I took a policy analysis course at UWO, where we would match proposed government action against its stated aims. Having good goals is almost always the easy part. Reaching them is tricky. When someone says the key to the green transition is a third infrastructure bank (which would be something like the 20th or 30th such thing in the world), I have questions. I'm always a little surprised when nobody else does.
Europe and the UK (and though not Canada yet) spending massively on defense is Trump "winning". It is one of the main things that Trump has been arguing for since 2016. You may not like his methods, but he has gotten the Europeans from having another meeting about doing nothing about defense except virtue signally moral righteousness, to actually making plans to spend. Trudeau and apparently Carney, did not and do not seem interested in ramping up military spending.
Carney is not an pragmatist. He is a another net-zero extremist coming home from a UK and EU deindustrialized by the climate policy and the industrial policy he is advocating. The CDU in Germany, if it can form a government without the Greens, will restart their nuclear plants and go on a massive building spree of natural gas fired electricity generation. France has less of a U-Turn to execute, as they have significant nuclear energy capacity, and will be starting from a much better place.
Norway is cutting itself off from the European Grid. Net Zero is dying a little slower in the UK, but another year of decline under the climate ideologues in Labour should force change in the near future. Net Zero by 2050 and his climate finance fantasies are slowly being rejected everywhere except inside Mark Carney's "big" brain. And Canada will be truly doomed if this climate ideologue shapes our economic future.
Carney has promised to eliminate the consumer carbon tax, but he wants to impose a similar policy that would have the same attempt at reducing Canada's carbon emissions. The USA & Mexico don't have any carbon taxes, so whatever policy Carney proposes will put us at a disadvantage to our competitors.
If the carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions, why doesn't he fix it? Take some of the billions he intends to spend on subsidies and make the carbon rebates do what the Liberals have always pretended: make them revenue positive for 80% of Canadians.
Of course he won't, and for the same reason as Trudeau didn't: the carbon tax is fair, and doesn't provide a mechanism to influence social change or benefit allies. As we've seen, SDTC-like subsidies provide ample opportunities to redistribute wealth to a select few so that is where Carney will go.
In an era of rampant disinformation accompanied by active attempts at political division, Carney is right that you can't simply judge policies on their objective merits. There's no reason to expect Carney is insincere about following the Canadian public in terms of what is tenable. Which is also about the only way to kneecap disinformation — by listening first, rather than setting policy and then using marketing to try to sway the public, which is an approach that's ridiculously prone to disinformation. The discussion here is all policy first, including the incredibly ironic take that Carney is not a pragmatist, despite him instantly jettisoning a policy that he strongly supports on objective grounds.
Which was the disinformation? The government argued that 80% of Canadians received more in carbon rebates than they paid in carbon tax. The Auditor General argued that the total effect of the carbon tax was that many fewer than 80% of Canadians would come out ahead. Both were true, but the government never added the asterisk implied by the AG to their statements.
The government could have said "By Jove, the AG's right. Let's fix that" but chose instead to let that asterisk linger, and that asterisk was all it took to fuel Poilievre's Axe the Tax campaign. The success of that campaign resulted in the Liberal leadership candidates also vowing to Axe the Tax.
I ask again: why has nobody tried to save the carbon tax? Instead, Carney is promoting more selected subsidies and a return to an equivalent of the old manufacturers' tax that the GST superseded. The manufacturers' tax was hidden and a modern version could be manipulated by the government to benefit favoured industries.
The analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer remains weird and confusing with its intended implications. The PBO acknowledged that most consumers are in fact receiving more money from the rebates than they are paying in the taxes, but then calculated some abstract "economic costs" and attached them to the negative consumer side of the equation. He did not calculate the economic benefits of the spending enabled by the rebates, nor the benefits of avoiding climate change (though the latter is admittedly quite difficult to do). He even acknowledged the latter point and said that all climate policies have their own respective costs.
I am not sure how any government could have responded to the PBO's baffling argument, his report only served to muddy the waters of the debate. (I appreciate that your own instinct is to suggest that the tax could be reformed, as opposed to this somehow offering a definitive case against carbon taxes entirely.)
I didn't find their argument baffling. The carbon tax on, for example, farming and transportation contributes to increased food prices.
I am not sure that carbon is the boogeyman it is claimed to be, but I still support reducing carbon emissions insofar as it will reduce pollution in general. Most agree that every other method of reducing carbon is worse than the carbon tax, so I back the carbon tax. It has limits because energy use is only so elastic in Canada, after which it just becomes another source of revenue.
And yet physics doesn’t care about any of our human folly, and every day the climate gets more destabilized.
Two things can be true at the same time: (1) Net zero by 2050 was always impossible without massive deindustrialization; (2) we have to achieve something close to net zero pretty quickly or large swaths of the planet are going to be very inhospitable and destabilized.
I think Carney is able to hold these two things in his head at the same time more effectively than Trudeau or Poilievre.
make sense for a 2% carbon contributor like Canada that splits the difference between impossibly utopian net zero in 25 years and do-nothing.
You calibrate policy to obtain the stringency required to about match the median performing country as weighted by carbon output.
Another way to put it:
Match the combined rate of decarbonization of the US, Europe, China and India.
There’s no need for Canada to exacerbate regional divisions and impair competitiveness to be a “climate leader”. We have next to no impact on the global concentration of CO2. We just need to do our part.
One fair challenge to this is that harms from local air pollution alone warrant stronger clean air policies.
That makes sense to me. Diplomacy is going to be much larger of a factor than decarbonizing ourself. We don’t matter; really only China and India do.
Would Poilievre pursue such a path? I’ve heard Carney talking about taking the problem seriously which could include diplomacy; I haven’t heard it from Poilievre.
Your reasoning falls apart if other countries adopt the exact same reasoning. If other countries also adopt the reasoning that they should pursue the "stringency required to about match the median performing country", then you quickly get to a place where no one is attempting to reduce emissions anymore because no one else is attempting to reduce emissions anymore.
A collective action problem is ultimately going to require individual leadership and individual setting of positive examples.
