Anyone remember the MacEachern budget of 1981? Trudeau’s backtracking on tax policy in 2017 looks an awful lot like Trudeau’s backtracking on tax policy in 1981; this sort of reversal has a long history in the Liberal Party of Canada. It’s a party that hates to think of itself as representing the privileged, so periodically it will introduce measures that would truly make things fairer and more just. But if and when the vested interests start howling, the Liberals quickly forget that they’re the party of fairness for the poor and the middle class—by which I mean those who are truly middle class, not doctors netting $150,000 or more in year, or roughly three times the average Canadian income.