health teacher, community development aficionado and was a three term MLA.