The Q&A: "I see some of the rhetoric, but I don’t see the actions"

Lloyd Axworthy isn't impressed by Mark Carney. He's big on Wab Kinew though

In a series of posts on his Substack newsletter and in articles and interviews elsewhere, Lloyd Axworthy — who was Jean Chrétien’s foreign minister and minister of human-resources development, and is a former president of the University of Winnipeg — has emerged as a persistent Carney critic on the left. Maybe he’s just not in step with the times. At 85, he recently moved back to Ottawa from Winnipeg so he could spend more time with his grandchildren. Or maybe he’s a sign of trouble to come.

“Other early developments under Carney have not been encouraging,” he wrote in the Toronto Star two weeks ago. “Immigration officials refusing sanctuary to Russian dissidents because of the Safe Third Country Agreement. The prime minister brushing off concerns about his top aide’s ties to Big Tobacco. The foreign minister remaining silent after the U.S. sanctioned a Canadian judge who sits on the International Criminal Court. The Liberals undermining Indigenous rights by fast-tracking Bill C-5. These are not the principled, progressive moves that voters were expecting.”

Most Carney supporters I know have laughed off these critiques. Of course it’s true that you can’t make everyone happy. I don’t know what the political future holds for Carney. Maybe he lasts a decade and transforms Canada. Maybe he never quite persuades voters to Justin Trudeau’s right, while losing the support of voters who preferred Trudeau’s policies to Carney’s. We’ll all find out soon enough. Meanwhile it was a pleasure to catch up with Axworthy. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Paul Wells: I keep seeing your name popping up, offering gentle suggestions for course correction for Canada’s relations with the United States. Is that a fair way to characterize it?

Lloyd Axworthy: I think it’s a very accurate way of describing it, yes.

PW: Let’s start by defining the challenge and then we could talk about what you make of the Carney government’s reaction to the challenge.

Axworthy: Well, I go back to the election, the so-called “elbows-up election.” I think there was a very strong mandate that was not just based on Liberal Party faithful, but had a pretty broad spectrum of people who said that we have to stand up for Canada and the threat of Trump — which at that time was quite striking and challenging, and which has become even more so. As each day goes by, he just looks more ominous. We are watching the creation of an authoritarian state next to us, and I guess my point is that we should be very careful not to be affected by that contagion.

We are susceptible because of all the incredibly integrated ways we work with the Americans, and I think that takes a set of actions and prescriptions that so far have been really limited to talking about the economic impact of tariffs. Let’s use the military as an example. We’ve still got our generals talking about further integration, further involvement with the U.S. and buying their equipment. If you think down the road for a minute, we want to defend our rights in the Arctic. But we’re buying equipment that is totally controlled by Americans or black boxes. What happens if they say no? If they say, we’re not going to enable you to go and protect against some incursion or some problem in the Arctic. Why are we even contemplating that at this time? Why aren’t we tracking a more independent point of view? The defense security side is just one side of that.

PW: Do you have a theory of why Donald Trump got elected and then re-elected? If we had jumped forward to today from 2015, I think it would have been a real surprise that this character got, not just sent to the White House, but sent back to the White House. What do you think is going on in the States?

Axworthy: I think that it’s hit a tipping point. I think there was a lot of build-up, but the Americans have always had this streak of nihilism, of… racism. It’s always been very turbulent. I lived in the United States for five or six years when I was going to graduate school and teaching there. So I came away with an enormous respect for the power and the entrepreneurship and the innovation — but also very worried about the dark side of American politics and American society. And that’s what’s been unleashed. When the whole neoliberal stuff took over —relying upon the market, relying upon individuals, where the State is the enemy, which became the mantra not just of the Republicans or Reagan, but by Clinton and the others — it all became an anti-government underlying problem. If you’ve got a grievance, blame the government, blame Washington. And I think that began to filter, and Trump gave a master classes on how to tap into and exploit those feelings. I just did a Substack post reminding people that back in, what, 2012, [Trump] was out after Obama for being a non-birther. I mean, he was engaged in fictionalizing and making it sound as if it was legitimate, and that just became expanded and bloated.

