I was very impressed by the apparently genuinely warm exchange between Poilievre and Carney immediately following the debate. It just goes to show that despite their differences politicians can still get along on a human level. Of course, they’ll have put their armour back on within minutes!
It was nice, eh? I wish I knew what they said. Especially Carney when he leaned in. I know that Poilievre start off by saying something like “thanks I enjoyed that”.
"I’m not sure why Poilievre hasn’t been showing up at campaign stops with life-sized cardboard cutouts of Chrystia Freeland, Steven Guilbeault and Jonathan Wilkinson. Didn’t Western populists use to know how to do show business?"
Especially since Canada is still (at least putatively) governed by *Cabinet*. We are NOT a Presidential system.
I'm no campaign strategist, and like most commenters here, I'm definitely not the median Canadian voter. But I'm left wonder why Poilievre didn't say something like this?:
"Mr. Carney, your Cabinet is basically Justin Trudeau's Cabinet. This forces you into one of two options. Number one: your continuing Trudeau Cabinet will continue to govern Canadians in the same way it has misgoverned them for the last decade. Number two: like a dictator, you will neuter and overrule your Cabinet just like Justin Trudeau did during the sponsorship scandal. Which of these two forms of misrule do you want to impose on the Canadian people?"
There may be a third option. Assume that JT did what he wanted in spite of what his cabinet advised - like, say the GST holiday which launched the fireworks 3 months ago. What if that cabinet has some good ideas, Carney is an effective leader and collaborator and they come up with useful ideas together? Then, what if they go to parliament and actually engage the opposition parties collaboratively and then onto the provinces etc.? Call me terminally optimistic but it feels like pieces of that are happening with the provinces, the cabinet unity on the response to tariffs etc. I’m not suggesting this as any kind of partisan position. I’m also not sure that PP is capable of it with his ‘I’m the smartest guy in the room approach’. But times like these might produce things that could surprise us all on the upside. Here’s hoping!
Agreed. Confronting the Trump threat calls for a Unity Cabinet or at least an all-Party Steering Committee. How much preferable would that be over the Libs going it alone (or supported by the NDP again) and the Cons sniping from the sidelines.
I am tired of hearing about confronting Trump followed by motherhood statements. What can the next PM do? Counter-tariffs have back-fired, and the alternatives are negotiating Trump and expanding non-US trade, at least as far as I've heard. Any PM can do these things and none are areas of expertise for either of the current crop of candidates or their ministers (looking at you Freeland). If Carney has a stronger solution, he needs to state it out loud before the election.
(*if one isn't concerned about even the most competent Liberal government's relationship with China, or its permanent lack of electoral incentive to consider Prairie interests.)
I doubt Carney is going to through Trudeau under the bus in order to give that kind of a response to the question.
It’ll be interesting to see. JT threw himself under the bus and CF just wrapped the debacle in a bow with her resignation. We need a leader that has all regional interests and needs in view and considered.
I hadn't heard about Justin Trudeau neutering and overruling cabinet during the sponsorship scandal! I would have hoped Jean Chretien would have stepped in.
Ha, yeah, good catch. Oops. Apparently the Liberal-Quebec scandals are blurring together in my mind.
Maybe Chretien would have just given the "Shawinigan Handshake" to Jody Wilson-Raybould. "If I were Prime Minister, the SNC-Lavalin scandal would have been a two-day story!"
For me, one of the issues with the JWR situation was Trudeau's inability to manage his cabinet. Trudeau fostered a culture in which no one, including himself, could wrap their brains around the question, "When the prime minister disagrees with another minister, which of these ministers is prime?" If Jean Chretien wanted one of his ministers to do something, he wouldn't have sent Ben Chin to gently suggest that maybe they consider doing the thing. He'd have directed his employee.
Of course that brings its own set of problems. No arguments here. I'm not saying Chretien would have been in the right to do that - Shawcross Doctrine and all that. But there's a reason ordinary people just got sick of Justin in a way they never got sick of Chretien, and I think this is part of it.
Chretien was effective, no doubt. He understood bare-knuckle politics very well. As for his legacy, I'll go with Andrew Coyne's column upon Chretien's retirement: what made him effective also lowered our politics.
Harper, of course, learned a lot from Chretien. No wonder everybody thought he was mean after nine years as PM.
What Chretien had going for him was his 'little guy' schtick (helped by Bell's Palsy), something that Harper never had, which made him into "Teflon Jean," even when he physically assaulted a protestor. (Chretien went out of his way to beat up a kid on the first day of Grade 9 - some underdog.) But Chretien, due to his humble roots (and Bell's Palsy), never had the vanity of Trudeau.
Still, I seem to recall that by the early aughts, a *lot* of people wanted Chretien to step down for Martin. (For example, the Globe endorsed Martin for PM in the 2000 election.)
Yeah, I want to be clear, I don't in any way endorse Chretien's violent streak - I just think he was better at having direct conversations with people than Justin Trudeau was. But also, this is not an especially high bar. If I hear from one more Liberal MP who served circa 2015-2024 and who says, "Yeah, Justin seemed like a nice guy on TV, I have never actually had a single conversation with the man in my life," it'll be...well, you know what, it'll be unremarkable, because that seems to be the consensus.
I was very involved in the LPC circa the Chretien/Martin feud. It is interesting to ponder - yes, a lot of people wanted Chretien to step down, but I don't feel like a critical mass of Canadians ever got to that visceral "I AM SO SICK OF THIS GUY'S STUPID FACE" place with him that they got to with Trudeau. It all felt so much more genteel - "gee wouldn't it be nice if Jean retired and Saint Paul could take over". But it's very possible that Chretien avoided that intense fatigue precisely because Canadians kind of knew that Martin was gearing up to depose him. Had Martin not be waiting in the wings, maybe people would have gotten to the point with Chretien that they got with JT.
The media landscape is also completely different than it was 20+ years ago. Constant social media and algorithmically driven "comments" tend to shape the narrative far more than "letters to the editor". Having a replacement in the wings helped, but not sure the new media doesn't have more to do with the current mood.
Interesting to read. (I'm mostly not an insider, just an observer.) I can believe that Chretien was more hands-on, because (to my eye) he never had Trudeau's entitlement; he knew that he had to work for everything he got. He always had a chip on his shoulder, which made him a hard worker.
And yeah, I can go with your take on Chretien's retirement. I think the polling numbers would bear that out. Trudeau exited with Mulroney levels of public hatred. Campbell and Carney both immediately brought their parties back up to mid-level respectability in the polls; Martin immediately had 47%, because he didn't have to start out from polling levels in the teens.
Nobody ever thought of Chretien as some kind of charismatic leader, the way they did of Trudeau (and in some ways, of Mulroney). Chretien was never grandiose in his vision, the way the other two were. So perhaps he didn't create as much disillusionment in the mind of the swing voter.
"If I were Prime Minister, the SNC-Lavalin scandal would have been a two-day story!"
It wouldn't have been a scandal in the first place.
Chretien would have recognized the alternative path which was eventually followed: SNC said "Yea, we are sort of guilty with excuses", threw Sami Bebawi under the bus and paid a fine. That is exactly what a DPA would have given, except maybe for Sami under the bus.
SNC (now LackinRealism) was never prevented from bidding on federal contracts.
He did the GST holiday over the objections and his Finance Minister and then tried to demote her to get her out of his war. She totally called him out on it in her very British resignation letter 😅
True that his cabinet is essentially the same. However, it's only for a month or two and putting newbies in hardly gives them time to find their feet and we needed some sort of stability in these times. Let's see who gets elected and hopefully we will see some new blood. Personally, I'd discard the three cardboard cutouts, particularly the two guys. Freeland is a long time friend so there's that.
