There are predictable wounded exclamations from readers who believe my only job, when beholding the winged Pegasus that is Mark Carney, should be to wax his feathers. It's too soon to ask where he stands, they say; wait until we've hired him before the job interview. Or: we know precisely what kind of fellow he is, for he has done great things.
If that's your position, please accept my hearty congratulations. Go do your thing.
My problem is that he's applying for a specific job, at a specific time, that is *different from other jobs*. A bank governor has three and a half weeks to make one decision, and no coalition of provinces or parties or voters is needed to sustain him. A guy who had gigantic financial interests last week should talk a little bit about how that influences his thinking, and you would all be saying so if that guy were Pierre Poilievre's star candidate for finance minister.
Most of all, talking about the complexities of the job forces a candidate to contemplate the complexities of the job. This *improves governance.* Liberals stand for freedom of action? Since when? Until when? In what ways, when these things are tested in a crisis? He wants a government that can pay for "security." Defined how? Until when? What if it's hard?
I ask these questions because it's my job. But I'm left wondering why you don't ask them.
Journalists are supposed to be objective. These days, too many have decided their job is advocacy. Thank you Mr Wells for your dedication to your profession. That's why I am a paid subscriber.
To me, I think its more like you're being a bit impatient.
He has put out multiple policy ideas (scrap carbon tax, add green incentive program, hit 2% NATO spending by 2030). Poilievre has been in politics 20 years and we barely know much more than axe the tax, axe CBC and build homes.
We haven't even had a debate yet in the Liberal race.
If we still don't know anything about Carney after the two debates I will take your point but right now it feels a little unfair to expect him to have a bunch of detailed plans 3 weeks into his political career.
I think your summation of PP's platform is a little bit trite. You may wish to read up a little more. He addresses many more issues and though we don't have costs we do have plans.
Carney has been "advising" the LPC since 2020 and touting climate activism for even longer so I would say his political career is a tad longer than 3 weeks.
Poilievre lacks a meaty platform because he is ignorant about public policy matters due to blinkered partisanship (though the same blinkered partisanship does give us a sense of how he will govern).
Carney, by contrast, clearly has put a lot of thought into policy issues generally speaking, as shown by his book, and yet he is lacking in policy announcements, with one of his few announcements being a reversal of what he advocated in his own book (i.e. now scrapping the carbon tax). Withholding a platform on Carney's part seems to be a conscious choice of a man who is perfectly capable of announcing policies in his sleep.
You suggest waiting for the debates, but we are past the point where countless potential candidates have been weeded out and where many tens of thousands of dollars have been invested in candidates - we are already in the advanced stages of the contest here. It is obvious that Carney has gotten this far based almost wholly on the basis of his non-political background and not at all on the basis of the quality of political campaigning as defined by a substantive political agenda.
A lot of thought lol. You mean net zero policies that have failed in Germany and which everyone is abandoning. Even that ridiculous green banking agreement he pushed is falling apart.
Thank you for asking those questions. It is important that you do, especially in the present circumstances. I wouldn’t subscribe to your newsletter if you didn’t. My point, however, is that many Canadians may feel they have enough information to assess Carney on the one issue that stands out amongst all others: who will best manage the creator of chaos that is Donald Trump? Should they be asking questions to him and the other candidates (and the opposition leaders)? Of course. Is it understandable that many believe they have a basis to make a decision? I think so. That doesn’t mean that a successful central banker will necessarily make a successful PM. But unfortunately, when confronted by a bully, our limbic system takes over. So please keep asking.
Could I ask for a bit more on how Carney is stiff-arming the press gallery, in your view? Is it his lack of availability, or is he going after reporters with ad hominems when they ask him questions?
I'm legitimately interested, though with an ulterior motive of wanting to ensure we are not unintentionally treating less serious issues as equal.
I am curious about this comment as well. I watched Carney being interviewed on Rosemary Barton Live last Sunday. She, the interviewer, was at times bordering on rude (many commenters have pointed this out), but he answered every question respectfully even though some questions and statements were clearly aimed at discrediting him. I’d hardly call that stiff-arming the press gallery but maybe I’ve missed something.