PW: You have often been associated with a more progressive, more collective current in the Liberal Party. One legend of the early days of Jean Chrétien’s leadership is that the Aylmer Conference in 1991 was a confrontation between Lloyd Axworthy and all the new [relatively more centrist] guys, like Paul Martin, John Manley, Roy McLaren…

Axworthy: The difference was that Chrétien was a very skillful Prime Minister, in that he understood that in the Liberal Party, you could range from the kind of progressive Liberals on one side to the conservative Liberals on the other, and still make it work. Nobody felt excluded. You always had your chance to make your case. What increasingly crept into the party was the whole idea that it was “my way or the highway,” or “take no prisoners.” There became no space or room for the other side. I think that was equally true under [Justin] Trudeau, with the isolating of the more conservative Liberals. He got rid of people that represented those points of view. I guess my concern now is that Carney’s kind of swinging it back the other way, and we’re now a Progressive Conservative government.

PW: Did you endorse a candidate in the leadership?

Axworthy: Yes, I supported Chrystia Freeland. I chair the World Refugee and Migration Council, and we worked very closely with her and her office. Early on [the World Refugee and Migration Council] had been an advocate for repurposing Russian assets for Ukraine and [Freeland] picked up on that. Canada really took the lead on this issue, and she went to the G7 and put it on the table, and so we were in the forefront of making that case. As a result, I established a respect for her, because she had some chops to do those kinds of things. I didn’t know anything about Carney, I’d never met him, except I just had an inclination that I had developed over 27 years in elected office, that I like to see people who are a little more ingrained in the party itself before they become the leader of it.

PW: The last time I saw you, we had lunch in Winnipeg, and you said Winnipeg politics still hasn’t gotten over the General Strike of 1917, and that’s why there’s not really a strong centrist current. It’s still the workers versus the bosses. Does that colour your perception of federal politics?

Axworthy: Yes, it did. Although, just to be clear, I think Wab Kinew is changing the equation. I knew him personally when we worked together at the University of Winnipeg. He was working on Indigenous programs for me at U of W when I was there, and he had a certain kind of quality that didn’t fit the conventional formats or methods. He brought with him a sense of Indigenous spiritualism that we’re not used to in our political conversations. When he ran for election, he asked if I would support him. I said, “I can’t endorse you directly, but I will write a letter, saying that when we worked together at the U of W, you did a terrific job.” That was at the time when the Conservatives were trying to smear him because of his somewhat adventuresome youth. I wrote the letter, and they printed it in the [Winnipeg] Free Press, and some of my Liberal friends were not very happy with me.

[Kinew] has built a coalition. He really has. And he’s still sitting at almost 65% approval rating after 2 years, which is pretty good for a politician these days. In the latest polling of Manitoba, rural Manitoba is increasingly approving of his government, which is highly unusual. The NDP won my old seat, simply by having a message focussed on networking and coalition building. They believe that everybody should be represented, everybody should have a voice, as opposed to the polarizing that’s going on in the rest of the political system.

PW: Some people think that Mark Carney’s trying to do the same thing.

Axworthy: I don’t see it. I see some of the rhetoric, but I don’t see the actions. He’s the Prime Minister, and he has a right to set the tone, but I think they’ve set a very narrow gauge about how to rebuild. So far it’s only pipelines and LNG and the physical assets. I just read Anand’s speech at the UN yesterday, and she’s talking about security based on NORAD and NATO. Those are fairly narrow corridors for us to be engaged in. I think even on the issue of security, it has a much broader range where the world needs what Canada can provide in terms of peacekeeping, in terms of providing moderation on the refugee migration issue.

And we’re ignoring climate totally. If there’s one thing that just surprised me—and I think it surprised a lot of Liberals— is that [Carney] came in based on his reputation as the UN Envoy on Climate Change, and since then, all we’ve been doing is subtracting from it, and not replacing it with anything. I always thought it was paradoxical to hold the G7 meeting in Alberta as smoke was rolling out of the northern parts of Canada. That’s something that’s going to happen to us every year. That’s now a cycle. Whoever is advising [Carney], or whether it’s his own calculation, he’s abandoned that particular issue, which to me is one of the three or four big global threats that we face.

PW: You’ve started a Substack. That is the universal signal that somebody is on the outs with the establishment. Have you sought to put your concerns more directly to anybody in the government, or do you figure saying it to Canadians is enough?