Nice piece Paul, direct and to the point. I think most would agree with your assessment. I like a lot of what Carney has to say, but simply cannot ignore or accept his apparent "about face" on much of the Trudeau legacy and platform, much of which are also in his own long-term platform and history elsewhere.
Carney's deliberate and unabashed platform plagiarism (stealing Poilievre's ideas) is in plain sight for all to see. His exaggerations and false claims regarding who saved Canada's finances and when, are well-reported. Same for his tenure at the BoE. His (alleged) personal and financial scandals (Brookfield, China, Caymans etc) are too familiar to those of us who have been deeply disappointed and annoyed with Trudeau's lies, corruption, treachery and misuse of power. With all this in mind, I don't trust Carney. He seems a lot like Trudeau in character, only much smarter and without the sickening virtue-signaling. He should have tried running for a few months in order to build trust before pulling the trigger on this election.
I voted Conservative today, mainly because I pay attention to details, have a functioning memory, and value Canada as a born-here Canadian. As a mature adult, I also value fiscal responsibility, social sanity and personal responsibility. I can't believe the sheer incompetence we've endured over the past 10 years of Trudeau. There should be a national "AFTER-ACTION REVIEW" of this unmitigated disaster, in the hope that future generations might avoid repeating it.
Possibly with Butts' advice, Carney hitched his cart to the bogeyman that is President Trump, hoping to wash away our memory of Trudeau, and parachute in to become Canada's saviour. It is my view that President Trump's actions wrt Canada and tariffs, are personal; a direct result of Trudeau's continued arrogance, disrespect, denial and failures to address problems that were brought to his attention many times; a) border security, b) fentanyl, c) NATO, d) free-riding on US security, e) turning a blind eye to Chinese interference, f) divisive virtue-signalling and wokeism.
On top of it all, I suspect Trump was probably also pissed with "Governor" Trudeau's publicly lamenting US voters' failure in not choosing a black female for president (despite Kamala being exposed as a looming disaster for the USA and for this planet). This was a direct and personal attack against a sitting president, who had all the cards.
All this said, I see rough times ahead, financially and otherwise.
I'm voting Liberal today to ensure that people who have big feelings about "wokeism", "black females", and being a "born-here Canadian" lose. CBC's poll tracker suggests a 98% chance of this working out for me.
I think he was pointing out Trudeau's position on not electing a black female in the US. I note that the LPC is the only party that still has not had a female leader. Also, I don't see and issue with being a born here Canadian or valuing Canada. I think you may be the type of person who sees micro aggressions everywhere. Interesting reasons to vote as you do.
I am, indeed, the type of person who recognizes that there are microaggressions everywhere. Thanks for the compliment.
It's interesting to me that "woke" is the hill so many right-wingers want to die on. Historically, it's just meant "aware of systemic injustices that exist". In demonizing "woke", the right has chosen to fight not over whether the injustices exist, but over whether it's good or bad to be aware of them. Every time someone derides wokeism, I hear them saying, "Ha ha, look at that goober, being 'aware' of 'reality'! What a clown!" So: yeah, there are microaggressions everywhere. Thanks for playing.
For what it's worth, I do agree with Ron that it was really unnecessary for Trudeau to poke the bear in the way he did by stating the simple, obvious fact that there's no reason but racism and sexism for anyone to vote for a six-time bankrupt palpably intellectually disabled convicted felon over a qualified and competent vice-president. There was no political upside to that coming from the prime minister of Canada., in roughly the sense that if a school bully who's forty times your size and has your head in a toilet tells you that 2 + 2 = 5, there's no upside in correcting him.
It's interesting to me that you think the only reason that someone wouldn't voter for Kamala is that they are either a racist or misogynist or both and because Trump was convicted of a crime yet you support the party that has an PM and cabinet ministers convicted of ethics violations, threw the women who pointed out the ethics issues out of the party.
Wow George, this last post makes me think you should reconsider your information sources and reevaluate your opinions, before sharing them with us.
Many of Mark Carney's stated positions over the past few weeks appear to indicate that maybe he'd come to his senses, showing a little fiscal and social sanity. But I watched and heard his real truth leak out a few times... And today's news; that Carney plans to run even bigger deficits than Trudeau did, tells me things are about to get worse; much worse...
...If he wins.
I won't blame all voters; some need to learn an occasional life-lesson. But I'm afraid we're ALL about to learn a hard lesson, together. Maybe we'll finally come to realize, that personal charm and charisma are not actual requirements for the job, nor is competence alone, nor being independently wealthy. One would think Trudeau taught everyone that.
Most don't have the time to dig into the truths behind the scenes... To be fair, it's too bad we all didn't have a chance to watch Carney & company try to right the ship for a few months, before calling the election. That the election was called so quickly, looks a little too convenient...
Hi, Ron - I doubt we agree on very much, but I give you full credit for coming back with such a classy, dignified response when I've been more belligerent than I ought to have. I apologize for the harshness of my tone, and thank you for engaging as respectfully as you have. I wish I were better at that and continue to work toward it.
The thing I usually remember (not so much this weekend) is that people with your views and people with my views just increasingly live in different worlds. If I lived in your world, I'm sure I'd see things the way you do, and vice-versa.
And can we add appreciation for the genuine civility of the two debates? Tone matters. We can disagree without being disagreeable, as someone's grandma used to say.
I'm skeptical that "Poilievre had the best night he’ll ever have in politics unless he is very lucky for the next ten days" as he failed to lay a glove on Carney when the Conservative Leader clearly needed to do so if one believes the polls. I kept waiting to see Poilievre live up to his reputation as a powerful debater who would cut up the rookie politician but saw nearly no evidence of that. Poilievre did come across as a human being in both the last question and the closing, but left this viewer with a too-little, too-late feeling given Carney's adequate French, adequate debate performances, and sterling resume that seems to fit the existential moment for Canada.
That's all fair. I just think voters are less impressed with debate skills or memorable moments than people like us are. It's easy to imagine "How many? How many?" Poilievre showing up and making steam come out of Carney's ears. I'm not sure he'd have been helping himself if he did that.
Poilievre needed to be less negative, more likeable, more mature than he has been up until this he last week. And he did that. I’m no fan of his, and I don’t trust him. But, I did find him more likeable and mature and less like the devil that people on the left say he is. I say that even as I don’t believe that was a genuine tearing up. I feel like it was planned. Nevertheless, I thought he did well last night. If he was smug and nasty, he would be going down in flames. As it stands, this debate likely has little impact on the vote, but maybe a bit of solidifying for both the libs and cons, maybe helped cons more than libs in very tight races. When it comes to Singh, I hope no one falls for his pie in the sky, spend everything platitudes. The NDP need to get serious and offer up fulsome plans that are costed. Enough with this constant barrage of billion dollar pandering.
His "reputation as a powerful debater" is very, very much in the eye of the beholder. Some people are impressed by the "date and time! date and time! Date! And! Time!" thing, but those people are already voting for him.
I've seen polls where he's at 40%, which is remarkable - better than I've seen a conservative do in decades. The problem is, the thing that makes him slightly more popular than Scheer or O'Toole or Harper also galvanizes the 60% of Canadians who are not conservatives to vote for the Liberals rather than say, "Oh, I'll give the Greens a try this time."