I don’t think so. For those countries I listed it really does matter how effective their policy is and in a rational world they would hammer out a four party deal that the rest of the world could sign on to. Their willingness or unwillingness to do that depends not one iota on what Canada does.
Every country in the world both resists and succumbs to peer pressure, up to a point respectively. Even if the U.S., China, and India were all ignoring whatever Canada is doing, they certainly would not be ignoring what the rest of the developed world or the developing world are doing. And there's going to absolutely be some countries watching what Canada does with interest.
If Canada leads, other countries will follow, and if multiple countries follow, one of the larger powers will feel increasing temptation to fall in line. There's absolutely a major difference between a world where Canada is thumbing its nose at the hard work of others and a world where Canada is able to credibly lecture other countries on this file.
I can tell I probably won’t be able to persuade you but I think most people would realize that matching what most of the world is doing on decarbonization is far from thumbing the nose at anyone. There is a cost to trying to be a “climate leader” as mentioned at the top and Mark Carney who is making a point of eliminating the consumer carbon tax seems to recognize that. I expect more recalibrating from him in a world of trade and other wars.
And let's not forget the impacts of our new season…no longer called Summer IMHO but now called The Burning Season. How much carbon was whooshed into the atmosphere when Jasper went up in smoke last summer or before that, in Lytton & Fort Mac? Or more recently in LA this January? These are the escalating costs of continued reliance on fossil fuels that mustn't be ignored — for they will most certainly continue at an even more rapid rate.
Sorry, but how are these two things reconcilable? Because I agree with you that net zero anytime soon is impossible without massive human suffering. But then how do you reduce warming enough?
The climate ideologues would have more credibility if they had not been obstructing the nuclearization of the electricity grid worldwide for the last 50 years.
Physicists had the solution, and the extremists actively blocked the solution from being implemented every step of the way for two generations.
The world has spent $2 trillion on so-called green energy and it has reduced fossil fuel use by 2% of total energy consumption.
The only solution to reduce global emissions is the nuclearization of the energy grid everywhere, with natural gas as the transition and residual fossil fuel. Solar, geothermal, and some other alternatives are useful at the margin.
Net zero by 2050 is not "impossible without massive deindustrialization". We have all the technology we need to get there, we just lack the political will.
Exactly the same as if we do not, since our emissions are a mole hill compared to the rapidly increasing emissions of China, India, and emerging Asia. And net zero by 2050 is in the process of being abandoned in the EU and the US.
The most effective way for Canada to slow the increase of global emissions, (which is supposed to be the goal), is to export as much LNG as possible to slow the increase in the use of coal, and to help the world nuclearize its electricity grid as fast as possible.
Exporting LNG only helps with the problem if it entirely displaces other more emission-intensive fuels, as opposed to LNG exports just adding to aggregate emissions alongside other energy sources.
Reducing emissions is going to necessarily require some energy/emissions conservation policies, and if Canada is making a virtue of making no progress here, other countries will be tempted to inaction as well, and China and India will therefore feel no pressure to change. Collective action problems can only be solved through individual leadership.
With nuclear energy, there is no need for energy scarcity policies. Coal use is continuing to rise in China, India, and emerging Asia. Every molecule of extra LNG will displace coal.
Restricting Canadian oil and natural gas development means more global coal usage, which means global carbon emissions rise faster. The energy hairshirt fails writ large. Individual country virtue leads to collective failure.
Emerging Asia is just entering its energy hockey stick. Where they move from bicycles to ICE vehicles or coal-fired electricity BEV vehicles.
The energy scarcity policies of the UK, the EU, and Canada have been a disaster. GDP per capita is declining. And the UK and EU have been progressively deindustrialized, with their industry moving to coal-burning Asia.
Thank God for AI, for it is an energy hog and will put an end to the delusions of the climate energy scarcity lunatics once and for all.
That's not how human economic behaviour works. Humans by nature seek to expand their quality of life, and by extension consume more energy. If LNG is made more plentiful, but coal is not restricted or emissions not taxed, then the LNG consumption is simply added on top of pre-existing coal consumption - not displacing it.
Only by policies that divorce economic growth from emissions do you get to a place where the economy can grow and yet emissions go down. The Nordic countries have higher economic productivity than Canada yet also have carbon taxes.
The European diplomat who made that observation seems to be under the impression that GOP Members of Congress have any influence on how this President thinks and speaks. There is zero evidence to demonstrate that this is even remotely true. I think the "51st State" thing started as a juvenile taunt, and kept going because he thought it diminished Trudeau, who somewhere along the line managed to seriously piss off Trump. I think he keeps doing it largely because some people told him to cut it out, not because no one did...
Trump hates Trudeau on a personal level. In 2018, Trudeau made the mistake of insulting Trump after he left the G7 summit in Charlevoix and the 2019 NATO Summit in London. It was caught on tape. I disagree with Trump's trade policies, but Trudeau's behaviour has made Canada more vulnerable to damage. Notice how Trump doesn't call Mexico's President, Governor Scheinbaum. I wonder how Trump will deal with Poilievre or Carney during the election campaign.
That's an odd take, considering that Trump in December was smiling on camera alongside Trudeau and he celebrated Freeland's resignation from Cabinet (implicitly dismissing her criticisms of Trudeau in doing so). He was always going to threaten Canada with tariffs regardless of what Trudeau said or did.
The words you chose for Canada, "this weary country", really said it all for me. We have been continually worked over by our politicians. Platitudes, slogans, announcements, admonishments. I even see the weariness now in my 30-something children. With a possible election looming (although not convinced the Liberals don't have other plans) how do we get the energy to stay engaged without having the life sucked out of us? Weary is right.
i) Freeland couldn't even crack 10%. That's stunning. Carney can't give her Finance and he can't give her Foreign Affairs. She'll never be PM. No real support from Caucus or fellow Cabinet members. Yet she's committed herself to running again. There's a story here but Paul will take it from here. They say politics is cruel.
ii) Why did only 150,000 out of a registered 400,000 Liberals actually cast a vote? It took most people I know about 10 minutes to do so (driver's license + smart phone). Nobody is talking about this but I expect someone is going to pose the question.
As we saw many times last year south of the border with former President Biden ("We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men and women are created, by the, you know the, you know the thing."), teleprompters allow one to present themselves as sharp, until they don't.