My concern is less about who will stand up against Trump. That will come and go and honestly I’m not sure it will make much of a difference whether it’s Carney or Poilievre. I’m more concerned about the next four years. With Carney adopting Trudeau’s entourage including Telford and Butts, and the rest of the Liberal entourage who have gotten us into our current mess. High debts and deficit budgets, and focusing on feel good measures while doing little about those things that are fundamental to good governance like defence, immigration, cost containment so as to not burden future generations, getting infrastructure built, easing interprovincial trade barriers, healthcare, creating internal dissent and the list goes on.
I’m ready to give another team a go at tackling these problems that have been created by and exacerbated by the Liberal government. It seems like we have a pattern in Canada for the Liberals to get us into trouble and then voting in the Conservatives to get us back on track. Here we go again.
So are you saying that Canadians should rejoice that MAGA-hat wearing Jenni Byrne is all ready to take the place of those staffers you consider so odious? Byrne, who, when she's not vindictively making personal attacks on members of the media, goes after people in her own party who don't conform to her exact brand of vicious, small-minded conservatism?
Here's the thing. Many, many Canadians look at what's on offer from the Conservatives and go, 'here we go again', à la the Harper years (but sans the competence of folks like James Moore and Rona Ambrose) and say no thank you.
I'd take the Harper years right now. BTW how do you know the competence level of the Conservatives who have yet to have had a chance to govern? We do know the level of the gang that is there now and it is not good.
@CleverFish: If you want a little reassurance, I was Poilievre-curious but Byrne was such a huge turn off that I decided the Conservatives won't get my vote. There were other factors, but Byrne was a huge one for me.
Carney’s only released major policy, his climate policy, says that he is bringing the disastrous UK and EU climate policy (and associated disastrous industrial policiy) to Canada. The UK and the EU now have the highest energy costs in the developed world. Norway and Sweden are about to cut themselves off from the European electricity grid (and take their cheap hydropower off the EU grid) because of skyrocketing pricea because of the UK and EU climate policy. The UK and EU are deindustrializing. There is hardly any tech innovation in the UK and Europe. 80% of our exports and 60% of our imports come from countries that will never have carbon pricing. Emerging Asia, the only real potential growth area for our exports, will never have carbon pricing. Carney’s carbon TARIFFS in that context signal he is a dangerous climate ideologue rather than a shrewd pragmatic leader. Canada has had a free trade deal with Europe for nearly a decade now, and it has done basically nothing for expanded trade and trade diversification. And Europe is pretty much the bigger loser in the emerging multipolar order because of their disastrous industrial and climate policies. And when previously notorious dangerous right wing Meloni runs the most stable country in Europe these days , and the UK, France, and Germany are basically ungovernable. Electing Carney would be like electing Starmer. A mistake and disaster from the first day it happens. The establishments’ interest are not longer in the country’s interests. True in the UK and true in Canada. The Laurentian establishment gang continues to believe that they and Canada are identical. They are not.
how 'bout we reduce coal burning by exporting LNG or nuclear reactors. Oh that's right we can't because there is no "business case" and we haven't built a reactor in over 30 years. You want green, make electricity cheaper.
Increasing exports of nuclear energy or LNG would not necessarily result in reduced CO2 emissions, for the simple reason that increased energy availability can facilitate an *increase in overall energy consumption* rather than anti-coal energy displacement.
To ensure overall CO2 emissions reductions practically requires punitive incentives against CO2-intensive development. Hence the carbon taxes.
If the Carbon Tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions, why not fix it? Take the money that is being squandered on all of the SDTC-type subsidies and make sure the rebates actually offset the costs for most Canadians.
The carbon tax is supposed to deter behavior considered harmful, namely the burning of fossil fuels. How is that purpose achieved if you remove the financial pain of burning fossil fuels by rebating the money people have paid directly in taxes?