Yes, in ordinary times that 40% would have given him a majority government and it must be very tough for him and his supporters to see that lead slipping away so dramatically.. However, clearly more than 40% of other voters do not want to risk him winning and so are coalescing around one person to ensure that PP does not become our PM. Particularly in these precarious times.
Yes, I'm a Liberal who has (until now) liked every Conservative leader in every federal election I've been eligible to vote in. I generally prefer my guys but don't dislike the other guys. I remember the STOP HARPER days and thinking, "Stop him from what, wearing a sweater-vest?" There were days on which I preferred Harper, Scheer, and O'Toole to my party's leaders. I'm confused by people who think every conservative is a monster - like, I would be happy to call this whole election off and just put Joe Clark in charge.
But Poilievre is...not my kind of guy, and this year is the most enthusiastic I've ever been about voting Liberal.
I just don't understand people who must always vote for party X regardless of who they are running, what there policies are, what their record is, and what they are doing to the country. I started as a Mel Watkins NDP and since have voted either Liberal or Conservative depending on who I thought would be best for my family, me and the country (in that order).
Wait, are you saying I do that? In a response to a comment where I said I generally like the other party?
I vote with my family's needs in mind, too (though, really, the fact that you put your own interests ahead of the country's says enough about your character - this election is basically about "selfish" and "not", and "selfish" is getting creamed.)
But also, I have Jewish family members, so the guy who's big into demonizing "globalists" (look up what ethnic group alt-right types tend to mean when they say that) is out. I have trans family members, so the guy who goes on Jordan Peterson's podcast and shares his radical-right views about "gender ideology" is out. I have family members who've been tossed in jail for driving while black, so the guy who wants to get "tough on crime" is out. I have family members who've struggled with mental illness, so the guy who spent months using "wacko" as a slur is out. I gave serious consideration to voting Conservative (and sometimes did vote Conservative) in the seven general elections of my adult lifetime when their leader seemed like a decent human being. This time is different. And, again, I should feel more magnanimous than I do, given that my guys are winning.
We can agree though, that your guys are winning. I guess we will continue to get the government we deserve. And yes, I vote what is good for me but since I believe the country should be stronger what's good for me is a country that doesn't denigrate itself and believe that we are a post-national state with no identity of our own.
So the candidate that is pro-Israel and seeks to stop the Hamas protestors is CARNEY? The guy who was advisor to PM blackface and the party who supported him isn't the racially biased and who got rid of strong women like JWR and Jane Philpott is best for you? You equate tough on crime with racism? I think tough on crime means tough on criminals. You have a problem with "Wacko" which merriam webster defines as "a person who is absurdly or amusingly eccentric or irrational" not mentally ill - the conclusion to which you leapt. I think if you read values you may want to ask your guy "As you wrote in your book Values and advised Justin you believe in Carbon taxes and thought it right to tax capital gains. Why then have you adopted the Conservative policies to remove carbon taxes, remove capital gains taxes, tax of GST on new homes and taken credit for the NDP Dentalcare and Pharmacare? Do you really have any values or principles beyond getting elected. "
“I think we succeeded in not putting our thumb on the scale for any leader. In fact, after the debate ended, Poilievre and I had a conversation on stage. “You know what?” he asked me. “I just spent two hours with you, and I have no idea who you’re going to vote for.””
I went to junior high with Ezra Levant. He was very quiet, nerdy and very, very smart. His current public persona may be a very clever (and lucrative) act.
I really did think, for the most part, Poilievre had a great night. If this debate had been my only exposure to him, I'd have mostly liked him.
The "I built 200,000 homes" / "no, six" / "no, 200,000" was silly on all counts, mostly on Singh's. When Poilievre was Stephen Harper's minister of getting up in the House and screeching that Michael Ignatieff did not come back for you, he actually built zero homes. If he'd had the courage in the debate to say, "I didn't build six homes. I didn't build two hundred thousand homes. It was not I who built the homes. Our hard-working everyday construction workers built the houses so that other people could inhabit the homes, cook the food, watch the TV, and sleep the beds on a nice house on a nice street near a nice tree in a prosperous town in an adequate province in a non-broken country," I'd have respected that.
I agree, Singh made an ass of himself, multiple times. Who built more homes was not the real issue. The issue was that Trudeau was told early on, when Sean Fraser was housing minister, that ramping up immigration and migration levels (of all kinds) would cause big problems if the government didn't also prepare in advance for the obvious impacts. And this on top of record inflation. Trudeau blundered ahead anyway, and it took a very long time for him to back off. The resulting crises in housing, healthcare and public acceptance of immigration, was a self-owned error of epic proportions. I believe Mark Carney is much wiser than Trudeau and wouldn't make such a colossal mistake. But Carney brings other problems...
That's when Sean Fraser should have resigned. Not when he thought he would lose his seat. I would be something to see a cabinet minister have the "balls" that Jane Philpott had to resign on principle. Off course she got thrown out of the party for having principles.
Funny thing George. The other day I heard Carney saying my government will build x million homes and I thought no Carney your government won’t. ( insert your last paragraph). He would look pretty good with his hard hat, safety glasses and his construction Bob tool belt though.
Housing: it remains unclear after listening to the English debate how the Conservatives plan to build the homes. Their carrot and stick proposals make no sense, and I got no further clarity in the debate.
The Liberals have a different approach, which has some intriguing options if they can focus and follow through. But if I understand correctly (always possible I don’t) they are offering to reduce municipal permit fees for developers which are an important revenue source for municipalities, and provide federal funds to municipalities to make up the shortfall. New homes require new roads, sewer, water, parks, etc which are all funded at a municipal level. If this is adopted, what’s the cost here? Seems a sleight of hand moving money from one level of government to another, but at the end of day it’s all taxpayer funded, and it becomes a federal deficit instead of a local one. Is this smoke and mirrors accounting? I can’t tell and remain confused.
The focus on supply side seems to ignore the demand side of things. Without reducing overall immigration (including TFW and foreign students) for awhile then it’s window dressing and housing and rent shortages will continue.
Ps. Trudeau came to Vancouver in 2015, spoke about his concerns about housing affordability, and that if elected his government would be examining the issue and looking for solutions because he saw it as a real problem. The rest is history as they say.
The answer to your question is that the federal government currently gives "infrastructure grants" to the municipalities, which are supposed to help pay for everything from new sewer pipes to street repair to a new roof on the hockey rink. The grants have been erratic and unreliable in their delivery by the federal government, and the result is often poor or non-existent planning at the municipal level. I'm gathering the Carney plan is to replace part of those infrastructure grants with different grants tied to housing starts. Hopefully they'll allow multi-year planning which is not the case now.
Carney says he's results-oriented. I can't think of a more hopeful example than this.
Hope I was clear here - my perspective comes from years of watching a well-intentioned municipality try to plan sensibly for its future while relying on a silly federal policy for the money to make it all work.
So yes, it's the same money but it's not smoke and mirrors - it's hopefully, finally, injecting some good sense into the system.
Reflecting on what I have heard, I remain concerned that the move to reduce ‘fees’ for new construction (and thus encourage new home building) and make up the shortfall with federal money will, if enacted across the country, ramp up federal deficits. Maybe they’ll cut costs somewhere else…
Nothing is free.
Bonus is there will be increased opportunities for local MP’s to show up with infrastructure cheques. As mentioned, any such funding will need to be predictable and sustainable for local governments to properly plan.
i was going to say that I defer to your greater knowledge but what's truer is that I'd like to know more. Perhaps this is something that Paul Wells could follow up on. Though I don't remember him doing money stories?