Rolling out the old guard is hardly the way to present their party as having gone through renewal. Better that they renain in their villas and tend to their grapes, giving those in the wings a chance to shine, allowing Canadians a chance to get to know them...
If accurate, X says that 62% of registered Liberal voters had their ballots disqualified, and two candidates were also disqualified. Given the history of the Liberals and their regard for the rule of law this past decade, the suspicion of further Liberal shenanigans should be held.
Let's keep an open mind. For weeks we've been told that Liberal Party membership was surging to 400,000. And then come voting day only 150,000 vote. It wasn't that complicated to vote: be a registered Liberal and use your driver's license and smart phone or go to local post office. Someone needs to explain why only 150,000 voted and/or why 62% of registered Liberals had their ballots disqualified. Carney was going to win this from Day 1. I'm not worried about that result. But you have to wonder why Freeland's and Gould's Teams couldn't estimate their woefully low numbers. The smart money is still on Conservative Minority or Majority based on their organization and ground game. Carney has to hope that Trump becomes more and more belligerent towards Canada so that he can run against him. That's the only option for Liberals.
The procedural obstacles to voting were high. I spoke to a Chrétien-Martin cabinet minister with a sterling reputation for getting shit done (that should narrow it down). They said it took four days of frustration before they were able to register a valid vote. This is in response to real concerns about foreign interference but it’s…not ideal.
Ok That's very interesting. I'm hoping someone can run this part of the Liberal story down. It took everyone I talked to about 10 minutes with their driver's license and smart phone.
"We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president," Trudeau said, adding that "women's rights and women's progress" are "under attack."
I found this quote truly bizarre. It makes no sense. If by 'we', he meant Canada, and 'supposed to' in the simplistic view of the devout believer. Also, progress isn't a destination, so I don't know how we were moving towards it. Of course I know what he means, but it shows the high school level preference for vibes and inability to contend with reality. JT took Fukuyama too close to heart.
There was a consolation prize offered…Ms. Trudeau introduced her Dad to the Liberal faithful, because it’s 2025 and a glimpse of the dynastic possibilities in the near future.
Don’t worry folks. After putting the country into a big debt hole over the last decade the likes of Dodge and Drummond say life is grand. We’re the best of the G7. We have triple star rating. We can buy ships, planes,tanks and drones and get to net zero at the same time. Timing may be everything and Carney may end up winning but Pierre is my hero because timing was just right enough for him to drive Trudeau away. Ding dong the idiots gone.
Trump has given the LPC a political distraction of monumental magnitude - enough to almost totally mask the ineptitude of their governance over the past decade.
The adroit manoeuvring that saw Trudeau put out to pasture and parliament neutralized turned out to be perfectly timed for the Party - it left Canada without a credible leader who might have been able to diffuse the trade and security irritants voiced by the President and parry his flippant references to Canada becoming a US state.
As it is, Trump, aided by our media, our cultural chauvinists and political opportunists stoking the anti-American sentiment that always underlies our conceit of civility, has managed to precipitate an outpouring of self-righteous indignation that posits Canada should abandon its relationship with the country that has protected it as well as enriched it.
The political sands have shifted due primarily to Trump’s bellicosity and dearth of diplomacy - and, understandably a combative stance is the only one that is viable on Canada’s political scene and the few calls for negotiations are met with charges of appeasement.
Lost in the furor are the future realities and the fact that both countries have more to lose than gain by parting ways.
There is no question that Trump’s strategy is causing blowback from the businesses that are dependent on Canadian trade to survive as well as energy consumers throughout the US - this blowback will inevitably lead to opposition to the tariff strategy.
In Canada, however, political opportunism will ensure that any attempt to reconcile the split will be cast as an erosion of our sovereignty and our about to be realized national independence.
The Liberals will now vie for the hardest line against America in competition with the Conservatives - trusting voter amnesia will erase their memory of their ten past years of kicking the problematic cans down the road that now can’t be kicked any further.
Trudeau's responses to the tariffs have been schizophrenic. He flew to Mar-a-Lago but with no plan of what to do when he got there. Then he disappeared for a month. Then he criticized Americans for not voting for a black women. Then he disappeared for a month. Then he came back and as much as stated that Smith's negotiations were treason. Then he got on the phone and negotiated a one month reprieve. Now he seems to be on a routine of talking tough and slagging Trump in the press and then calling him up and begging.
I wonder if failing to elect its first woman as leader, and giving two female cabinet ministers 13% of the vote between them (on the weekend of International Women's Day, no less!) puts the Liberal Party on Trudeau's list of regressive entities blocking our steady if difficult march toward progress.
Yeah, I do think it would be surprising if any Canadian prime minister had gamed out the trade war/ annexation scenario in great detail. Sometimes life is surprising. People get to be surprised.
I congratulate you on the puissance of your rhetoric. If you lather it on just a little more thickly, we might find ourselves sufficiently overwhelmed that the rot lying at the heart of your arguments passes unnoticed.
Our pivot from alliance with to defense aginst the US is not a failure of leadership, it is the necessary reaction to an openly pro-Russian anti-Western Trump. The sands have shifted not because of his tone, but his actions, his open hostility to democracy and the rule of law. This is not a time to appease, to shame ourselves with flattery and capitulation. That way lies the death of the free world. We must resist, and have faith that freedom loving people here, in the US and around the world will overcome our enemies.
Our leaders have clearly stated that this is madness, that we have so much more to gain together. But we must not fail to meet this moment. Trump is our enemy, he is a traitor to all of his country's [former] allies. He must not be appeased.
"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?"
That's a very legitimate question. Poilievre loves campaigning and is good at it. He understands the age of social media, and sometimes descends to its lowering of politics.
But does he love governing?
I used to suspect the answer was no. But that might have been too pessimistic.
Poilievre actually believes things. (He primarily believes in freedom, which doesn't necessarily make him the best defender of Canada.) He got interested in politics by reading Milton Friedman at age 14. So I don't think he's a pure opportunist like, say, Jean Chretien, who epitomized amoral Liberal brokerage politics. (And if Poilievre were an opportunist, the Conservative party would be a great venue for that, because Conservatives are (in the long run) less likely to hold power. And that would have seemed especially true in the late '90s when he entered politics.