This is a good question that the government and others should’ve done a better job answering. The way I find to get it clearest is to think about the incentive in extremes. No matter how much fuel you use or don’t use you get the same rebate. So if you use zero fossil fuels it’s all upside or free money if you like. Bank account goes up. If you use a sh!t ton of fossil fuels on the other hand you will pay more than you get back. Bank account goes down.
The federal carbon tax/rebate was designed so that most people received a net positive amount of money. You can even calculate it for your own situation but the overall incentive is to make decisions over time that result in fewer carbon emissions and more rebate kept.
I do think it would be wise for Carney to moderate his climate policies (which he already appears to have done so albeit in a way that is politically prudent but not ideal from a policy standpoint. That’s politics for you though).
One important aspect I think you’re wrong on is your prediction that our major trading partners will never put a price on carbon. They already have. Subsidies and regulations are just another form of carbon pricing, implicit rather than explicit (but less efficient than a straightforward economy-wide carbon tax/rebate).
Mark Carney held or holds a position with the UN as a finance reformer.
In 2020, Mark Carney was appointed United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance.
The whole idea was is to leverage institutional investors in the banking world finance, to use finance to pressure corporations into limiting supply in order to drive up prices so people couldn’t afford to consume as much.
The climate change idea is for people to consume less. Less consumption; less carbon emissions.
Mark Carney helped build this so banks could 'financially weaponize' against people that didn’t follow their agenda. (shades of the Emergency Act - threatening people who donated $50.00 for a cause they believed in with frozen band accounts)
Being that Mark Carney was the architect of all of this I don't believe for a second that a guy with an ideology that is willing to manipulate financial markets to a degree where favouring international price fixing in order to drive down consumption of food, clothing etc. is all of a sudden going to change his mind on the carbon tax.
Having read his book, the accusation that Carney wants across-the-board declines in societal consumption seems to be baseless. The argument for carbon taxes is that they do succeed in creating a divergence between economic growth and CO2 emissions growth.
I don't particularly like Mark Carney. There's too much of the curated image about him - "trust me I'm unimpeachable and I have a history of saving the world. It was all me!". There is also the fact that he is an actual climate idealogue whose solutions are always "tinker with the market economy and that will fix it!". And I'm deeply skeptical that Carney will be able to govern in any way that doesn't make every single policy a market-based climate solution. I.e. take your price increases, because climate! ... Interesting how those solutions never affect shareholder profits.
Nate Erskine-Smith interviewed Mark Carney in November of last year. ( https://youtu.be/2ZfBERgXC4c?si=6W1RwNhCW6GAeuqV ) Looking at the current landscape, I suspect the obvious puppy-love Smith shows for Carney indicates the image Carney has been building within the party for the last two or so years. But more importantly, they supposedly have an hour long conversation on pollicy. I've watched that twice. I still can't name you a concreate policy outside of the carbon tax. The entire interview feels like one of those drawn out ADM town halls I had to attend while in the public service. Many words are said but they mean very little. To paraphrase Jen Gerson: "Outside of highly specilized fields - quantumn mechanics - if a smart person cannot communicate an idea, then they either struggle with communication or they are trying to pull one over on you." ... we're going to "synergize the optimized efficiencies"... Carney very much suffers from the smart person disease of saying nothing about something while making you think he is the expert.
and Erskine-Smith showed his true LPC ethic when he accepted the raise as a minister (after announcing his resignation) while the parliament is prorogued and likely to be defeated -- unless Singh...
Thanks for that link, Tara. Over the 1h and 14m what comes across is a man of experience and seriousness with a clear sense of where Canada needs to go. I’ll admit that hearing someone say “I understand how the world works” is a bit scary, but I’ll forgive him that in light of the alternatives.
Are we really surprised that the Liberals are up in the polls since they dumped a historically unpopular PM? That has to be worth 7-10 points in the polls.
But the team is the same, the advisors are the same, the MP pool is the same. Those negatives won’t go away.
Remember, Kim Campbell was actually ahead of Chrétien in the election polls. 2 seats.
I don’t think anything has fundamentally changed. Reversing 10 years of policy overnight will be noticed. I’m not sure,”Hey, we got everything wrong for 10 years but now we understand what to do,” is a viable campaign strategy or slogan.
