I don’t consume a lot of right-wing talking points. But every so often I catch one, and if I’m not up to speed on the issue, I like to give it some thought and do what usually amounts to about five minutes of digging. That’s really all it takes to get a reasonable understanding of most issues these days.
And inevitably, I end up calling bullshit.
This Thanksgiving weekend, it was outrage over the fact that before Mark Carney became Prime Minister, he happened to work at Brookfield.
And I’ve got to say, it’s time to stop whining about Brookfield. Or at least the idea that somehow our Prime Minister still holds a corner office on the fiftieth floor.
And before you call me a Liberal sycophant, let me assure you that I went down this particular rabbit hole because I genuinely wanted to know whether what I’m about to lay out for you was something worth getting outraged about.
Spoiler alert! I’m not outraged.
The issue at hand is a federal pledge of about $2 billion to help Canadians retrofit their homes with heat pumps.
What is a heat pump, some of you may be asking?
A heat pump is a proven, energy-efficient way to heat and cool your home. It’s not new technology, but like most technologies, it’s improved considerably over the decades.
Basically, you heat your home by transferring heat from the air outside, concentrating it somehow and bringing it inside. And vice versa when you want to cool the house.
I don’t understand all the thermodynamics involved, but I’m an English teacher, not a physicist.
Anyway, it uses electricity to move heat rather than burning fossil fuels or using electricity to heat an element, which is generally far less efficient.
A miracle, really.
So back to Carney and Brookfield.
The issue is that Brookfield owns Enercare, a company involved in residential heating and cooling, and has investments across numerous industries connected to energy and infrastructure.
So the right-wing outrage machine points to this and shouts, “See! Corruption!”
Mark Carney is cutting a cheque for his bigwig buddies.
And $2 billion is a lot of money.
Except that’s not what’s happening.
The money is being used to provide rebates to eligible homeowners who choose to upgrade their heating systems.
The government is essentially saying that if you’re replacing your furnace and choose a qualifying heat pump, it may help you out with a $2,000 rebate. Some eligible households can receive considerably more.
And I don’t know about you, but a $2,000 rebate on a purchase I might have to make regardless is certainly going to make me learn everything I need to know about changing how I heat my home.
Ah, but now that money is supporting industries in which Brookfield has investments.
To which my response is, yes. But here’s the thing.
Brookfield has a stake in a remarkable number of businesses and industries. If we avoided investing in anything Brookfield had a financial interest in, we’d have a hard time investing in much of anything.
We couldn’t build hospitals, roads or bridges without potentially benefiting some large investment firm somewhere along the way.
Hell, the heating and cooling industry itself includes companies producing everything from traditional natural gas furnaces to modern heat pumps.
Whichever system you choose, there’s a good chance some enormous investment portfolio has a piece of the action.
And here’s what you have to remember.
It’s not a $2 billion cheque to Brookfield. It’s a rebate to the consumer, who then has to hire somebody to supply and install the thing.
The guy who supplied it needs to get paid. The guy who shipped it needs to get paid. And the guys who turn the wrenches, drill the holes and install the damn thing need to get paid.
Those are real jobs, often performed by local businesses employing people in your own community.
Brookfield might benefit somewhere along that chain. Through companies it owns, it might even benefit directly from some installations.
But it isn’t the sole beneficiary, and it certainly isn’t receiving the entire $2 billion.
And hold on a second.
Brookfield is hardly the only investment firm involved. There are plenty of others with investments spanning the same industries.
Your RRSP, your mutual fund, your pension plan. They all might contain investments in companies that benefit from government spending.
Government investment in heat pumps has the potential to benefit all sorts of businesses and investors, not just Brookfield.
How do you feel about it now?
And look, if you want to argue about whether investment firms should be allowed to consolidate so much money, power and ultimately influence, then let’s have that conversation.
I’m in on that.
At what point does diversification become concentration? When does financial influence become political influence? And should a relatively small number of enormous investment firms have so much influence over the economy?
Those are questions worth asking.
But linking a federal policy decision to Carney and Brookfield through some enormous financial spiderweb that practically all of us are caught in, and then calling it corruption, is at the very least disingenuous.
Let’s not forget that we live in a country where ethics and oversight still exist and function reasonably well.
We have a Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. We have parliamentary committees, access-to-information legislation and independent journalism that, for the most part, still has standards.
None of these institutions is perfect, and legitimate conflicts of interest can certainly go undetected or unresolved.
If anything, one of the problems with ethics oversight is that identifying wrongdoing doesn’t always come with consequences that people consider meaningful.
But that’s another issue altogether.
And look, if you’re concerned about ethics in government, do yourself a favour.
Get involved. Write to your elected representatives. Demand accountability. Support independent journalism. Try actually showing up to vote.
But at the very least, take five minutes to understand what you’re getting outraged about before you let somebody else make up your mind for you.