Commentary Editor’s note: This is the third in a series examining the economic platform of each party ahead of the 2021 federal election. Read the first here and the second here. Canada has the pomp and circumstance of municipal and provincial governments. When reading the incumbent Liberal Party’s elaborate economic platform, however, one struggles to decipher where the federal government ends and where the lower levels of government begin. Aside from Quebec’s distinct case, meaningful autonomy is already on the ropes, and the Liberals’ plan would deliver the knock-out punch. That means the party’s economic policies—from mandates to contingent funding—hasten the trend toward lower levels of government merely being administrative puppets of the Ottawa ruling class. The excruciating level of detail to which the platform outlines local policy defies belief. Underlying the ongoing takeover of provincial and local jurisdictions is a vast centralization mentality: a lack of confidence in bottom-up growth, individual initiative, …