By the way, the NDP has destroyed its one opportunity to replace the Liberals by not voting non confidence while Trudeau was still leader.
Who knows what Mr. Carney's policies will turn out to be? But one thing is clear to me. Mr. Carney may be a wonderful new leader. But he will be surrounded by the same old gang of Liberals that brought us to the present point. Katie Telford and Gerry Butts are in his corner. And, when naming ministers, if he wins the election, his talent pool will be the same as Mr. Trudeau's talent pool.
I think that the Liberals need to drastically rebuild. Just changing the quarterback is not enough.
" I would ask myself how that became so easy so soon." Because Pierre Poilievre only has one trick- carnival barking -negative Trump style attacks that goes against the Canadian temperature.
How did this "firewall" breach become so easy so soon? In a word, prorogation.
With much of the media focus on him and his competitors (including Chrystia Freeland) struggling to get any of their attention, it's no surprise the numbers have shifted. He still has a long way to go. Ten years of dysfunctional Liberal rule and an angry electorate are some tall hurtles to get over.
This is very on point. There should be consequences for candidates who evade scrutiny and accountability, but instead they seem to rewarded. So frustrating.
PP was probably the weakest minister in Harper’s government and his policies don’t bear up to scrutiny.
Mr Carney has failed to explain in any detail how he will fix the problems facing Canada. One wonders what his actual policies are. Seems he is just visiting.
Perhaps the only quibble on this read is on Freeland. It takes a special detachment from reality to think you can be a change candidate after being Trudeau’s loyal minister. She showed her character fully as she said nothing (except PMO talking points) as Jane Philpott was run out of the party. She deserves no sympathy for the bed she made.
The ballet question may be who is the better person to stand up to or negotiate with Trump. Does anyone think that a person who's never in his life had a real job could be that person?
The Conservative numbers have always been soft because people don’t like Pollievre. I’ve felt for a long time that if the Liberals could find a leader that the public likes, the Liberals could give the Conservatives a run for their money. And… even before the leader is finalized, the polls are shifting. And no clear policy from the front running leadership candidate. Yikes. Perilous times. We’ll see where we land.
Yes, Carney should be tested. But how? And by whom? By card-carrying Liberals? By pollsters? Influencers? Most Canadians still can’t get their heads around why, if Trudeau resigned, he still seems to be running the country as long as Parliament isn’t needed. I’m writing this in Morocco, where the weather is fabulous and American tourists of THAT persuasion are either absent or as quiet as mice. When I try to explain all this to a native, their eyes glaze over. Oh, Trump will lose interest, they say. They all love Canadians.
Yeah, honestly that’s the weakest half-paragraph in the piece (if I’m lucky). But he seems to be eager to add it to his list of accomplishments, which seems cheeky to me.
A coda.
There are predictable wounded exclamations from readers who believe my only job, when beholding the winged Pegasus that is Mark Carney, should be to wax his feathers. It's too soon to ask where he stands, they say; wait until we've hired him before the job interview. Or: we know precisely what kind of fellow he is, for he has done great things.
If that's your position, please accept my hearty congratulations. Go do your thing.
My problem is that he's applying for a specific job, at a specific time, that is *different from other jobs*. A bank governor has three and a half weeks to make one decision, and no coalition of provinces or parties or voters is needed to sustain him. A guy who had gigantic financial interests last week should talk a little bit about how that influences his thinking, and you would all be saying so if that guy were Pierre Poilievre's star candidate for finance minister.
Most of all, talking about the complexities of the job forces a candidate to contemplate the complexities of the job. This *improves governance.* Liberals stand for freedom of action? Since when? Until when? In what ways, when these things are tested in a crisis? He wants a government that can pay for "security." Defined how? Until when? What if it's hard?
I ask these questions because it's my job. But I'm left wondering why you don't ask them.
Journalists are supposed to be objective. These days, too many have decided their job is advocacy. Thank you Mr Wells for your dedication to your profession. That's why I am a paid subscriber.
