Elections highlight differences. Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre already seem like opposites, and once the federal election campaign heats up, they will look even further apart.

But after election day, magnified differences fade away. A Poilievre government would undoubtedly bring change, but also considerable continuity in critical areas.

That’s because Liberals and Tories share a deep-seated commitment to market-based approaches. Both parties tackle socioeconomic challenges by giving corporations ever more incentives and subsidies and staying clear of regulating them, even where regulation is the most direct and least costly solution.

Political philosopher Nancy Fraser famously coined the term “progressive neoliberalism” to describe governments that openly embrace equity and diversity ideals from social movements while actively defending corporate and financial sector interests. Bill Clinton paved the way for Barack Obama in the United States. Tony Blair was the face of it in the United Kingdom.

We have seen this in Canada, too.

Trudeau’s Liberals have repeatedly combined progressive language and inspiring plans with market fundamentalism. Nowhere is this more visible than in their climate change and housing policies. In these areas, Poilievre is likely to reverse some small but positive changes, while continuing to defend the primacy of markets.

On climate, Poilievre’s central plank is to axe the carbon tax.

The federal carbon tax is a market-based mechanism that relies on incentives rather than restrictions. While the system has had a modest impact on national emissions, the price is still too low to trigger serious behavioural changes. It is also rife with loopholes for industry that undermine compliance.

Since 2015, the federal government has rolled out a series of climate policy frameworks, which outline various regulations and investment plans for the transition to a lower-carbon economy. Most of these remain plans.

In his incisive chapter in The Trudeau Record: Promise and Performance, climate researcher Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood argues that the federal government has missed many opportunities to implement its climate plans. Last year, he warned that the government’s Fall Economic Statement signalled that the Liberals had gone as far as they would go in funding climate action, and he was right. The 2024 budget contained a mere $2 billion in new spending in this area, over the next five years. For comparison, Canada needs to invest an estimated $100 billion more per year in clean energy to reach its goal of a net-zero economy by 2050. While not all this investment would be public spending, a committed federal government would pitch in more than $2 billion over five years.

Meanwhile, Liberals have reliably supported the oil and gas industry through generous subsidies, carbon tax exemptions, and the direct financing of pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. This support has allowed production and related emissions to rise, offsetting progress in other areas, like the phase-out of coal power. Poilievre would no doubt stay the course in supporting oil and gas.

On housing, Poilievre’s plan is to build, build, build—which has also been the Liberals’ focus.

Trudeau’s Liberals have done more on housing than previous governments, but less than they claim. The National Housing Strategy is excessively focused on supporting private-sector rental housing, which, according to more than one government analysis, is not affordable to most renters.

Funding for homelessness reduction increased at a snail’s pace between 2015 and 2020, while chronic homelessness rose. Funding for non-market housing has been piecemeal and way below what analysts deem necessary. In the 2024 budget, the $1.5 billion for non-market housing stood in sharp contrast to the $15 billion for private developers.

At the same time, the government deployed plenty of progressive language, recognizing housing as a human right, creating the National Housing Council and the Office of Federal Housing Advocate, and promising a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and a Renters’ Bill of Rights.

So far, nothing has come out of these initiatives.

Even the simple promise of banning blind bidding didn’t fully come through. The review of the tax treatment of real estate investment trusts (REITs), aimed at curbing excess profits in rental housing, went nowhere. The government consulted widely on the topic for two years, then backpedaled on it.

Poilievre’s only detailed housing plan so far consists of coercing municipalities to get out of the way so developers can build more housing. The Liberals beat him to it. The Housing Accelerator Fund advances a mix of goals, from necessary upzoning to freezing development charges, which Housing Minister Sean Fraser pejoratively calls a housing tax.

On climate and housing, a future Conservative government wouldn’t have much room to be more pro-market than the current government is.

To be clear, a Poilievre government would be different. His courting of far-right groups, his unclear stance on abortion, and his willingness to test the limits of the Constitution could bring the loss of rights and freedoms. But fear of darker days should not cloud our judgment of the present.

Underneath the Liberal government’s progressive gestures, tepid policies, and piecemeal funding of non-market solutions, there is a deep-seated commitment to market approaches. It’s the same ideology that has weakened the Canadian state since the 1990s.

A Poilievre government would drop the “progressive” from “progressive neoliberalism” while thrusting ahead with market-based approaches that prevent progress on issues people care deeply about.

A genuinely alternative economic agenda would focus on increasing taxes on the wealthy to pay for better-quality and universal public services; actively regulating markets to stop profiteering in basic-need sectors like nutrition, health, education, and housing, and renationalizing natural resources and public infrastructure.

That alternative is not currently on offer in Canada.

Ricardo Tranjan, PhD, is a political economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of The Tenant Class. Follow him on X @ricardo_tranjan.