Carney’s Surge and the Looming Election

Can anyone stop Mark Carney in his bid to become Liberal leader? Not likely and here’s why.

The top-of-mind issue in every election is the economy. The so-called kitchen-table issues, like inflation, grocery costs, energy prices, and unaffordable housing and rental accommodation.

That’s why most opposition politicians seeking office put it this way to voters: “Are you better off now than you were four or five years ago?”

It is a loaded question designed to elicit a hearty “Hell no.” With that answer, the solution becomes obvious: it’s time for a change.

And so, back to the former central banker who wants to be prime minister.

Carney made his reputation on building, or rebuilding, economies.

His first go at it was in this country in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, when he was governor of the Bank of Canada.

He did it again as central banker in the United Kingdom after the Brexit blunder, the decision by Britain to leave the European Union.

With the United States now run by a tariff-crazed territorial predator, Canada’s economy, if not its sovereignty, is under threat.

None of the other three candidates for the leadership — Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould and Frank Baylis — has Carney’s experience in meeting the new economic threat.

Nor, for that matter, does Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Which is why polls, including one by Nik Nanos, show that Canadians believe by a double-digit margin that Carney, not Poilievre, is best equipped to deal with the Orange One in the stormy days ahead.

But there is more to Carney’s attraction as a future leader of the Liberal party than his economic and negotiating chops.

During the recent Liberal leadership debates, Carney was the only leading candidate who showed that he was a genuine agent of change, something the electorate is demanding after 10 years of Justin Trudeau.

He did that by making a telling remark about Trudeau’s tenure as leader. In a debate that was in the main so genteel and collegial it might have been a family reunion, Carney offered the only firm criticism of the former prime minister.

While Freeland and Gould were singing the Trudeau government’s praises, Carney brought the conversation back to reality.

He said Canada’s finances had been in trouble long before Donald Trump issued his tariff threats.

In fact, Carney said that the Canadian economy had been in trouble for five years. And he explained why.

The Trudeau government was spending at double the rate that the economy was growing. And that, of course, is how Team Trudeau lost control of the deficit.

It is hard to imagine how Liberals would hand back control of the party to the very people who were part of that process for nearly a decade, Freeland or Gould.

Gould even wants to retain the carbon tax, though without the pending increase in the tax. Really?

With polls showing that the huge gap is closing between the ascendant Conservatives and the Liberals if led by Carney, the former central banker is the only choice the party has to avoid a crushing defeat in the next election.

But if Carney becomes Liberal leader and prime minister on March 9, that’s when things get interesting.

By that time, if not before, Trump’s tariffs will likely be imposed. That raises the issue of retaliatory tariffs and a trade war that could seriously hurt the Canadian economy and Canadian workers.

Former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy says that the situation amounts to a national emergency.

“Parliament must now be recalled, ending its past churlish behaviour to pass an all-party resolution affirming Canadian independence, and asking Canadians to follow suit (and no, there should not be any non-confidence votes at this moment),” he wrote in an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail.

Instead, Axworthy argued, Canadian politicians at every level should work together to remove internal trade barriers, streamline our military recruitment process and forge new diplomatic and economic partnerships with allies who see the danger of an autocratic U.S. president.

It is an argument not without merit, with Trump behaving with all the predictability of a rabid dog.

But here’s the catch. The Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and their unlikely ally the NDP have all vowed to bring the government down as soon as Parliament returns in late March.

It all comes down to Carney-phobia, the panicked sense that the Liberals could make a comeback under a new leader and a transformed political landscape.

The panic in the Conservative party is almost comical. Poilievre and his party have criticized Carney for everything from his expensive sneakers to the fact “he doesn’t have to buy groceries in tough neighbourhoods or take public transit.”

The Conservative leader has absurdly declared that Carney is just another Trudeau. That is a sure sign that Poilievre simply can’t pivot from demonizing Trudeau and the carbon tax as his ticket to power.

And if Carney were just another Trudeau, Poilievre has something else to explain. Why did former prime minister Stephen Harper invite Carney to become his finance minister in 2012, when Jim Flaherty was already in the job?

It was to be expected that the Conservatives would try to bring the government down as quickly as possible. Up until recently, the polls showed them winning a massive majority.

In Quebec, the polls continue to give the Bloc a lead over the Liberals and an appetite for an election.

But why would the NDP join Poilievre in triggering a spring election? Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party are, after all, political cousins of the Liberals. The NDP endorses many of the government’s policies and programs, like dental care and pharmacare.

That’s why they kept Trudeau’s minority government in power under the supply and confidence agreement.

The plain fact is that propping up the Trudeau government simply became too costly for the NDP. Poilievre relentlessly tied “Sellout Singh” to enabling a deeply unpopular prime minister to stay in office.

Ultimately the pressure on Singh became too great. What looked like a sinking Liberal party with no prospects of recovery convinced the NDP leader that it was time to cut the cord — even though in so doing he was in all likelihood ushering in a Conservative majority government.

Although Singh has suggested he is open to working with the Liberals to pass relief measures for workers if Trump moves ahead with tariffs on Canadian goods, he is still committed to bringing down the government when Parliament reconvenes in March.

He may be banking on that decision being taken out of his hands. Singh has said he expects a snap election if Carney wins.

Carney did say he would not rule out calling an election if he becomes leader: “Let’s see what the situation is in the middle of March and do what is best for Canadians.”

In the middle of a national crisis, the game plan of all three opposition parties is to bring down the government and go to the polls, rather than take to the ramparts in a united front against the threat from Donald Trump.

Canadians might have a surprise in store for leaders who would play partisan politics with the American wolf at the door.