To me, I think its more like you're being a bit impatient.
He has put out multiple policy ideas (scrap carbon tax, add green incentive program, hit 2% NATO spending by 2030). Poilievre has been in politics 20 years and we barely know much more than axe the tax, axe CBC and build homes.
We haven't even had a debate yet in the Liberal race.
If we still don't know anything about Carney after the two debates I will take your point but right now it feels a little unfair to expect him to have a bunch of detailed plans 3 weeks into his political career.
I think your summation of PP's platform is a little bit trite. You may wish to read up a little more. He addresses many more issues and though we don't have costs we do have plans.
Carney has been "advising" the LPC since 2020 and touting climate activism for even longer so I would say his political career is a tad longer than 3 weeks.
So anyone who advises the government is a politician now? That's a pretty broad scope.
Poilievre lacks a meaty platform because he is ignorant about public policy matters due to blinkered partisanship (though the same blinkered partisanship does give us a sense of how he will govern).
Carney, by contrast, clearly has put a lot of thought into policy issues generally speaking, as shown by his book, and yet he is lacking in policy announcements, with one of his few announcements being a reversal of what he advocated in his own book (i.e. now scrapping the carbon tax). Withholding a platform on Carney's part seems to be a conscious choice of a man who is perfectly capable of announcing policies in his sleep.
You suggest waiting for the debates, but we are past the point where countless potential candidates have been weeded out and where many tens of thousands of dollars have been invested in candidates - we are already in the advanced stages of the contest here. It is obvious that Carney has gotten this far based almost wholly on the basis of his non-political background and not at all on the basis of the quality of political campaigning as defined by a substantive political agenda.
A lot of thought lol. You mean net zero policies that have failed in Germany and which everyone is abandoning. Even that ridiculous green banking agreement he pushed is falling apart.
He’s (Carney) been behind most of their policies for 9 years. Trudeau has no competency for governing nor policy creation. Are you new here? LOL.
Thank you for asking those questions. It is important that you do, especially in the present circumstances. I wouldn’t subscribe to your newsletter if you didn’t. My point, however, is that many Canadians may feel they have enough information to assess Carney on the one issue that stands out amongst all others: who will best manage the creator of chaos that is Donald Trump? Should they be asking questions to him and the other candidates (and the opposition leaders)? Of course. Is it understandable that many believe they have a basis to make a decision? I think so. That doesn’t mean that a successful central banker will necessarily make a successful PM. But unfortunately, when confronted by a bully, our limbic system takes over. So please keep asking.
Could I ask for a bit more on how Carney is stiff-arming the press gallery, in your view? Is it his lack of availability, or is he going after reporters with ad hominems when they ask him questions?
I'm legitimately interested, though with an ulterior motive of wanting to ensure we are not unintentionally treating less serious issues as equal.
I am curious about this comment as well. I watched Carney being interviewed on Rosemary Barton Live last Sunday. She, the interviewer, was at times bordering on rude (many commenters have pointed this out), but he answered every question respectfully even though some questions and statements were clearly aimed at discrediting him. I’d hardly call that stiff-arming the press gallery but maybe I’ve missed something.
All very fair. I vaguely recall Mark Carney putting a little more flesh on the bones with his speech in, was it Windsor, recently?
Sending my sympathies to Kansas City fans.
Can we now stop with the Comparisons to Brady?
Speaking of the football game ... boy the Americans know how to do patriotism. We look like rank amateurs in comparison.
You mean the booing of both Trump and Taylor Swift?
My concern is less about who will stand up against Trump. That will come and go and honestly I’m not sure it will make much of a difference whether it’s Carney or Poilievre. I’m more concerned about the next four years. With Carney adopting Trudeau’s entourage including Telford and Butts, and the rest of the Liberal entourage who have gotten us into our current mess. High debts and deficit budgets, and focusing on feel good measures while doing little about those things that are fundamental to good governance like defence, immigration, cost containment so as to not burden future generations, getting infrastructure built, easing interprovincial trade barriers, healthcare, creating internal dissent and the list goes on.