And Poilievre has executive experience in Cabinet. He became a ParlSec at age 27 and a Cabinet minister at age 34. Did he compromise his work in Cabinet to throw barbs in Question Period? More experienced observers might have an answer, but I'd be surprised if he did.
Those are two things that give me hope that he plays the political game as a means to an end.
But it's true that it can be hard to stop playing the game once you've grown to love it.
Fair comments, but I think it would be a fair assessment that Justin Trudeau didn’t enjoy the hard work of governing and especially the hard work of following through with his staccato flood of pronouncements.
Oh, for sure. I have no doubts that Poilievre would take governing more seriously than Trudeau has. Of course, that's a low bar. (Trudeau is in love with the sound of his own voice more than just about any other politician I can think of. He loves the camera.)
It's possible to savagely excoriate Trudeau while still holding Poilievre's feet to the fire. That's one of the reasons I read Wells.
All of our politicians live for press conferences and social-media releases. It is their chance to define themselves. You must remember how much Trudeau enjoyed emoting at his daily appearances under the tent during Covid.
Yes. And we had bland, up until 2015. A good sort of bland that worked quite well. Until, that is, the chap Mr. Carney just replaced worked up enough Canadians (recall the white on red "Harper" decals soiling the bottom of stop signs across the country) into rejecting that bland, effective governance we had, instead bringing us sunny days. Ten years later - in this, our lost decade - and we're hardly left in any fighting shape to take on the international opponents fond of pummeling our once sound country and its economy with repeated body shots these days, regardless of the less than inspiring acceptance speech Mr. Carney delivered earlier tonight, trying to assure the nation that the Great Bland Hope has arrived.
At a time like this, we need grit, not bland - and not the sort of grit the once dominant natural governing party has allowed itself to become. If Mr. Carney is successful, though, in persuading a sufficient number of Canadians otherwise, and that he alone has the right stuff to lead us through this looming economic crisis, there won't be enough of him to go around when looking at his supporting cast. A good number had previously indicated they're moving on, and those planning to stay on were never given the opportunity by their old boss to hone their skills, show us what they were really made of, or do anything without overbearing PMO staffers telling them what they were allowed to do. In the eyes of the PMO, they were nothing more than nodding backdrops to a leader fond of making endless announcements.
Add to all this the wildcard that is the 'on again, off again' Jagmeet Singh, his electoral fate not at all looking good, if his dismal polling numbers are any indication. One can only imagine that a sense of desperation will see him seeking al lifeline from the Liberals and a stay of electoral execution.
We're in dire need of a change in Ottawa, and hopefully Mr. Carney will give us our right to have our say on what we want. No point in giving his opponents the chance to label him, like the decal campaign we saw someone else go through a decade or so before...
Call the vote, Mr. Carney. Enjoy a brief courtship with the Laurentian elites and hob bobbing with the G6 or G7 (depending on you to deny Putin entry to Canada and maybe Trump pouting at Mar a Lago). Poilievre will hopefully win and help the nation recover from the most recent 10 year “ Reign of Error” by the Liberals. I have had enough of them.
If I didn't already have a subscription, I would get one. We've turned the page and taken a cut in the long and winding Liberal road. Methinks Poilievre will sleep well tonight.
Both Carney and Poilievre have been planning this campaign for years if not decades, and it's going to take place in a world neither of them wanted. This is not a good time for Carney to promise the golden age of government-by-Davos he dreams of, but Poilievre actually needs to look like a Prime Minister instead of riding a carefully selected set of pocketbook issues to government. I want to say the winner will be the one who adjusts to the real world, but I fear we're in for a month of chest-thumping about Trump that has nothing to do with what we need to do as a nation moving forward in a new world.
After all this time, it's finally hit me, reading this article(random, I know) that Elon Musk was once described as an Accelerationist. A lot of the current "Tech Bros" were also described that way.
Then there's Ezra Klein's editorial this week describing how the current Republicans are trying to create an environment of scarcity to promote productivity. Suddenly, in my head, the gong show at the White house is making more sense.
This is what came to my mind reading this article(really random, I know). Now I'm wondering if trying to join the fray is really the best course of action for Canada. Without the US's support we'll never compete. Compared to other countries, we'll always lag behind in human, intellectual, fiscal, and political capital.
I think instead we should try to be the refuge from the storm. A lot of people will want to avoid what's going on in the US and Europe. By being a nation that sticks to the basics of human and economic development we can create an environment that will be a lot more attractive to the moderate types, in contrast to the rest of the world.
I was hoping that's the direction Carney would have went considering his roots., but this 2 trillion dollar deal... it's not a great start if he wants to split himself from the Trudeau legacy.
$80Billion a year for 25 years to support Carney’s seemingly only raison d’être for finance and government’s main. As for his book, your “uneven “ assessment is being too kind. The book was just a rather weak attempt at best to call on private investors to flock to his side as the UN Special Envoy on climate change and leader of his new climate finance plan calling on the world to spend hundreds of trillions on net- zero. Think I’m making this up? Listen to his keynote speech as Envoy to COP 26. God save Canada. Carney won’t.
I took a policy analysis course at UWO, where we would match proposed government action against its stated aims. Having good goals is almost always the easy part. Reaching them is tricky. When someone says the key to the green transition is a third infrastructure bank (which would be something like the 20th or 30th such thing in the world), I have questions. I'm always a little surprised when nobody else does.
Agree - it’s a proven smoke and mirrors strategy to keep sleepy voters happy
Europe and the UK (and though not Canada yet) spending massively on defense is Trump "winning". It is one of the main things that Trump has been arguing for since 2016. You may not like his methods, but he has gotten the Europeans from having another meeting about doing nothing about defense except virtue signally moral righteousness, to actually making plans to spend. Trudeau and apparently Carney, did not and do not seem interested in ramping up military spending.
