Mark Carney is prime minister of Canada. If newspapers ran emojis, I would insert the “man shrugging” one here. Nothing else makes much sense nowadays, so why not? But thus far, and it’s admittedly early hours — hours that everyone will likely forget once the election campaign begins anyway — the Mark Carney era is a baffling mixture of constancy and inscrutable change.
Windy pronouncements are a constancy, certainly. On his way to Rideau Hall Friday morning, Carney told reporters, “We are a very focused government, focused on action and we are going to get straight to work.”
“Today, we’re building a government that meets the moment,” Carney wrote on X. “Canadians expect action — and that’s what this team will deliver. A smaller, experienced cabinet that moves faster, secures our economy, and protects Canada’s future.”
Look at those sentences and sentence fragments. Bask in their Trudeauvian emptiness. Savour.
Carney has a very different mien than Trudeau, as do most normal human beings, and I suspect that has already served him well. It wouldn’t change my vote (or unwillingness to vote), but I for one would much rather be bafflegabbed by an avuncular banker than by a terrible actor who thinks all the world is his stage and everyone else merely players.
It’s difficult to imagine Carney charging down the aisle in the House of Commons in a fit of calculated anger and accidentally elbowing a female MP in the thorax. As he spoke on Friday after being sworn in, I felt palpable relief at actually being able to listen to my country’s prime minister talk without digging my fingernails into my palms. It’s a small improvement, admittedly, but an improvement nonetheless.
Baffling decisions seem to be a constancy: Marco Mendicino is Carney’s chief of staff. Yes that Marco Mendicino: The hapless ex-cabinet minister whose greatest hits include claiming no one at Correctional Service Canada (CSC) told his public safety ministry that Paul Bernardo was being transferred to a medium-security prison; then admitting that CSC did tell his ministry, but claiming his ministry didn’t tell him; and then allowing CSC’s untenable decision to stand anyway. (A prison break would sure spice up the election campaign, wouldn’t it?)
If Carney was looking to send clear, strong signals on Friday about what his government might look like and how dissimilar it is to Trudeau’s, he did not succeed
Inscrutable change: The carbon tax is being cancelled, as a first order of business, which is a stinging rebuke to Trudeau — or it would be, if Trudeau were capable of feeling rebuked. But then, more constancy: Carney clearly believes carbon taxes are a good way to reduce emissions. While running for the Liberal leadership he said, “the consumer carbon tax isn’t working (because) it’s become too divisive” — note, not because he thought it was bad policy.
Constancy: Whatever “system of incentives” a Carney government designed “to reward Canadians for making greener choices, such as purchasing an energy efficient appliance, electric vehicle or improved home insulation” and taxing emitters — as were his leadership-campaign promises — will cost taxpayers one way or the other.
(One of the funnier media narratives to take hold in the early days of the Carney era is that by ditching Trudeau’s carbon tax, the new PM has neutralized the issue such that the Conservatives can’t use it against him. By that logic, the Liberals can’t use abortion rights against Poilievre because he has forsworn introducing or supporting any legislation on the matter.)
Change: It’s a smaller cabinet. Streamlined! Lean, sinewy and ready to pounce!
Team Carney had teased as few as 15 or 20 new members, but it ended up at 24, down from 37. This is a good idea. Cabinet bloat is largely a communications exercise: remember when we had a “minister of middle class prosperity,” who couldn’t or wouldn’t define “middle class”?
But also, constancy: Who’s in that cabinet. Much as his prominence baffles anglophone Canadians, Steven Guilbeault makes a lot of sense as Carney’s new Quebec lieutenant. The fact is, he’s popular in Quebec. And maybe 150 people in the Rest of Canada could tell you who Trudeau’s last Quebec lieutenant was. (I couldn’t have, and I pay attention to this stuff. It was Jean-Yves Duclos, for the record, who was a notable non-appointment to Carney’s cabinet.) Guilbeault was damaging as an environment minister.
Except … Carney has put Guilbeault back at his previous post as minister of Canadian Heritage (or rather of “Canadian culture and identity”), where he previously failed spectacularly to sell Trudeau’s anti-internet agenda outside of Quebec. Unfathomable.
Again, this cabinet really doesn’t matter — or it shouldn’t, because we should be headed to the polls in short order. But why keep the always-unimpressive Bill Blair around (he stays at Defence)? What kompromat exactly does the equally unimpressive Patty Hajdu have, and on whom, that makes her a constant cabinet shoo-in? (She stays at Indigenous Services.) What is Chrystia Freeland even still doing here, and why does Carney want her around — she moves to Transport, of all things — after her three-alarm tire fire of a leadership campaign? Is Freeland desperate to oversee the Liberals’ doomed high-speed rail project … for a few weeks?
If Carney was looking to send clear, strong signals on Friday about what his government might look like and how dissimilar it is to Trudeau’s, he did not succeed. But by rights, this is a dead cabinet walking anyway. Perhaps unite, briefly, in congratulating Justin Trudeau on a job … done.
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