Axworthy: I just don’t have the same connections that I had at one point. The signaling I’ve had is that progressive Liberals are not particularly welcome. People like Karina Gould and Chrystia Freeland were really put on the outer ring, and I think that’s continuing. I was very disappointed about the people [Carney] surrounded himself with, because I thought many of them were part of the same problem Trudeau had— this kind of centralizing, “we’re the smartest people in the room” kind of attitude. And as a result, we’re still not bringing parliament in as a major factor in expressing what Canadians want. There’s not much public engagement. There’s no kind of effort to really connect with a lot of Canadians. [Carney] meets with a pretty select group of people from the business community and certain others, but as a result, mistakes are being made, and I’m concerned that the coalition that voted in the last election is going to become unstrung.

PW: Say the Prime Minister has a sort of conversion on the road to Damascus and decides to bring you in as a dollar-a-year man. What would you advise this government to do over the next 6 months, until Easter?

Axworthy: Well, I would go back to what I just said. I would certainly start with a much clearer effort in participation, engagement, and talking to people which would work to bring in a sense that [the government] is open and transparent, and we’re looking for some new answers. The climate issue is very important. I think the Indigenous issue is just as important. There was an interesting column by Niigaan Sinclair in the [Winnipeg] Free Press yesterday that said, yes, we’re doing all these things, but Indigenous people still have the worst records in terms of health, education, and success. We haven’t broken through that issue.

I think the increasing alienation that’s going on with young people is also an issue. I would start developing a major program for youth employment. I know this probably sounds antediluvian or something, but when I was Employment Minister back in the 80s, we set up a Conservation Corps. We had people out converting slag around Sudbury into green areas. With what we’re facing in the northern parts of Manitoba, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done, and it’s not going to be done by the private sector.

On the international front, we’re also missing an opportunity. The way in which Trump is degrading, day by day, the assets of the United States, just undermining everything that made it an incredibly powerful, effective country — we should be rebounding off that and saying, yes, we can fill those voids. Every time [Trump] says that [the Americans] are not going to build solar panels, or windmills, or EVs, we [in Canada] should be piling on that so that we can be the North American green economy.

We go to the UN, and we make some nice speeches, but we’re not doing anything to fill the void. The Americans have pulled the basic financing out of the United Nations. What are we in Canada doing, and where are we looking for some new partners?

I just wrote a Substack post yesterday. I’m one of those who’s quibbling with [Carney] going over to meet with the Starmer for the third or fourth time. Starmer has no particular sensitivity to Canada. He’s shown that. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister visit Nuuk, Greenland and start talking about how we work together in terms of a network in the Arctic around minerals and protection? Canada was the author of the Arctic Council and the whole point was to keep the Arctic free from the big-power struggles. I think we’re talking about putting our own military effort, but if it means that we’re going to extend the American strategy into the Arctic, then we are making a big mistake.

PW: I know you’re not making an electoral argument. You’re making a higher-order argument. But do you think this direction could end up hurting the Liberals in future elections? The NDP has a new leadership race with Heather McPherson and Avi Lewis. Are either of them catching your attention?

Axworthy: I’m doing a lot of work in Winnipeg these days. The Premier asked me to head up a major study of rail relocation and rail modernization. I’m back there every second week for 2 or 3 days, and I think there’s now some space opening up for the [New Democratic Party] again. Between Heather McPherson and Avi Lewis, those are pretty good candidates. But it’s not just a party thing. I think the narrative, the language, what we’re saying has to be different. We’re going to set up this kind of corridor of major economic development projects. And that’s our answer to what’s going wrong in the world. But we’re not striking in any new pathways. And yet, I think Canadians are open to that.

My liberalism goes back to when I was 17 years old. I listened to Mike Pearson saying, “Canada can be different”. We can do things that the other guys can’t do. We’re not better, we’re not stronger, but we are different, and that, to me, was always a kind of touchstone in my politics.

PW: Does it hurt your feelings to think that that current of thought has been lost?

Axworthy: I don’t know if it’s been lost, but it’s certainly been shelved. I think that’s one reason why I do some of the writing, and some of the talking that I do, to keep it alive. Let’s revise it, let’s make it contemporary, that broader-based liberalism with its human rights commitments.

The most important thing I participated in was the creation of the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, and I just thought that set a tone for this country. It said to a lot of people who had felt on the outside, that they were on the inside, that their rights could be properly protected. But we’re not giving that any new expression. We’re fighting over the notwithstanding clause, and we have to do that. But in terms of how do we translate that particular kind of Charter philosophy into what we’re doing on the issue of equity, on the issue of employment, on the issue of our international stance. I read Anand’s speech, and I saw no reference to human rights. If human rights aren’t being degraded around the world, what else is? It’s just horrendous what’s going on.