Carney is not an pragmatist. He is a another net-zero extremist coming home from a UK and EU deindustrialized by the climate policy and the industrial policy he is advocating. The CDU in Germany, if it can form a government without the Greens, will restart their nuclear plants and go on a massive building spree of natural gas fired electricity generation. France has less of a U-Turn to execute, as they have significant nuclear energy capacity, and will be starting from a much better place.
Norway is cutting itself off from the European Grid. Net Zero is dying a little slower in the UK, but another year of decline under the climate ideologues in Labour should force change in the near future. Net Zero by 2050 and his climate finance fantasies are slowly being rejected everywhere except inside Mark Carney's "big" brain. And Canada will be truly doomed if this climate ideologue shapes our economic future.
Carney has promised to eliminate the consumer carbon tax, but he wants to impose a similar policy that would have the same attempt at reducing Canada's carbon emissions. The USA & Mexico don't have any carbon taxes, so whatever policy Carney proposes will put us at a disadvantage to our competitors.
If the carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions, why doesn't he fix it? Take some of the billions he intends to spend on subsidies and make the carbon rebates do what the Liberals have always pretended: make them revenue positive for 80% of Canadians.
Of course he won't, and for the same reason as Trudeau didn't: the carbon tax is fair, and doesn't provide a mechanism to influence social change or benefit allies. As we've seen, SDTC-like subsidies provide ample opportunities to redistribute wealth to a select few so that is where Carney will go.
In an era of rampant disinformation accompanied by active attempts at political division, Carney is right that you can't simply judge policies on their objective merits. There's no reason to expect Carney is insincere about following the Canadian public in terms of what is tenable. Which is also about the only way to kneecap disinformation — by listening first, rather than setting policy and then using marketing to try to sway the public, which is an approach that's ridiculously prone to disinformation. The discussion here is all policy first, including the incredibly ironic take that Carney is not a pragmatist, despite him instantly jettisoning a policy that he strongly supports on objective grounds.
Which was the disinformation? The government argued that 80% of Canadians received more in carbon rebates than they paid in carbon tax. The Auditor General argued that the total effect of the carbon tax was that many fewer than 80% of Canadians would come out ahead. Both were true, but the government never added the asterisk implied by the AG to their statements.
The government could have said "By Jove, the AG's right. Let's fix that" but chose instead to let that asterisk linger, and that asterisk was all it took to fuel Poilievre's Axe the Tax campaign. The success of that campaign resulted in the Liberal leadership candidates also vowing to Axe the Tax.
I ask again: why has nobody tried to save the carbon tax? Instead, Carney is promoting more selected subsidies and a return to an equivalent of the old manufacturers' tax that the GST superseded. The manufacturers' tax was hidden and a modern version could be manipulated by the government to benefit favoured industries.
The analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer remains weird and confusing with its intended implications. The PBO acknowledged that most consumers are in fact receiving more money from the rebates than they are paying in the taxes, but then calculated some abstract "economic costs" and attached them to the negative consumer side of the equation. He did not calculate the economic benefits of the spending enabled by the rebates, nor the benefits of avoiding climate change (though the latter is admittedly quite difficult to do). He even acknowledged the latter point and said that all climate policies have their own respective costs.
I am not sure how any government could have responded to the PBO's baffling argument, his report only served to muddy the waters of the debate. (I appreciate that your own instinct is to suggest that the tax could be reformed, as opposed to this somehow offering a definitive case against carbon taxes entirely.)
Thank you for the PBO correction.
I didn't find their argument baffling. The carbon tax on, for example, farming and transportation contributes to increased food prices.
I am not sure that carbon is the boogeyman it is claimed to be, but I still support reducing carbon emissions insofar as it will reduce pollution in general. Most agree that every other method of reducing carbon is worse than the carbon tax, so I back the carbon tax. It has limits because energy use is only so elastic in Canada, after which it just becomes another source of revenue.
And yet physics doesn’t care about any of our human folly, and every day the climate gets more destabilized.
Two things can be true at the same time: (1) Net zero by 2050 was always impossible without massive deindustrialization; (2) we have to achieve something close to net zero pretty quickly or large swaths of the planet are going to be very inhospitable and destabilized.
I think Carney is able to hold these two things in his head at the same time more effectively than Trudeau or Poilievre.
There is a climate policy approach that would
make sense for a 2% carbon contributor like Canada that splits the difference between impossibly utopian net zero in 25 years and do-nothing.
You calibrate policy to obtain the stringency required to about match the median performing country as weighted by carbon output.
Another way to put it:
Match the combined rate of decarbonization of the US, Europe, China and India.
There’s no need for Canada to exacerbate regional divisions and impair competitiveness to be a “climate leader”. We have next to no impact on the global concentration of CO2. We just need to do our part.
One fair challenge to this is that harms from local air pollution alone warrant stronger clean air policies.
That makes sense to me. Diplomacy is going to be much larger of a factor than decarbonizing ourself. We don’t matter; really only China and India do.
Would Poilievre pursue such a path? I’ve heard Carney talking about taking the problem seriously which could include diplomacy; I haven’t heard it from Poilievre.
Your reasoning falls apart if other countries adopt the exact same reasoning. If other countries also adopt the reasoning that they should pursue the "stringency required to about match the median performing country", then you quickly get to a place where no one is attempting to reduce emissions anymore because no one else is attempting to reduce emissions anymore.
A collective action problem is ultimately going to require individual leadership and individual setting of positive examples.
I don’t think so. For those countries I listed it really does matter how effective their policy is and in a rational world they would hammer out a four party deal that the rest of the world could sign on to. Their willingness or unwillingness to do that depends not one iota on what Canada does.
Every country in the world both resists and succumbs to peer pressure, up to a point respectively. Even if the U.S., China, and India were all ignoring whatever Canada is doing, they certainly would not be ignoring what the rest of the developed world or the developing world are doing. And there's going to absolutely be some countries watching what Canada does with interest.
If Canada leads, other countries will follow, and if multiple countries follow, one of the larger powers will feel increasing temptation to fall in line. There's absolutely a major difference between a world where Canada is thumbing its nose at the hard work of others and a world where Canada is able to credibly lecture other countries on this file.