I’m ready to give another team a go at tackling these problems that have been created by and exacerbated by the Liberal government. It seems like we have a pattern in Canada for the Liberals to get us into trouble and then voting in the Conservatives to get us back on track. Here we go again.
So are you saying that Canadians should rejoice that MAGA-hat wearing Jenni Byrne is all ready to take the place of those staffers you consider so odious? Byrne, who, when she's not vindictively making personal attacks on members of the media, goes after people in her own party who don't conform to her exact brand of vicious, small-minded conservatism?
Here's the thing. Many, many Canadians look at what's on offer from the Conservatives and go, 'here we go again', à la the Harper years (but sans the competence of folks like James Moore and Rona Ambrose) and say no thank you.
I'd take the Harper years right now. BTW how do you know the competence level of the Conservatives who have yet to have had a chance to govern? We do know the level of the gang that is there now and it is not good.
@CleverFish: If you want a little reassurance, I was Poilievre-curious but Byrne was such a huge turn off that I decided the Conservatives won't get my vote. There were other factors, but Byrne was a huge one for me.
Gerry Butts hasn't worked for the PMO or the Liberals since 2019.
officially :)
My understanding is Butts is providing policy advice for Carney.
Carney’s only released major policy, his climate policy, says that he is bringing the disastrous UK and EU climate policy (and associated disastrous industrial policiy) to Canada. The UK and the EU now have the highest energy costs in the developed world. Norway and Sweden are about to cut themselves off from the European electricity grid (and take their cheap hydropower off the EU grid) because of skyrocketing pricea because of the UK and EU climate policy. The UK and EU are deindustrializing. There is hardly any tech innovation in the UK and Europe. 80% of our exports and 60% of our imports come from countries that will never have carbon pricing. Emerging Asia, the only real potential growth area for our exports, will never have carbon pricing. Carney’s carbon TARIFFS in that context signal he is a dangerous climate ideologue rather than a shrewd pragmatic leader. Canada has had a free trade deal with Europe for nearly a decade now, and it has done basically nothing for expanded trade and trade diversification. And Europe is pretty much the bigger loser in the emerging multipolar order because of their disastrous industrial and climate policies. And when previously notorious dangerous right wing Meloni runs the most stable country in Europe these days , and the UK, France, and Germany are basically ungovernable. Electing Carney would be like electing Starmer. A mistake and disaster from the first day it happens. The establishments’ interest are not longer in the country’s interests. True in the UK and true in Canada. The Laurentian establishment gang continues to believe that they and Canada are identical. They are not.
Out of curiosity, what's your preferred climate policy? Would I be correct if I were to guess it is "do nothing"?
BTW -- Survival and jobs are more important to me at this point than Canada getting to net zero when we are >2% of the world problem.
I'm not even saying you're wrong... I'm just saying we should be honest about what we're choosing.
how 'bout we reduce coal burning by exporting LNG or nuclear reactors. Oh that's right we can't because there is no "business case" and we haven't built a reactor in over 30 years. You want green, make electricity cheaper.
Increasing exports of nuclear energy or LNG would not necessarily result in reduced CO2 emissions, for the simple reason that increased energy availability can facilitate an *increase in overall energy consumption* rather than anti-coal energy displacement.
To ensure overall CO2 emissions reductions practically requires punitive incentives against CO2-intensive development. Hence the carbon taxes.
If the Carbon Tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions, why not fix it? Take the money that is being squandered on all of the SDTC-type subsidies and make sure the rebates actually offset the costs for most Canadians.
The carbon tax is supposed to deter behavior considered harmful, namely the burning of fossil fuels. How is that purpose achieved if you remove the financial pain of burning fossil fuels by rebating the money people have paid directly in taxes?
This is a good question that the government and others should’ve done a better job answering. The way I find to get it clearest is to think about the incentive in extremes. No matter how much fuel you use or don’t use you get the same rebate. So if you use zero fossil fuels it’s all upside or free money if you like. Bank account goes up. If you use a sh!t ton of fossil fuels on the other hand you will pay more than you get back. Bank account goes down.
