Back in August 2015, while still trailing the NDP in some polls, Justin Trudeau pulled off an impressive political feint. Having committed himself to a balanced budget just a few weeks earlier, Trudeau abruptly reversed course and started channelling the language of Keynesian economics instead. His rhetoric was appealing and, in the Liberal pledge to invest tens of billions in (mostly unspecified) “social infrastructure,” what many Canadians heard was the promise that the state would once again be used for progressive ends.