I can tell I probably won’t be able to persuade you but I think most people would realize that matching what most of the world is doing on decarbonization is far from thumbing the nose at anyone. There is a cost to trying to be a “climate leader” as mentioned at the top and Mark Carney who is making a point of eliminating the consumer carbon tax seems to recognize that. I expect more recalibrating from him in a world of trade and other wars.
And let's not forget the impacts of our new season…no longer called Summer IMHO but now called The Burning Season. How much carbon was whooshed into the atmosphere when Jasper went up in smoke last summer or before that, in Lytton & Fort Mac? Or more recently in LA this January? These are the escalating costs of continued reliance on fossil fuels that mustn't be ignored — for they will most certainly continue at an even more rapid rate.
Sorry, but how are these two things reconcilable? Because I agree with you that net zero anytime soon is impossible without massive human suffering. But then how do you reduce warming enough?
We don’t get there by 2050. But we’ll get there by 2100 and that will have to be enough. Nuclear energy will be required.
The climate ideologues would have more credibility if they had not been obstructing the nuclearization of the electricity grid worldwide for the last 50 years.
Physicists had the solution, and the extremists actively blocked the solution from being implemented every step of the way for two generations.
The world has spent $2 trillion on so-called green energy and it has reduced fossil fuel use by 2% of total energy consumption.
The only solution to reduce global emissions is the nuclearization of the energy grid everywhere, with natural gas as the transition and residual fossil fuel. Solar, geothermal, and some other alternatives are useful at the margin.
But this assumes that electricity can power everything, but it can’t.
Net zero by 2050 is not "impossible without massive deindustrialization". We have all the technology we need to get there, we just lack the political will.
So what will Canada look like in 2050 if we achieve net zero?
Exactly the same as if we do not, since our emissions are a mole hill compared to the rapidly increasing emissions of China, India, and emerging Asia. And net zero by 2050 is in the process of being abandoned in the EU and the US.
The most effective way for Canada to slow the increase of global emissions, (which is supposed to be the goal), is to export as much LNG as possible to slow the increase in the use of coal, and to help the world nuclearize its electricity grid as fast as possible.
Exporting LNG only helps with the problem if it entirely displaces other more emission-intensive fuels, as opposed to LNG exports just adding to aggregate emissions alongside other energy sources.
Reducing emissions is going to necessarily require some energy/emissions conservation policies, and if Canada is making a virtue of making no progress here, other countries will be tempted to inaction as well, and China and India will therefore feel no pressure to change. Collective action problems can only be solved through individual leadership.
With nuclear energy, there is no need for energy scarcity policies. Coal use is continuing to rise in China, India, and emerging Asia. Every molecule of extra LNG will displace coal.
Restricting Canadian oil and natural gas development means more global coal usage, which means global carbon emissions rise faster. The energy hairshirt fails writ large. Individual country virtue leads to collective failure.
Emerging Asia is just entering its energy hockey stick. Where they move from bicycles to ICE vehicles or coal-fired electricity BEV vehicles.
The energy scarcity policies of the UK, the EU, and Canada have been a disaster. GDP per capita is declining. And the UK and EU have been progressively deindustrialized, with their industry moving to coal-burning Asia.
Thank God for AI, for it is an energy hog and will put an end to the delusions of the climate energy scarcity lunatics once and for all.
"Every molecule of extra LNG will displace coal."
That's not how human economic behaviour works. Humans by nature seek to expand their quality of life, and by extension consume more energy. If LNG is made more plentiful, but coal is not restricted or emissions not taxed, then the LNG consumption is simply added on top of pre-existing coal consumption - not displacing it.
Only by policies that divorce economic growth from emissions do you get to a place where the economy can grow and yet emissions go down. The Nordic countries have higher economic productivity than Canada yet also have carbon taxes.
The European diplomat who made that observation seems to be under the impression that GOP Members of Congress have any influence on how this President thinks and speaks. There is zero evidence to demonstrate that this is even remotely true. I think the "51st State" thing started as a juvenile taunt, and kept going because he thought it diminished Trudeau, who somewhere along the line managed to seriously piss off Trump. I think he keeps doing it largely because some people told him to cut it out, not because no one did...
Trump hates Trudeau on a personal level. In 2018, Trudeau made the mistake of insulting Trump after he left the G7 summit in Charlevoix and the 2019 NATO Summit in London. It was caught on tape. I disagree with Trump's trade policies, but Trudeau's behaviour has made Canada more vulnerable to damage. Notice how Trump doesn't call Mexico's President, Governor Scheinbaum. I wonder how Trump will deal with Poilievre or Carney during the election campaign.
That's an odd take, considering that Trump in December was smiling on camera alongside Trudeau and he celebrated Freeland's resignation from Cabinet (implicitly dismissing her criticisms of Trudeau in doing so). He was always going to threaten Canada with tariffs regardless of what Trudeau said or did.
I don’t know if Trump actually cares what House reps think, but he should. If Dems flip Congress he has a lot more opposition to his agenda.
51st state is America's equivalent to Russia calling Ukraine "Little Russia," sowing "not a real country" propaganda in uneducated citizens' minds.
The words you chose for Canada, "this weary country", really said it all for me. We have been continually worked over by our politicians. Platitudes, slogans, announcements, admonishments. I even see the weariness now in my 30-something children. With a possible election looming (although not convinced the Liberals don't have other plans) how do we get the energy to stay engaged without having the life sucked out of us? Weary is right.
Oh boo-hoo... Snap out of it!
A couple of takeaways from the Convention:
i) Freeland couldn't even crack 10%. That's stunning. Carney can't give her Finance and he can't give her Foreign Affairs. She'll never be PM. No real support from Caucus or fellow Cabinet members. Yet she's committed herself to running again. There's a story here but Paul will take it from here. They say politics is cruel.
ii) Why did only 150,000 out of a registered 400,000 Liberals actually cast a vote? It took most people I know about 10 minutes to do so (driver's license + smart phone). Nobody is talking about this but I expect someone is going to pose the question.
iii) Jean Chretien sharp as a tack.
As we saw many times last year south of the border with former President Biden ("We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men and women are created, by the, you know the, you know the thing."), teleprompters allow one to present themselves as sharp, until they don't.