Maybe if the subscription pot gets deep enough at some point, and he's looking for a fellow reporter, he could hire someone with the inclination and skills to follow this kind of money story. Would enough people care?
Ah. Checking your subscriber page, I see you've quoted a man named David Clinton with a page called The Audit. He's clearly my guy on Canadian money matters. So interesting. Thanks.
> Seems a sleight of hand moving money from one level of government to another, but at the end of day it’s all taxpayer funded, and it becomes a federal deficit instead of a local one.
The big difference between municipal revenue and federal/provincial revenue is that the former does not increase with the economy like the latter. This is *why* upper level governments downloaded on to municipalities in the first place — because they knew they couldn’t afford to provide the same level of services. It was a sneaky way cutting them.
Uploading costs is exactly what’s called for now when municipalities are running a racket trying to fund their services and fancy facilities on the backs of new home buyers.
The "carrot & stick" approach to building housing, DOES make sense. But it is in of itself, not a complete solution. Poilievre at least has the insight to recognize some key bottlenecks at the municipal and provincial levels. The costs of municipal permits & fees, conservation assessments & fees, service connection fees and other fees, legal fees and real estate commissions, all burdened with the additional parasitic GST & PST, are themselves, now a show-stopper. It seems everyone wants their cut, and the buyer of a new home pays not just for the material and labor of their house, but the many other stakeholders who they pay before they can take possession. And of course MPAC and the municipality are perfectly happy to set the annual property tax to very high levels. Imagine a 1M$ purchase price home (not uncommon), with taxes, fees piled on. Then imagine a 10k$ annual property tax hit (assuming 1% mill rate, which is probably underestimating it). And then there is the bank mortgage... Who in their right mind would enter into such a purchase? The finished and ready-to-move-in cost of a home today, is nominally more than twice what it was a decade ago. It's called inflation; something Justin never understood nor respected, e.g. "You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy", and "We can afford to spend more... Interest rates are low, money is cheap". The mess that was caused by the Liberals, is collossal, will take a generation or more to get past.
Poilievre has also taken great pains to explain his individual strategies (platform) over the past several years, in the form of educational videos on YouTube. I would encourage the reader to go check them out. Key topics you'll find, include his ideas on the housing market, why monetary policy is important, and many others.
Mark Carney is without a doubt, a very smart guy, and is well-spoken. But anyone who plans to vote Liberal today, just because Mark Carney took the helm a few weeks ago, should look very closely at his fiscal involvement in Canadian politics since 2020, when he became a close financial advisor to the Trudeau government. And that includes the mega-spending during and after the pandemic. Much if not most of that spending was completely unnecessary. But the results of this out-of-control spending left us with over 1.2T$ in national debt. Take some time and find out how much of your annual income tax bill goes directly to pay interest on federal debt.
That's what happens when those in charge operate on emotion rather than facts and intelligent reason. To get a better insight to Mark's belief system, look closely to his connection to the WEF. Look at his attitudes toward Gaza protests, his antisemitic remarks during the current election, and his generally "globalist" world-view. Do you think his one-line "answers" are realistic? Maybe you think we've been moving too quickly with immigration & migration today? Look ahead...
Outlined the additional parts, which involve major (re)training and building up our tradespeople. Many months ago, the simple fact was put forward, that there simply not enough tradespeople in the country to build homes any faster than the present rate. Federal governments like to talk about how many billions$ they're spending for this and spending for that. THIS IS NOT A PLAN. And a federal government will NEVER be able to project-manage such an endeavor. Anyone who tells you they're going to build 500k homes a year, is delusional, or lying. Look at Trudeau's announcements on this. Lots of steak for the big $ announcement for INVESTMENTS (hint: they're never investments), but ALWAYS zero success in achieving results. Don't believe me, go do your own research. GOVERNMENT PROJECTS ALWAYS TURN OUT TO BE BOONDOGGLES.
Regarding his successes as Governor of the Bank of England, here's the impression Mark left in the UK...
I think that the TV debating era has come and gone unless someone can entice the leaders into a barely manageable free for all that would reveal true, on yer feet debating skills. A little reality TV edginess is needed.
Two opposing goals are competing against each other. The leaders don’t want to make any verbal mistakes (policy) or in presentation (optics). Playing it safe results in “everyone survived so they are all winners”. This is boring and is just a regurgitation of talking points seen elsewhere. Besides, I thought the idea of debating was to produce a winner?
The competition is how the debate functions, which is based on fair play, which is boring. Flooding the field with too many voices is fair but boring. A political party polling under 10% (hello NDP, Green Party, Bloc, PPC) has nothing to offer as the chances of winning the election are zero. One note bleating about healthcare, sovereignty or ________, is wasted microphone time.
The media hype is not delivering a watchable product where voters can LEARN much anymore. The landscape has shifted to optics and there are lots of opportunities for voters to get their impressions about haircuts, glasses, apparel and charm without sitting through a two night beauty contest.
I had a good impression of both the English & French debates. Steve Paikin was awesome (as usual). And the French debate moderator was pretty good as well. The multiple-translators worked out perfectly, and were able to keep up, even when participants were talking over one another (always annoying). I'm happy the Greens were out, because they're nothing but a narrow-interest side-show and a time-waster in a serious conversation such as this. Singh's NDP have become attention-seeking extremists, as far as mainstream Canadians are concerned (there are some notable exceptions in the party). Singh wouldn't stop talking-over Poilievre or Carney during much of the English debate, and I don't know anyone who wasn't annoyed.
Summary, these sessions were far more informative than in previous years. Unfortunately there is far too much subject matter than can possibly be covered adequately within 2 hours; hence the very short time-limits on individual questions and responses, and the close-watch on the timers. There's no way the public can get properly informed (and educated) in such a short time period. I'd personally like to see more of a marathon debate approach, even if spread over several days. Take the major networks out of the equation - to remove any complaints about bias. There are some excellent podcast programs out there that show just how much you can learn about somebody, in a 3 to 5 hour podcast interview...
For sure, multiple debate sessions are badly needed. One or two sessions will never be enough.
They must have been broadcasting something else where I live. Each participant just seemed to be quoting verses from Party greeting cards. I left when one of them proposed solving the housing problem by building prefab houses using Canadian lumber. Geezus, the solution has been there in front of us all this time! Does that group represent the best that Canada can offer as a Prime Minister?
Thank you for this. I can always count on Paul Wells to give us good (and non-partisan) politics. That this makes PW superlative says much that is good about him (and much that is bad about the modern social media / news media environment).
I find it unfortunate that the electors feel the liberals under Carney will now be different and refuse to give a chance to Poilievre to govern. Now the liberals with a new inexperienced politician as leader popped up by previous NDP voters will be the government. I don’t understand. Poilievre is a dedicated
I was very impressed by the apparently genuinely warm exchange between Poilievre and Carney immediately following the debate. It just goes to show that despite their differences politicians can still get along on a human level. Of course, they’ll have put their armour back on within minutes!
It was nice, eh? I wish I knew what they said. Especially Carney when he leaned in. I know that Poilievre start off by saying something like “thanks I enjoyed that”.
"I’m not sure why Poilievre hasn’t been showing up at campaign stops with life-sized cardboard cutouts of Chrystia Freeland, Steven Guilbeault and Jonathan Wilkinson. Didn’t Western populists use to know how to do show business?"
Especially since Canada is still (at least putatively) governed by *Cabinet*. We are NOT a Presidential system.
