On reflecting on his failed Liberal leadership bid in 2006, Michael Ignatieff said being a front-runner candidate drained him of all conviction. “I could feel myself becoming less inspiring as every night went by,” he said in his memoir, Fire and Ashes.
Mark Carney can probably appreciate that sentiment.
His performance during the French-language leadership debate on Monday was not one to quicken pulses.
The whole front-runner strategy rests on not upsetting anyone enough not to vote for you.
But the effect on this occasion was bloodless and overly technocratic.
As a result, Carney promised to make “big changes” but not cut transfer payments or existing programs like daycare or supply management.
His government would use emergency powers to force through energy projects, but provinces and First Nations that have blocked previous efforts would have to buy in.
He said we have to stand up for Canada, yet his plan doesn’t hit NATO’s spending target of two per cent of GDP on defence until the end of the decade.
The most common refrain during the debate was: “I think we all agree on that.” But Carney came under mild criticism from rivals Karina Gould and Chrystia Freeland on defence spending, with both committing to the two-per-cent target by 2027.
One former francophone MP said he empathizes with anyone who has to debate in their second language. But he said Carney mangled the language of Molière. “He is seen as the adult in the room, but it’s hard for me to see him energize and rally Canadians,” the former MP said.
The strategy is understandable, with the leadership contest finish line in sight. The most recent Angus Reid Institute poll has the Liberals within touching distance of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives with Carney as leader; they are more than 10 points behind with Chrystia Freeland at the helm.
This race is over unless Carney says something outrageously impulsive — and this is a man who is mildewed with caution.
Forget about the widely publicized gaffe where he said in French that all the candidates agree with Hamas, instead of all being against Hamas. The Conservatives leapt on it with but it was a nothingburger — a slip of the tongue in the heat of debate in the candidate’s second language.
The winner of the next election is likely to be the person who can rally Canadians and give them some reassurances on security and prosperity
But what is equally clear is that once he has won, Carney needs to widen his audience, broaden his ambition and risk offending some people.
He will need to address the concerns of people like a regular letter-writer to me who is worried Carney is a climate zealot who will strip Canada of its natural resource wealth and drive investment out of the country.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have done a pretty good job of that already: non-residential investment has plummeted from 14 per cent of GDP to just 10 per cent in the last decade, while in the U.S. it has surged to 15 per cent.
Reversing that trend is going to be particularly tough if the Trump administration hits Canada with punitive tariffs.
The CEO of one major Canadian corporation told me that he is running an analysis on what that would mean for his company and expects a number of companies to shift their operations to the U.S. “The business climate (in Canada) is very poor,” he said.
TD Economics has just put out a study that said what would have been a very solid year for the Canadian economy, with unemployment falling to six per cent by the end of next year, could end up seeing things slide into recession, with the jobless rate rising to eight per cent, if Trump follows through on his threats.
Every day, Canada’s strategic position seems to get worse.
There were reports on Tuesday that Vladimir Putin is offering to send two million metric tons of aluminium to the U.S. to “stabilize” the price on the market. Canada currently supplies three million tonnes a year to the U.S., about 40 per cent of its imports.
On the same day, the Financial Times reported that Trump’s senior adviser, Peter Navarro, was proposing to expel Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence network — an allegation Navarro later denied, rather unconvincingly.
It is a dismal picture and Canadians are alive to its implications. A new Nanos poll suggests that dealing with Trump is now the most important issue for voters.
The winner of the next election is likely to be the person who can rally Canadians and give them some reassurances on security and prosperity.
Carney has advanced a number of battle cries: we need to become “masters in our own house” and we have to leverage our assets to become a “clean energy superpower.”
He said he will balance the operational budget in three years, separating ongoing spending from “investments” for the future. That seems wide open to abuse, given just about every penny spent by Trudeau was labelled “an investment in Canadians.”
But even if the details are vague, there are signs that a Liberal party led by Carney would be different from its predecessor: the consumer carbon tax would be gone and he said he would support east-west pipelines if there is provincial buy-in.
“I think it’s an opportunity for us that we should seize … The federal government has to act quickly and rigorously, if it’s in the interests of the whole country,” he said.
His critics still portray him as a patrician who moves in elitist circles. As I am obliged to do in these columns, I have to disclose I have known him for years and find that charge overblown.
He has an impressive record and has already exposed the softness of the support for Poilievre, a leader who has reinforced his Conservative credentials with his narrow base again and again and again, rather than attempting to broaden that base.
But Carney will not win unless he moves the hearts of men and women. He routinely says he is not a politician but, as Ignatieff pointed out, to succeed in politics, you have to know an issue in your guts, not your head.
Carney may never be William Wallace when it comes proclaiming that the tyrant can take our lives but will never take our freedom.
However, he does need to kindle the inner fire that has been sparked in many Canadians by the threat to their country from their former friends to the south.
National Post
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