The federal carbon tax/rebate was designed so that most people received a net positive amount of money. You can even calculate it for your own situation but the overall incentive is to make decisions over time that result in fewer carbon emissions and more rebate kept.
The rebates offset the inflation caused by the tax and are based on need, not fuel burned.
This is the debate about climate policy I wish we were having.
Such a stupid response. Even if there’s a climate emergency there’s no point in doing things (like net zero) that don’t work.
I do think it would be wise for Carney to moderate his climate policies (which he already appears to have done so albeit in a way that is politically prudent but not ideal from a policy standpoint. That’s politics for you though).
One important aspect I think you’re wrong on is your prediction that our major trading partners will never put a price on carbon. They already have. Subsidies and regulations are just another form of carbon pricing, implicit rather than explicit (but less efficient than a straightforward economy-wide carbon tax/rebate).
As far as I can see, Carney's plan is to rename the tax and hide it.
Mark Carney held or holds a position with the UN as a finance reformer.
In 2020, Mark Carney was appointed United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance.
The whole idea was is to leverage institutional investors in the banking world finance, to use finance to pressure corporations into limiting supply in order to drive up prices so people couldn’t afford to consume as much.
The climate change idea is for people to consume less. Less consumption; less carbon emissions.
Mark Carney helped build this so banks could 'financially weaponize' against people that didn’t follow their agenda. (shades of the Emergency Act - threatening people who donated $50.00 for a cause they believed in with frozen band accounts)
Being that Mark Carney was the architect of all of this I don't believe for a second that a guy with an ideology that is willing to manipulate financial markets to a degree where favouring international price fixing in order to drive down consumption of food, clothing etc. is all of a sudden going to change his mind on the carbon tax.
Having read his book, the accusation that Carney wants across-the-board declines in societal consumption seems to be baseless. The argument for carbon taxes is that they do succeed in creating a divergence between economic growth and CO2 emissions growth.
This 💯%
I don't particularly like Mark Carney. There's too much of the curated image about him - "trust me I'm unimpeachable and I have a history of saving the world. It was all me!". There is also the fact that he is an actual climate idealogue whose solutions are always "tinker with the market economy and that will fix it!". And I'm deeply skeptical that Carney will be able to govern in any way that doesn't make every single policy a market-based climate solution. I.e. take your price increases, because climate! ... Interesting how those solutions never affect shareholder profits.
Nate Erskine-Smith interviewed Mark Carney in November of last year. ( https://youtu.be/2ZfBERgXC4c?si=6W1RwNhCW6GAeuqV ) Looking at the current landscape, I suspect the obvious puppy-love Smith shows for Carney indicates the image Carney has been building within the party for the last two or so years. But more importantly, they supposedly have an hour long conversation on pollicy. I've watched that twice. I still can't name you a concreate policy outside of the carbon tax. The entire interview feels like one of those drawn out ADM town halls I had to attend while in the public service. Many words are said but they mean very little. To paraphrase Jen Gerson: "Outside of highly specilized fields - quantumn mechanics - if a smart person cannot communicate an idea, then they either struggle with communication or they are trying to pull one over on you." ... we're going to "synergize the optimized efficiencies"... Carney very much suffers from the smart person disease of saying nothing about something while making you think he is the expert.
Sunny ways 2.0 folks. Sunny ways.
and Erskine-Smith showed his true LPC ethic when he accepted the raise as a minister (after announcing his resignation) while the parliament is prorogued and likely to be defeated -- unless Singh...
Oh it's gonna be Singh. You know it is 😆
Thanks for that link, Tara. Over the 1h and 14m what comes across is a man of experience and seriousness with a clear sense of where Canada needs to go. I’ll admit that hearing someone say “I understand how the world works” is a bit scary, but I’ll forgive him that in light of the alternatives.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👊🏻
Are we really surprised that the Liberals are up in the polls since they dumped a historically unpopular PM? That has to be worth 7-10 points in the polls.