I'm no campaign strategist, and like most commenters here, I'm definitely not the median Canadian voter. But I'm left wonder why Poilievre didn't say something like this?:
"Mr. Carney, your Cabinet is basically Justin Trudeau's Cabinet. This forces you into one of two options. Number one: your continuing Trudeau Cabinet will continue to govern Canadians in the same way it has misgoverned them for the last decade. Number two: like a dictator, you will neuter and overrule your Cabinet just like Justin Trudeau did during the sponsorship scandal. Which of these two forms of misrule do you want to impose on the Canadian people?"
There may be a third option. Assume that JT did what he wanted in spite of what his cabinet advised - like, say the GST holiday which launched the fireworks 3 months ago. What if that cabinet has some good ideas, Carney is an effective leader and collaborator and they come up with useful ideas together? Then, what if they go to parliament and actually engage the opposition parties collaboratively and then onto the provinces etc.? Call me terminally optimistic but it feels like pieces of that are happening with the provinces, the cabinet unity on the response to tariffs etc. I’m not suggesting this as any kind of partisan position. I’m also not sure that PP is capable of it with his ‘I’m the smartest guy in the room approach’. But times like these might produce things that could surprise us all on the upside. Here’s hoping!
Agreed. Confronting the Trump threat calls for a Unity Cabinet or at least an all-Party Steering Committee. How much preferable would that be over the Libs going it alone (or supported by the NDP again) and the Cons sniping from the sidelines.
I am tired of hearing about confronting Trump followed by motherhood statements. What can the next PM do? Counter-tariffs have back-fired, and the alternatives are negotiating Trump and expanding non-US trade, at least as far as I've heard. Any PM can do these things and none are areas of expertise for either of the current crop of candidates or their ministers (looking at you Freeland). If Carney has a stronger solution, he needs to state it out loud before the election.
Theoretically possible, I suppose*
(*if one isn't concerned about even the most competent Liberal government's relationship with China, or its permanent lack of electoral incentive to consider Prairie interests.)
I doubt Carney is going to through Trudeau under the bus in order to give that kind of a response to the question.
It’ll be interesting to see. JT threw himself under the bus and CF just wrapped the debacle in a bow with her resignation. We need a leader that has all regional interests and needs in view and considered.
I hadn't heard about Justin Trudeau neutering and overruling cabinet during the sponsorship scandal! I would have hoped Jean Chretien would have stepped in.
Ha, yeah, good catch. Oops. Apparently the Liberal-Quebec scandals are blurring together in my mind.
Maybe Chretien would have just given the "Shawinigan Handshake" to Jody Wilson-Raybould. "If I were Prime Minister, the SNC-Lavalin scandal would have been a two-day story!"
That last sentence is absolutely true.
For me, one of the issues with the JWR situation was Trudeau's inability to manage his cabinet. Trudeau fostered a culture in which no one, including himself, could wrap their brains around the question, "When the prime minister disagrees with another minister, which of these ministers is prime?" If Jean Chretien wanted one of his ministers to do something, he wouldn't have sent Ben Chin to gently suggest that maybe they consider doing the thing. He'd have directed his employee.
Of course that brings its own set of problems. No arguments here. I'm not saying Chretien would have been in the right to do that - Shawcross Doctrine and all that. But there's a reason ordinary people just got sick of Justin in a way they never got sick of Chretien, and I think this is part of it.
Chretien was effective, no doubt. He understood bare-knuckle politics very well. As for his legacy, I'll go with Andrew Coyne's column upon Chretien's retirement: what made him effective also lowered our politics.
Harper, of course, learned a lot from Chretien. No wonder everybody thought he was mean after nine years as PM.
What Chretien had going for him was his 'little guy' schtick (helped by Bell's Palsy), something that Harper never had, which made him into "Teflon Jean," even when he physically assaulted a protestor. (Chretien went out of his way to beat up a kid on the first day of Grade 9 - some underdog.) But Chretien, due to his humble roots (and Bell's Palsy), never had the vanity of Trudeau.
Still, I seem to recall that by the early aughts, a *lot* of people wanted Chretien to step down for Martin. (For example, the Globe endorsed Martin for PM in the 2000 election.)
Yeah, I want to be clear, I don't in any way endorse Chretien's violent streak - I just think he was better at having direct conversations with people than Justin Trudeau was. But also, this is not an especially high bar. If I hear from one more Liberal MP who served circa 2015-2024 and who says, "Yeah, Justin seemed like a nice guy on TV, I have never actually had a single conversation with the man in my life," it'll be...well, you know what, it'll be unremarkable, because that seems to be the consensus.
I was very involved in the LPC circa the Chretien/Martin feud. It is interesting to ponder - yes, a lot of people wanted Chretien to step down, but I don't feel like a critical mass of Canadians ever got to that visceral "I AM SO SICK OF THIS GUY'S STUPID FACE" place with him that they got to with Trudeau. It all felt so much more genteel - "gee wouldn't it be nice if Jean retired and Saint Paul could take over". But it's very possible that Chretien avoided that intense fatigue precisely because Canadians kind of knew that Martin was gearing up to depose him. Had Martin not be waiting in the wings, maybe people would have gotten to the point with Chretien that they got with JT.
The media landscape is also completely different than it was 20+ years ago. Constant social media and algorithmically driven "comments" tend to shape the narrative far more than "letters to the editor". Having a replacement in the wings helped, but not sure the new media doesn't have more to do with the current mood.
Interesting to read. (I'm mostly not an insider, just an observer.) I can believe that Chretien was more hands-on, because (to my eye) he never had Trudeau's entitlement; he knew that he had to work for everything he got. He always had a chip on his shoulder, which made him a hard worker.
And yeah, I can go with your take on Chretien's retirement. I think the polling numbers would bear that out. Trudeau exited with Mulroney levels of public hatred. Campbell and Carney both immediately brought their parties back up to mid-level respectability in the polls; Martin immediately had 47%, because he didn't have to start out from polling levels in the teens.
Nobody ever thought of Chretien as some kind of charismatic leader, the way they did of Trudeau (and in some ways, of Mulroney). Chretien was never grandiose in his vision, the way the other two were. So perhaps he didn't create as much disillusionment in the mind of the swing voter.
"If I were Prime Minister, the SNC-Lavalin scandal would have been a two-day story!"
It wouldn't have been a scandal in the first place.
Chretien would have recognized the alternative path which was eventually followed: SNC said "Yea, we are sort of guilty with excuses", threw Sami Bebawi under the bus and paid a fine. That is exactly what a DPA would have given, except maybe for Sami under the bus.
SNC (now LackinRealism) was never prevented from bidding on federal contracts.
Not Trudeau's best moment.
He did the GST holiday over the objections and his Finance Minister and then tried to demote her to get her out of his war. She totally called him out on it in her very British resignation letter 😅
True that his cabinet is essentially the same. However, it's only for a month or two and putting newbies in hardly gives them time to find their feet and we needed some sort of stability in these times. Let's see who gets elected and hopefully we will see some new blood. Personally, I'd discard the three cardboard cutouts, particularly the two guys. Freeland is a long time friend so there's that.
That's the reason I don't have influential friends. Well, one of the reasons :}.
That's why he is Mark Carney. Not a politician, not an actor. If you think back to the debate, he did answer a similar attack from Mr Poilievre.
I do my own talking points thank you.
He told anyone listening. I Am my own man.
Nice piece Paul, direct and to the point. I think most would agree with your assessment. I like a lot of what Carney has to say, but simply cannot ignore or accept his apparent "about face" on much of the Trudeau legacy and platform, much of which are also in his own long-term platform and history elsewhere.