Rolling out the old guard is hardly the way to present their party as having gone through renewal. Better that they renain in their villas and tend to their grapes, giving those in the wings a chance to shine, allowing Canadians a chance to get to know them...
I think Freeland should step down from politics. I am sure she can find another job that won't be as stressful for her.
If accurate, X says that 62% of registered Liberal voters had their ballots disqualified, and two candidates were also disqualified. Given the history of the Liberals and their regard for the rule of law this past decade, the suspicion of further Liberal shenanigans should be held.
Let's keep an open mind. For weeks we've been told that Liberal Party membership was surging to 400,000. And then come voting day only 150,000 vote. It wasn't that complicated to vote: be a registered Liberal and use your driver's license and smart phone or go to local post office. Someone needs to explain why only 150,000 voted and/or why 62% of registered Liberals had their ballots disqualified. Carney was going to win this from Day 1. I'm not worried about that result. But you have to wonder why Freeland's and Gould's Teams couldn't estimate their woefully low numbers. The smart money is still on Conservative Minority or Majority based on their organization and ground game. Carney has to hope that Trump becomes more and more belligerent towards Canada so that he can run against him. That's the only option for Liberals.
The procedural obstacles to voting were high. I spoke to a Chrétien-Martin cabinet minister with a sterling reputation for getting shit done (that should narrow it down). They said it took four days of frustration before they were able to register a valid vote. This is in response to real concerns about foreign interference but it’s…not ideal.
Ok That's very interesting. I'm hoping someone can run this part of the Liberal story down. It took everyone I talked to about 10 minutes with their driver's license and smart phone.
X as in the personal plaything of our generation's Joseph Goebbels?
Really, though, could you be a little more specific about your source, assuming after looking into it with a modicum of seriousness you stand by it?
Justin Trudeau in December:
"We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president," Trudeau said, adding that "women's rights and women's progress" are "under attack."
Liberal Party hyprocisy taking us back to 1925.
I found this quote truly bizarre. It makes no sense. If by 'we', he meant Canada, and 'supposed to' in the simplistic view of the devout believer. Also, progress isn't a destination, so I don't know how we were moving towards it. Of course I know what he means, but it shows the high school level preference for vibes and inability to contend with reality. JT took Fukuyama too close to heart.
There was a consolation prize offered…Ms. Trudeau introduced her Dad to the Liberal faithful, because it’s 2025 and a glimpse of the dynastic possibilities in the near future.
Don’t worry folks. After putting the country into a big debt hole over the last decade the likes of Dodge and Drummond say life is grand. We’re the best of the G7. We have triple star rating. We can buy ships, planes,tanks and drones and get to net zero at the same time. Timing may be everything and Carney may end up winning but Pierre is my hero because timing was just right enough for him to drive Trudeau away. Ding dong the idiots gone.
Trump has given the LPC a political distraction of monumental magnitude - enough to almost totally mask the ineptitude of their governance over the past decade.
The adroit manoeuvring that saw Trudeau put out to pasture and parliament neutralized turned out to be perfectly timed for the Party - it left Canada without a credible leader who might have been able to diffuse the trade and security irritants voiced by the President and parry his flippant references to Canada becoming a US state.
As it is, Trump, aided by our media, our cultural chauvinists and political opportunists stoking the anti-American sentiment that always underlies our conceit of civility, has managed to precipitate an outpouring of self-righteous indignation that posits Canada should abandon its relationship with the country that has protected it as well as enriched it.
The political sands have shifted due primarily to Trump’s bellicosity and dearth of diplomacy - and, understandably a combative stance is the only one that is viable on Canada’s political scene and the few calls for negotiations are met with charges of appeasement.
Lost in the furor are the future realities and the fact that both countries have more to lose than gain by parting ways.
There is no question that Trump’s strategy is causing blowback from the businesses that are dependent on Canadian trade to survive as well as energy consumers throughout the US - this blowback will inevitably lead to opposition to the tariff strategy.
In Canada, however, political opportunism will ensure that any attempt to reconcile the split will be cast as an erosion of our sovereignty and our about to be realized national independence.
The Liberals will now vie for the hardest line against America in competition with the Conservatives - trusting voter amnesia will erase their memory of their ten past years of kicking the problematic cans down the road that now can’t be kicked any further.
Trudeau's responses to the tariffs have been schizophrenic. He flew to Mar-a-Lago but with no plan of what to do when he got there. Then he disappeared for a month. Then he criticized Americans for not voting for a black women. Then he disappeared for a month. Then he came back and as much as stated that Smith's negotiations were treason. Then he got on the phone and negotiated a one month reprieve. Now he seems to be on a routine of talking tough and slagging Trump in the press and then calling him up and begging.
I wonder if failing to elect its first woman as leader, and giving two female cabinet ministers 13% of the vote between them (on the weekend of International Women's Day, no less!) puts the Liberal Party on Trudeau's list of regressive entities blocking our steady if difficult march toward progress.
Trudeau was invited by Trump to Mar-A-Lago. What kind of "plan" could he conceivably have had?
Yeah, I do think it would be surprising if any Canadian prime minister had gamed out the trade war/ annexation scenario in great detail. Sometimes life is surprising. People get to be surprised.
To combat Trump's stated issues: reduce immigration to the point where we can complete background checks and introduce RICO-like laws in Canada.
I congratulate you on the puissance of your rhetoric. If you lather it on just a little more thickly, we might find ourselves sufficiently overwhelmed that the rot lying at the heart of your arguments passes unnoticed.
Our pivot from alliance with to defense aginst the US is not a failure of leadership, it is the necessary reaction to an openly pro-Russian anti-Western Trump. The sands have shifted not because of his tone, but his actions, his open hostility to democracy and the rule of law. This is not a time to appease, to shame ourselves with flattery and capitulation. That way lies the death of the free world. We must resist, and have faith that freedom loving people here, in the US and around the world will overcome our enemies.
Our leaders have clearly stated that this is madness, that we have so much more to gain together. But we must not fail to meet this moment. Trump is our enemy, he is a traitor to all of his country's [former] allies. He must not be appeased.
"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?"
