Gravity(s)

Mark Carney brings the Liberals down to earth. Watch that landing

You get one surprise, not more. Mark Carney won the Liberal leadership, but the only unexpected element of the outcome was the margin of his victory. The second-place candidate, Chrystia Freeland, didn’t even get three times as many votes as fourth-place Frank Baylis. The good news is that after many weeks of solid effort, Freeland is well-positioned for a consolation job as fill-in anchor on MSNBC.

Carney’s acceptance speech was terribly dull, almost perfunctory. Maybe voters will like it. After all, Bill Davis used to say bland works. “I’m a pragmatist above all,” Carney said. So he’ll “immediately eliminate the divisive consumer carbon tax” and “stop the hike in the capital gains tax.” Those were the two least popular items in the Trudeau policy book. Justin Trudeau watched with a smile fixed on his face while Carney sent them off.

“Canada needs more of this type of change,” Carney continued. “Change that puts more money in people’s pockets. Change that makes our companies more competitive. Change that builds the strongest economy in the G7.”

This is almost precisely why Pierre Poilievre says you should vote Conservative. So that’s one way to think about the next two months: which of these two very different leaders of very different parties can deliver the “more change” Carney says the country needs?

That’ll hardly be the only question. It may not even be the biggest. Hurricane Trump will keep blowing. Every day, voters will be preoccupied with finding the best response, and judging severely any Canadian leader whose response is found wanting. Little Marco Rubio will be in Charlevoix on Wednesday for the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting. What’s the best response? By Wednesday that will still be Justin Trudeau’s and Mélanie Joly’s problem. Within days after, when Carney becomes Prime Minister, questions like that will become a jump ball, and will remain so until we get a chance to vote.

It will only be natural if Canadians find the coming electoral confrontation exciting. But meanwhile the world is passing us by. Again. Still. In Germany, Friedrich Merz, who isn’t yet the Chancellor, has cooked a deal with other major parties to finance the most rapid military build-up in many decades. The rest of the European Union will soon follow suit. Poland is looking at an unprecedented expansion of its army — and at acquiring a nuclear deterrent. The post-NATO world is being built right now, this week, with punishing table stakes.

Canada is hors jeu for all of these debates, and seems unlikely to contribute much to them after an election. There is a culture-wide reluctance or inability to pivot in a moment of grave peril. Much of the blame lies with Justin Trudeau, who announced in January a retirement plan that ensured Canada would not have a fully legitimate and functioning government for months. It’s unfashionable to deliver that verdict, given all the brio Trudeau has shown on the tariff file in the last few weeks, but there it is.

But there’s Trudeau and then there’s post-Trudeau. A thesis of Carney’s victory speech was that these are “dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust.” The question facing Carney, Poilievre — all of us — is whether our actions begin to reflect the scale of the test that implies.

I spoke to a European diplomat last week who absolutely could not believe that Canadians, including Mark Carney, are still talking about defence spending drifting lazily up toward 2% of GDP in a half-decade. The same diplomat, incidentally, was astonished that Conservative MPs aren’t burning up the phone lines right now to persuade GOP members of Congress of the folly of Trump’s “51st state” campaign. It’s true that Conservatives don’t form Canada’s government. But they’d like to, soon. They are legislators now. They hold a public trust now. Are they waiting for some more important issue to come along before they start to act like it?

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This weary country is being tested again and will be tested some more. Same goes for its leaders. It’s a big problem that Carney has never faced an electorate or dealt with the complicated play of permission and audacity that democratic leadership requires. It’s a problem that whoever wrote his “Economic Pillars For Change” platform document seems unfamiliar with recent developments in economic policy in Canada.

This next bit is wonky. I think it’s important.

 “By fostering investment in these critical areas” — energy, hydro, ports and more — “we can drive more rapid and more sustainable growth that secures Canada’s economic future,” Carney’s policy document said. “For example, Canada must invest $2 trillion by 2050—about $80 billion per year—to become carbon competitive and achieve Net Zero. However, investment in decarbonisation is currently running around $15 billion annually…. We will leverage our new fiscal approach so that scarce public investment dollars catalyse multiples of private investment.”

Got it? Massive investment needed. Current investment way too low. Solution: find some mechanism to “catalyse multiples of private investment.”

This was precisely the rationale behind the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank in 2017, and of the Canada Growth Fund in 2022. Neither is mentioned in Carney’s document. I launched this newsletter with questions about the Growth Fund. Both the Growth Fund and the Infrastructure Bank have now been operating for some time. It’s never been clear why Canada needs both funds. It’s not clear that it could use a third. It’s very clear that the two existing funds together aren’t making or motivating $80 billion a year in total investment, and that neither is “catalyzing multiples of private investment.” Why not? It’s not an idle question. It’s the sort of question I would have thought a former central banker would address: What’s the difference between what needs to work and what hasn’t been working?

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I wish we knew more about Carney in this context, the context of governing choices. Yes, he wrote a book not too long ago. I read much of it when it came out. It’s uneven. It’s four years old. This isn’t ideal.

But politics is chemistry and manner, as well as policy. I’ve been meaning to pass along this interview that Carney gave last autumn to Father Raymond J. de Souza, the National Post columnist who’s a fellow at The Cardus, a Christian think tank. Father Raymond’s a pretty conservative guy. Stories about The Cardus reliably position it closer to the Conservatives than the Liberals. But Carney, who certainly knew by last fall that a Liberal leadership candidacy might be in his future, gave the group an hour and a half of his time all the same. I’ll leave it to you to decide what to make of it.

The Globe reports that Janice Charette is leading Carney’s transition team as he builds a provisional, pre-election government. Charette was the Clerk of the Privy Council for much of Trudeau’s time in power. But Stephen Harper appointed her to that job first. She once had a job in party politics, long ago: she was Jean Charest’s chief of staff when he was Progressive Conservative leader.

I don’t know whether this occurred to Carney, but Pierre Poilievre spent 2022 telling anyone who would listen that Conservatives mustn’t support people who think like Charest. It’s starting to look like Carney agrees.

Poilievre released French-language ads last week on his favourite topic: what other people should think about him. (This Substack post by Éric Blais discusses the ads more fully.)

“There are people who think I have a style that’s too direct, too frank,” he says in one ad. “Hmm. I wonder whether you should be cute and docile when you negotiate tariffs with Donald Trump.”

Fair question. Can we treat its two halves separately? I don’t think anyone should be docile. I also think cute wears out its welcome pretty quick. I think it’s fair to say Poilievre has a hard time resisting the urge to play it cute. I can say that again while eating an apple if you like. When negotiating tariffs with Trump, would Poilievre concentrate more on the negotiation, or on the fantastic social-media videos he could make an hour later? I’m sorry, was that question cute?

Either of these leaders would bring real qualities to the job of prime minister. Each has also given us ample reason to doubt, to wonder, to demand more information. Don’t let either tell you the other’s weakness is all you need to know.