Carney's deliberate and unabashed platform plagiarism (stealing Poilievre's ideas) is in plain sight for all to see. His exaggerations and false claims regarding who saved Canada's finances and when, are well-reported. Same for his tenure at the BoE. His (alleged) personal and financial scandals (Brookfield, China, Caymans etc) are too familiar to those of us who have been deeply disappointed and annoyed with Trudeau's lies, corruption, treachery and misuse of power. With all this in mind, I don't trust Carney. He seems a lot like Trudeau in character, only much smarter and without the sickening virtue-signaling. He should have tried running for a few months in order to build trust before pulling the trigger on this election.
I voted Conservative today, mainly because I pay attention to details, have a functioning memory, and value Canada as a born-here Canadian. As a mature adult, I also value fiscal responsibility, social sanity and personal responsibility. I can't believe the sheer incompetence we've endured over the past 10 years of Trudeau. There should be a national "AFTER-ACTION REVIEW" of this unmitigated disaster, in the hope that future generations might avoid repeating it.
Possibly with Butts' advice, Carney hitched his cart to the bogeyman that is President Trump, hoping to wash away our memory of Trudeau, and parachute in to become Canada's saviour. It is my view that President Trump's actions wrt Canada and tariffs, are personal; a direct result of Trudeau's continued arrogance, disrespect, denial and failures to address problems that were brought to his attention many times; a) border security, b) fentanyl, c) NATO, d) free-riding on US security, e) turning a blind eye to Chinese interference, f) divisive virtue-signalling and wokeism.
On top of it all, I suspect Trump was probably also pissed with "Governor" Trudeau's publicly lamenting US voters' failure in not choosing a black female for president (despite Kamala being exposed as a looming disaster for the USA and for this planet). This was a direct and personal attack against a sitting president, who had all the cards.
All this said, I see rough times ahead, financially and otherwise.
I'm voting Liberal today to ensure that people who have big feelings about "wokeism", "black females", and being a "born-here Canadian" lose. CBC's poll tracker suggests a 98% chance of this working out for me.
I think he was pointing out Trudeau's position on not electing a black female in the US. I note that the LPC is the only party that still has not had a female leader. Also, I don't see and issue with being a born here Canadian or valuing Canada. I think you may be the type of person who sees micro aggressions everywhere. Interesting reasons to vote as you do.
I am, indeed, the type of person who recognizes that there are microaggressions everywhere. Thanks for the compliment.
It's interesting to me that "woke" is the hill so many right-wingers want to die on. Historically, it's just meant "aware of systemic injustices that exist". In demonizing "woke", the right has chosen to fight not over whether the injustices exist, but over whether it's good or bad to be aware of them. Every time someone derides wokeism, I hear them saying, "Ha ha, look at that goober, being 'aware' of 'reality'! What a clown!" So: yeah, there are microaggressions everywhere. Thanks for playing.
For what it's worth, I do agree with Ron that it was really unnecessary for Trudeau to poke the bear in the way he did by stating the simple, obvious fact that there's no reason but racism and sexism for anyone to vote for a six-time bankrupt palpably intellectually disabled convicted felon over a qualified and competent vice-president. There was no political upside to that coming from the prime minister of Canada., in roughly the sense that if a school bully who's forty times your size and has your head in a toilet tells you that 2 + 2 = 5, there's no upside in correcting him.
It's interesting to me that you think the only reason that someone wouldn't voter for Kamala is that they are either a racist or misogynist or both and because Trump was convicted of a crime yet you support the party that has an PM and cabinet ministers convicted of ethics violations, threw the women who pointed out the ethics issues out of the party.
Wow George, this last post makes me think you should reconsider your information sources and reevaluate your opinions, before sharing them with us.
Many of Mark Carney's stated positions over the past few weeks appear to indicate that maybe he'd come to his senses, showing a little fiscal and social sanity. But I watched and heard his real truth leak out a few times... And today's news; that Carney plans to run even bigger deficits than Trudeau did, tells me things are about to get worse; much worse...
...If he wins.
I won't blame all voters; some need to learn an occasional life-lesson. But I'm afraid we're ALL about to learn a hard lesson, together. Maybe we'll finally come to realize, that personal charm and charisma are not actual requirements for the job, nor is competence alone, nor being independently wealthy. One would think Trudeau taught everyone that.
Most don't have the time to dig into the truths behind the scenes... To be fair, it's too bad we all didn't have a chance to watch Carney & company try to right the ship for a few months, before calling the election. That the election was called so quickly, looks a little too convenient...
Hi, Ron - I doubt we agree on very much, but I give you full credit for coming back with such a classy, dignified response when I've been more belligerent than I ought to have. I apologize for the harshness of my tone, and thank you for engaging as respectfully as you have. I wish I were better at that and continue to work toward it.
The thing I usually remember (not so much this weekend) is that people with your views and people with my views just increasingly live in different worlds. If I lived in your world, I'm sure I'd see things the way you do, and vice-versa.
RonnIngram, sir: A very excellent, well written opinion:- particulaly your:- "final sentence:-
... Canada has already entered a RECESSION.
Peter D. Marshall, Oakville.
I'm afraid it will work.
And can we add appreciation for the genuine civility of the two debates? Tone matters. We can disagree without being disagreeable, as someone's grandma used to say.
I'm skeptical that "Poilievre had the best night he’ll ever have in politics unless he is very lucky for the next ten days" as he failed to lay a glove on Carney when the Conservative Leader clearly needed to do so if one believes the polls. I kept waiting to see Poilievre live up to his reputation as a powerful debater who would cut up the rookie politician but saw nearly no evidence of that. Poilievre did come across as a human being in both the last question and the closing, but left this viewer with a too-little, too-late feeling given Carney's adequate French, adequate debate performances, and sterling resume that seems to fit the existential moment for Canada.
That's all fair. I just think voters are less impressed with debate skills or memorable moments than people like us are. It's easy to imagine "How many? How many?" Poilievre showing up and making steam come out of Carney's ears. I'm not sure he'd have been helping himself if he did that.
Poilievre needed to be less negative, more likeable, more mature than he has been up until this he last week. And he did that. I’m no fan of his, and I don’t trust him. But, I did find him more likeable and mature and less like the devil that people on the left say he is. I say that even as I don’t believe that was a genuine tearing up. I feel like it was planned. Nevertheless, I thought he did well last night. If he was smug and nasty, he would be going down in flames. As it stands, this debate likely has little impact on the vote, but maybe a bit of solidifying for both the libs and cons, maybe helped cons more than libs in very tight races. When it comes to Singh, I hope no one falls for his pie in the sky, spend everything platitudes. The NDP need to get serious and offer up fulsome plans that are costed. Enough with this constant barrage of billion dollar pandering.
I also think Poilievre knows he's losing, and that may have been part of the emotion.
I kinda wondered that too. This election was in the bag for him in November. And everything has changed to his detriment. To be so close...
His "reputation as a powerful debater" is very, very much in the eye of the beholder. Some people are impressed by the "date and time! date and time! Date! And! Time!" thing, but those people are already voting for him.
I've seen polls where he's at 40%, which is remarkable - better than I've seen a conservative do in decades. The problem is, the thing that makes him slightly more popular than Scheer or O'Toole or Harper also galvanizes the 60% of Canadians who are not conservatives to vote for the Liberals rather than say, "Oh, I'll give the Greens a try this time."