But the team is the same, the advisors are the same, the MP pool is the same. Those negatives won’t go away.
Remember, Kim Campbell was actually ahead of Chrétien in the election polls. 2 seats.
I don’t think anything has fundamentally changed. Reversing 10 years of policy overnight will be noticed. I’m not sure,”Hey, we got everything wrong for 10 years but now we understand what to do,” is a viable campaign strategy or slogan.
By the way, the NDP has destroyed its one opportunity to replace the Liberals by not voting non confidence while Trudeau was still leader.
Who knows what Mr. Carney's policies will turn out to be? But one thing is clear to me. Mr. Carney may be a wonderful new leader. But he will be surrounded by the same old gang of Liberals that brought us to the present point. Katie Telford and Gerry Butts are in his corner. And, when naming ministers, if he wins the election, his talent pool will be the same as Mr. Trudeau's talent pool.
I think that the Liberals need to drastically rebuild. Just changing the quarterback is not enough.
Actually, the talent pool will be much smaller since many have retired and fewer will be elected.
" I would ask myself how that became so easy so soon." Because Pierre Poilievre only has one trick- carnival barking -negative Trump style attacks that goes against the Canadian temperature.
How did this "firewall" breach become so easy so soon? In a word, prorogation.
With much of the media focus on him and his competitors (including Chrystia Freeland) struggling to get any of their attention, it's no surprise the numbers have shifted. He still has a long way to go. Ten years of dysfunctional Liberal rule and an angry electorate are some tall hurtles to get over.
"Retromingent" just earned you next year's renewal fee.
Swiped from a line in Tom Hanks’s lunch with Meryl Streep in Spielberg’s “The Post.”
Projection on the cave wall does it for me.
I like me a writer who follows Eliot's advice; and passes along Plato's wisdom
This is very on point. There should be consequences for candidates who evade scrutiny and accountability, but instead they seem to rewarded. So frustrating.
PP was probably the weakest minister in Harper’s government and his policies don’t bear up to scrutiny.
Mr Carney has failed to explain in any detail how he will fix the problems facing Canada. One wonders what his actual policies are. Seems he is just visiting.
Perhaps the only quibble on this read is on Freeland. It takes a special detachment from reality to think you can be a change candidate after being Trudeau’s loyal minister. She showed her character fully as she said nothing (except PMO talking points) as Jane Philpott was run out of the party. She deserves no sympathy for the bed she made.
The ballet question may be who is the better person to stand up to or negotiate with Trump. Does anyone think that a person who's never in his life had a real job could be that person?
Wait.. was "ballet question" intentional? If yes, genius. If no, a harmless slip.
It was a typo, but I'll gladly take the kudos.
The Conservative numbers have always been soft because people don’t like Pollievre. I’ve felt for a long time that if the Liberals could find a leader that the public likes, the Liberals could give the Conservatives a run for their money. And… even before the leader is finalized, the polls are shifting. And no clear policy from the front running leadership candidate. Yikes. Perilous times. We’ll see where we land.
That's the problem -- we have Prime Ministers who the people like.
How can it be any different? People will not vote for someone they dislike unless the other gang has someone even more unlikable.
One can be competent without having charisma.
Worked out great for O'Toole!
Yes, Carney should be tested. But how? And by whom? By card-carrying Liberals? By pollsters? Influencers? Most Canadians still can’t get their heads around why, if Trudeau resigned, he still seems to be running the country as long as Parliament isn’t needed. I’m writing this in Morocco, where the weather is fabulous and American tourists of THAT persuasion are either absent or as quiet as mice. When I try to explain all this to a native, their eyes glaze over. Oh, Trump will lose interest, they say. They all love Canadians.
Oh my goodness. If there’s one thing Liberals DON’T believe, it’s that people are free to make their own choices.
I share your skepticism about Carney (about them all, actually; not a prize in the bunch), but to be fair he did warn Britain AGAINST Brexit.
Yeah, honestly that’s the weakest half-paragraph in the piece (if I’m lucky). But he seems to be eager to add it to his list of accomplishments, which seems cheeky to me.