That's a very legitimate question. Poilievre loves campaigning and is good at it. He understands the age of social media, and sometimes descends to its lowering of politics.
But does he love governing?
I used to suspect the answer was no. But that might have been too pessimistic.
Poilievre actually believes things. (He primarily believes in freedom, which doesn't necessarily make him the best defender of Canada.) He got interested in politics by reading Milton Friedman at age 14. So I don't think he's a pure opportunist like, say, Jean Chretien, who epitomized amoral Liberal brokerage politics. (And if Poilievre were an opportunist, the Conservative party would be a great venue for that, because Conservatives are (in the long run) less likely to hold power. And that would have seemed especially true in the late '90s when he entered politics.
And Poilievre has executive experience in Cabinet. He became a ParlSec at age 27 and a Cabinet minister at age 34. Did he compromise his work in Cabinet to throw barbs in Question Period? More experienced observers might have an answer, but I'd be surprised if he did.
Those are two things that give me hope that he plays the political game as a means to an end.
But it's true that it can be hard to stop playing the game once you've grown to love it.
Fair comments, but I think it would be a fair assessment that Justin Trudeau didn’t enjoy the hard work of governing and especially the hard work of following through with his staccato flood of pronouncements.
Oh, for sure. I have no doubts that Poilievre would take governing more seriously than Trudeau has. Of course, that's a low bar. (Trudeau is in love with the sound of his own voice more than just about any other politician I can think of. He loves the camera.)
It's possible to savagely excoriate Trudeau while still holding Poilievre's feet to the fire. That's one of the reasons I read Wells.
All of our politicians live for press conferences and social-media releases. It is their chance to define themselves. You must remember how much Trudeau enjoyed emoting at his daily appearances under the tent during Covid.
Trudeau has been playing games for 10 years.
"Bill Davis used to say bland works."
Yes. And we had bland, up until 2015. A good sort of bland that worked quite well. Until, that is, the chap Mr. Carney just replaced worked up enough Canadians (recall the white on red "Harper" decals soiling the bottom of stop signs across the country) into rejecting that bland, effective governance we had, instead bringing us sunny days. Ten years later - in this, our lost decade - and we're hardly left in any fighting shape to take on the international opponents fond of pummeling our once sound country and its economy with repeated body shots these days, regardless of the less than inspiring acceptance speech Mr. Carney delivered earlier tonight, trying to assure the nation that the Great Bland Hope has arrived.
At a time like this, we need grit, not bland - and not the sort of grit the once dominant natural governing party has allowed itself to become. If Mr. Carney is successful, though, in persuading a sufficient number of Canadians otherwise, and that he alone has the right stuff to lead us through this looming economic crisis, there won't be enough of him to go around when looking at his supporting cast. A good number had previously indicated they're moving on, and those planning to stay on were never given the opportunity by their old boss to hone their skills, show us what they were really made of, or do anything without overbearing PMO staffers telling them what they were allowed to do. In the eyes of the PMO, they were nothing more than nodding backdrops to a leader fond of making endless announcements.
Add to all this the wildcard that is the 'on again, off again' Jagmeet Singh, his electoral fate not at all looking good, if his dismal polling numbers are any indication. One can only imagine that a sense of desperation will see him seeking al lifeline from the Liberals and a stay of electoral execution.
We're in dire need of a change in Ottawa, and hopefully Mr. Carney will give us our right to have our say on what we want. No point in giving his opponents the chance to label him, like the decal campaign we saw someone else go through a decade or so before...
Call the vote, Mr. Carney. Enjoy a brief courtship with the Laurentian elites and hob bobbing with the G6 or G7 (depending on you to deny Putin entry to Canada and maybe Trump pouting at Mar a Lago). Poilievre will hopefully win and help the nation recover from the most recent 10 year “ Reign of Error” by the Liberals. I have had enough of them.
If I didn't already have a subscription, I would get one. We've turned the page and taken a cut in the long and winding Liberal road. Methinks Poilievre will sleep well tonight.
Both Carney and Poilievre have been planning this campaign for years if not decades, and it's going to take place in a world neither of them wanted. This is not a good time for Carney to promise the golden age of government-by-Davos he dreams of, but Poilievre actually needs to look like a Prime Minister instead of riding a carefully selected set of pocketbook issues to government. I want to say the winner will be the one who adjusts to the real world, but I fear we're in for a month of chest-thumping about Trump that has nothing to do with what we need to do as a nation moving forward in a new world.
Yeah, because pocketbook issues have never gotten anyone elected before?
Mark Carney shares the same multiculturalism and globalism values as the WEF.
In fact, Canada just got another puppet in front of the same cast.
Don’t worry he’ll be gone soon
When he will be replaced as party leader by Trudeau. There will be nobody else left.
After all this time, it's finally hit me, reading this article(random, I know) that Elon Musk was once described as an Accelerationist. A lot of the current "Tech Bros" were also described that way.
Then there's Ezra Klein's editorial this week describing how the current Republicans are trying to create an environment of scarcity to promote productivity. Suddenly, in my head, the gong show at the White house is making more sense.
This is what came to my mind reading this article(really random, I know). Now I'm wondering if trying to join the fray is really the best course of action for Canada. Without the US's support we'll never compete. Compared to other countries, we'll always lag behind in human, intellectual, fiscal, and political capital.
I think instead we should try to be the refuge from the storm. A lot of people will want to avoid what's going on in the US and Europe. By being a nation that sticks to the basics of human and economic development we can create an environment that will be a lot more attractive to the moderate types, in contrast to the rest of the world.
I was hoping that's the direction Carney would have went considering his roots., but this 2 trillion dollar deal... it's not a great start if he wants to split himself from the Trudeau legacy.
I sympathize with this view but I think by nature of geography the storm will come to us.
$80Billion a year for 25 years to support Carney’s seemingly only raison d’être for finance and government’s main. As for his book, your “uneven “ assessment is being too kind. The book was just a rather weak attempt at best to call on private investors to flock to his side as the UN Special Envoy on climate change and leader of his new climate finance plan calling on the world to spend hundreds of trillions on net- zero. Think I’m making this up? Listen to his keynote speech as Envoy to COP 26. God save Canada. Carney won’t.