Yes, in ordinary times that 40% would have given him a majority government and it must be very tough for him and his supporters to see that lead slipping away so dramatically.. However, clearly more than 40% of other voters do not want to risk him winning and so are coalescing around one person to ensure that PP does not become our PM. Particularly in these precarious times.
Yes, I'm a Liberal who has (until now) liked every Conservative leader in every federal election I've been eligible to vote in. I generally prefer my guys but don't dislike the other guys. I remember the STOP HARPER days and thinking, "Stop him from what, wearing a sweater-vest?" There were days on which I preferred Harper, Scheer, and O'Toole to my party's leaders. I'm confused by people who think every conservative is a monster - like, I would be happy to call this whole election off and just put Joe Clark in charge.
But Poilievre is...not my kind of guy, and this year is the most enthusiastic I've ever been about voting Liberal.
I just don't understand people who must always vote for party X regardless of who they are running, what there policies are, what their record is, and what they are doing to the country. I started as a Mel Watkins NDP and since have voted either Liberal or Conservative depending on who I thought would be best for my family, me and the country (in that order).
Wait, are you saying I do that? In a response to a comment where I said I generally like the other party?
I vote with my family's needs in mind, too (though, really, the fact that you put your own interests ahead of the country's says enough about your character - this election is basically about "selfish" and "not", and "selfish" is getting creamed.)
But also, I have Jewish family members, so the guy who's big into demonizing "globalists" (look up what ethnic group alt-right types tend to mean when they say that) is out. I have trans family members, so the guy who goes on Jordan Peterson's podcast and shares his radical-right views about "gender ideology" is out. I have family members who've been tossed in jail for driving while black, so the guy who wants to get "tough on crime" is out. I have family members who've struggled with mental illness, so the guy who spent months using "wacko" as a slur is out. I gave serious consideration to voting Conservative (and sometimes did vote Conservative) in the seven general elections of my adult lifetime when their leader seemed like a decent human being. This time is different. And, again, I should feel more magnanimous than I do, given that my guys are winning.
We can agree though, that your guys are winning. I guess we will continue to get the government we deserve. And yes, I vote what is good for me but since I believe the country should be stronger what's good for me is a country that doesn't denigrate itself and believe that we are a post-national state with no identity of our own.
So the candidate that is pro-Israel and seeks to stop the Hamas protestors is CARNEY? The guy who was advisor to PM blackface and the party who supported him isn't the racially biased and who got rid of strong women like JWR and Jane Philpott is best for you? You equate tough on crime with racism? I think tough on crime means tough on criminals. You have a problem with "Wacko" which merriam webster defines as "a person who is absurdly or amusingly eccentric or irrational" not mentally ill - the conclusion to which you leapt. I think if you read values you may want to ask your guy "As you wrote in your book Values and advised Justin you believe in Carbon taxes and thought it right to tax capital gains. Why then have you adopted the Conservative policies to remove carbon taxes, remove capital gains taxes, tax of GST on new homes and taken credit for the NDP Dentalcare and Pharmacare? Do you really have any values or principles beyond getting elected. "
There was no debate. Just one minute tik tok tryouts.
The inside scoop from the moderator himself:
“I think we succeeded in not putting our thumb on the scale for any leader. In fact, after the debate ended, Poilievre and I had a conversation on stage. “You know what?” he asked me. “I just spent two hours with you, and I have no idea who you’re going to vote for.””
Great insight.
https://www.tvo.org/article/everything-you-didnt-see-at-the-leaders-debate
Perhaps Singh thought it’s better to be seen as annoying instead of not being seen at all.
So annoying
I doubt he'll be annoying anyone much longer.
I went to junior high with Ezra Levant. He was very quiet, nerdy and very, very smart. His current public persona may be a very clever (and lucrative) act.
I really did think, for the most part, Poilievre had a great night. If this debate had been my only exposure to him, I'd have mostly liked him.
The "I built 200,000 homes" / "no, six" / "no, 200,000" was silly on all counts, mostly on Singh's. When Poilievre was Stephen Harper's minister of getting up in the House and screeching that Michael Ignatieff did not come back for you, he actually built zero homes. If he'd had the courage in the debate to say, "I didn't build six homes. I didn't build two hundred thousand homes. It was not I who built the homes. Our hard-working everyday construction workers built the houses so that other people could inhabit the homes, cook the food, watch the TV, and sleep the beds on a nice house on a nice street near a nice tree in a prosperous town in an adequate province in a non-broken country," I'd have respected that.
I agree, Singh made an ass of himself, multiple times. Who built more homes was not the real issue. The issue was that Trudeau was told early on, when Sean Fraser was housing minister, that ramping up immigration and migration levels (of all kinds) would cause big problems if the government didn't also prepare in advance for the obvious impacts. And this on top of record inflation. Trudeau blundered ahead anyway, and it took a very long time for him to back off. The resulting crises in housing, healthcare and public acceptance of immigration, was a self-owned error of epic proportions. I believe Mark Carney is much wiser than Trudeau and wouldn't make such a colossal mistake. But Carney brings other problems...
That's when Sean Fraser should have resigned. Not when he thought he would lose his seat. I would be something to see a cabinet minister have the "balls" that Jane Philpott had to resign on principle. Off course she got thrown out of the party for having principles.
Funny thing George. The other day I heard Carney saying my government will build x million homes and I thought no Carney your government won’t. ( insert your last paragraph). He would look pretty good with his hard hat, safety glasses and his construction Bob tool belt though.
I know my kids would love that Soviet style housebox that would have to be built to meet his commitments.
“I’m here too!” is valid NDP message.
Reminds me of the way the Air Farce used to send up Ed Broadbent.
I'm dating myself, aren't I?
Housing: it remains unclear after listening to the English debate how the Conservatives plan to build the homes. Their carrot and stick proposals make no sense, and I got no further clarity in the debate.
The Liberals have a different approach, which has some intriguing options if they can focus and follow through. But if I understand correctly (always possible I don’t) they are offering to reduce municipal permit fees for developers which are an important revenue source for municipalities, and provide federal funds to municipalities to make up the shortfall. New homes require new roads, sewer, water, parks, etc which are all funded at a municipal level. If this is adopted, what’s the cost here? Seems a sleight of hand moving money from one level of government to another, but at the end of day it’s all taxpayer funded, and it becomes a federal deficit instead of a local one. Is this smoke and mirrors accounting? I can’t tell and remain confused.
The focus on supply side seems to ignore the demand side of things. Without reducing overall immigration (including TFW and foreign students) for awhile then it’s window dressing and housing and rent shortages will continue.
Ps. Trudeau came to Vancouver in 2015, spoke about his concerns about housing affordability, and that if elected his government would be examining the issue and looking for solutions because he saw it as a real problem. The rest is history as they say.
The answer to your question is that the federal government currently gives "infrastructure grants" to the municipalities, which are supposed to help pay for everything from new sewer pipes to street repair to a new roof on the hockey rink. The grants have been erratic and unreliable in their delivery by the federal government, and the result is often poor or non-existent planning at the municipal level. I'm gathering the Carney plan is to replace part of those infrastructure grants with different grants tied to housing starts. Hopefully they'll allow multi-year planning which is not the case now.
Carney says he's results-oriented. I can't think of a more hopeful example than this.
Hope I was clear here - my perspective comes from years of watching a well-intentioned municipality try to plan sensibly for its future while relying on a silly federal policy for the money to make it all work.
So yes, it's the same money but it's not smoke and mirrors - it's hopefully, finally, injecting some good sense into the system.
Thank you both for thoughtful replies.
Reflecting on what I have heard, I remain concerned that the move to reduce ‘fees’ for new construction (and thus encourage new home building) and make up the shortfall with federal money will, if enacted across the country, ramp up federal deficits. Maybe they’ll cut costs somewhere else…
Nothing is free.
Bonus is there will be increased opportunities for local MP’s to show up with infrastructure cheques. As mentioned, any such funding will need to be predictable and sustainable for local governments to properly plan.
i was going to say that I defer to your greater knowledge but what's truer is that I'd like to know more. Perhaps this is something that Paul Wells could follow up on. Though I don't remember him doing money stories?
Maybe if the subscription pot gets deep enough at some point, and he's looking for a fellow reporter, he could hire someone with the inclination and skills to follow this kind of money story. Would enough people care?
Ah. Checking your subscriber page, I see you've quoted a man named David Clinton with a page called The Audit. He's clearly my guy on Canadian money matters. So interesting. Thanks.
> Seems a sleight of hand moving money from one level of government to another, but at the end of day it’s all taxpayer funded, and it becomes a federal deficit instead of a local one.
The big difference between municipal revenue and federal/provincial revenue is that the former does not increase with the economy like the latter. This is *why* upper level governments downloaded on to municipalities in the first place — because they knew they couldn’t afford to provide the same level of services. It was a sneaky way cutting them.
Uploading costs is exactly what’s called for now when municipalities are running a racket trying to fund their services and fancy facilities on the backs of new home buyers.
The "carrot & stick" approach to building housing, DOES make sense. But it is in of itself, not a complete solution. Poilievre at least has the insight to recognize some key bottlenecks at the municipal and provincial levels. The costs of municipal permits & fees, conservation assessments & fees, service connection fees and other fees, legal fees and real estate commissions, all burdened with the additional parasitic GST & PST, are themselves, now a show-stopper. It seems everyone wants their cut, and the buyer of a new home pays not just for the material and labor of their house, but the many other stakeholders who they pay before they can take possession. And of course MPAC and the municipality are perfectly happy to set the annual property tax to very high levels. Imagine a 1M$ purchase price home (not uncommon), with taxes, fees piled on. Then imagine a 10k$ annual property tax hit (assuming 1% mill rate, which is probably underestimating it). And then there is the bank mortgage... Who in their right mind would enter into such a purchase? The finished and ready-to-move-in cost of a home today, is nominally more than twice what it was a decade ago. It's called inflation; something Justin never understood nor respected, e.g. "You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy", and "We can afford to spend more... Interest rates are low, money is cheap". The mess that was caused by the Liberals, is collossal, will take a generation or more to get past.
Poilievre has also taken great pains to explain his individual strategies (platform) over the past several years, in the form of educational videos on YouTube. I would encourage the reader to go check them out. Key topics you'll find, include his ideas on the housing market, why monetary policy is important, and many others.
Mark Carney is without a doubt, a very smart guy, and is well-spoken. But anyone who plans to vote Liberal today, just because Mark Carney took the helm a few weeks ago, should look very closely at his fiscal involvement in Canadian politics since 2020, when he became a close financial advisor to the Trudeau government. And that includes the mega-spending during and after the pandemic. Much if not most of that spending was completely unnecessary. But the results of this out-of-control spending left us with over 1.2T$ in national debt. Take some time and find out how much of your annual income tax bill goes directly to pay interest on federal debt.
That's what happens when those in charge operate on emotion rather than facts and intelligent reason. To get a better insight to Mark's belief system, look closely to his connection to the WEF. Look at his attitudes toward Gaza protests, his antisemitic remarks during the current election, and his generally "globalist" world-view. Do you think his one-line "answers" are realistic? Maybe you think we've been moving too quickly with immigration & migration today? Look ahead...
Outlined the additional parts, which involve major (re)training and building up our tradespeople. Many months ago, the simple fact was put forward, that there simply not enough tradespeople in the country to build homes any faster than the present rate. Federal governments like to talk about how many billions$ they're spending for this and spending for that. THIS IS NOT A PLAN. And a federal government will NEVER be able to project-manage such an endeavor. Anyone who tells you they're going to build 500k homes a year, is delusional, or lying. Look at Trudeau's announcements on this. Lots of steak for the big $ announcement for INVESTMENTS (hint: they're never investments), but ALWAYS zero success in achieving results. Don't believe me, go do your own research. GOVERNMENT PROJECTS ALWAYS TURN OUT TO BE BOONDOGGLES.
Regarding his successes as Governor of the Bank of England, here's the impression Mark left in the UK...
https://x.com/drjay247/status/1914129330545844656
I think that the TV debating era has come and gone unless someone can entice the leaders into a barely manageable free for all that would reveal true, on yer feet debating skills. A little reality TV edginess is needed.
Two opposing goals are competing against each other. The leaders don’t want to make any verbal mistakes (policy) or in presentation (optics). Playing it safe results in “everyone survived so they are all winners”. This is boring and is just a regurgitation of talking points seen elsewhere. Besides, I thought the idea of debating was to produce a winner?
The competition is how the debate functions, which is based on fair play, which is boring. Flooding the field with too many voices is fair but boring. A political party polling under 10% (hello NDP, Green Party, Bloc, PPC) has nothing to offer as the chances of winning the election are zero. One note bleating about healthcare, sovereignty or ________, is wasted microphone time.
The media hype is not delivering a watchable product where voters can LEARN much anymore. The landscape has shifted to optics and there are lots of opportunities for voters to get their impressions about haircuts, glasses, apparel and charm without sitting through a two night beauty contest.
There should be a separate debate with the top two parties in English & French.
I had a good impression of both the English & French debates. Steve Paikin was awesome (as usual). And the French debate moderator was pretty good as well. The multiple-translators worked out perfectly, and were able to keep up, even when participants were talking over one another (always annoying). I'm happy the Greens were out, because they're nothing but a narrow-interest side-show and a time-waster in a serious conversation such as this. Singh's NDP have become attention-seeking extremists, as far as mainstream Canadians are concerned (there are some notable exceptions in the party). Singh wouldn't stop talking-over Poilievre or Carney during much of the English debate, and I don't know anyone who wasn't annoyed.
Summary, these sessions were far more informative than in previous years. Unfortunately there is far too much subject matter than can possibly be covered adequately within 2 hours; hence the very short time-limits on individual questions and responses, and the close-watch on the timers. There's no way the public can get properly informed (and educated) in such a short time period. I'd personally like to see more of a marathon debate approach, even if spread over several days. Take the major networks out of the equation - to remove any complaints about bias. There are some excellent podcast programs out there that show just how much you can learn about somebody, in a 3 to 5 hour podcast interview...
For sure, multiple debate sessions are badly needed. One or two sessions will never be enough.
They must have been broadcasting something else where I live. Each participant just seemed to be quoting verses from Party greeting cards. I left when one of them proposed solving the housing problem by building prefab houses using Canadian lumber. Geezus, the solution has been there in front of us all this time! Does that group represent the best that Canada can offer as a Prime Minister?
Thank you for this. I can always count on Paul Wells to give us good (and non-partisan) politics. That this makes PW superlative says much that is good about him (and much that is bad about the modern social media / news media environment).
I find it unfortunate that the electors feel the liberals under Carney will now be different and refuse to give a chance to Poilievre to govern. Now the liberals with a new inexperienced politician as leader popped up by previous NDP voters will be the government. I don’t understand. Poilievre is a dedicated
Canadian and not
Trump
Respect Steve Paikin.
Works hard to be neutral and fair.
Seen him on YouTube videos moderating debates/discussions over the years.