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Mark Carney is running for leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister of Canada, putting to rest years of speculation and the joke uttered whenever the government made a decision: “What does this mean for Mark Carney?” He’ll be up against erstwhile finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, who was a Trudeau stalwart almost to the bitter end.
There are other contenders including long-time Cabinet minister Karina Gould and two other members of Parliament, Jaime Battiste and Chandra Arya, but the odds-on favourites in the race are Carney and Freeland. They’ll be locked in a battle over who can connect quickly with voters, and the early advantage goes to Carney — with a caveat or two.
It’s a shame that we’re often stuck reducing politics to aesthetics, but we are. Most people aren’t policy experts and spend their days in other ways, living their lives without worry about the minutiae of this or that issue. When it comes time to make a political decision, like who to back in an election, they use mental shortcuts to make decisions. One popular shortcut is likeability, an emotional connection that draws one person to another or repels them. And part of that is whether the politician in question can speak human.
Chrystia Freeland is a competent and capable politician. Like Carney, she’s a technocrat who knows files inside and out and believes there are technical solutions driven by expertise that can solve Canada’s problems. But she also speaks like an expert and technocrat. When she tries to leave that terrain, things get dicey.
In the spring of 2023, she tried to relate to people struggling through the cost of living crisis, likening cutting a Disney+ subscription to how she approached managing government finances. That analogy was taken out of context and weaponized in subsequent attacks on her. She was painted as an elite, entitled insider for whom ten bucks a month or so is a rounding error on a rounding error.
Suffice to say, her attempt to relate to ordinary Canadians didn’t go well. It’s unfair, but politics is unfair. To win, you’ve got to minimize the chances that your opponent can make an unfair attack stick to you. She’s going to have a hard time doing that in the weeks to come as opponents within the party and outside it tie her to the status quo and every problem plaguing the country. She’ll have a hard time talking her way out of that.
Mark Carney, on the other hand, is surprisingly smooth and even funny. Carney’s campaign soft-launch on the Daily Show revealed a more affable man with a sense of humour. It turns out the guy — a two-time head of a national central bank — has a bit of charisma. An early poll from Leger has him ahead of Freeland by six per cent.
But Carney, who is working to cast himself as an outsider, has two fundamental weaknesses. One, he’s thoroughly an elite — a central banker, the chair of an asset management firm, an advisor to both the Liberal Party and the UN. For many, that CV will read as about as insider as it gets, even if he hasn’t been previously elected to political office. He also has his own aesthetic liability: he speaks in platitudes and clichés.
Over time, people see through them.
In a late-December op-ed for the Globe and Mail, Carney wrote “These are not easy times. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves that there are quick fixes. But Canadians don’t shrink from challenges — we face them head on. With the right resolutions, we can build the future we want, and the future our kids and grandkids deserve.”
That’s the kind of thing I tell myself in January before I’m eating three Snickers bars a day in February.
Carney’s op-ed was about as platitudinous as it gets. He suggests Canada’s future rests with resolutions to “Stand up for Canada,” “Play as a team” and “Embrace change.” He might as well have said we must “give 110 percent” or “leave it all on the ice.” He added some more pabulum before hitting the mother of them all: “Bring the Stanley Cup back home to Canada, where it belongs.”
Speaking human is one thing, communicating in an accessible way to those you seek to govern. That’s good. But if you’re not careful, that accessibility becomes patronizing, insincere, and unserious. People see through it, because though they may not be experts in politics, they aren’t stupid. We all know when we’re being talked down to.
In the short run, Carney might be able to out-talk Freeland, connecting with Liberal voters, relying on an avuncular, dad-out-for-a-canal-skate posture. He might win the leadership and become prime minister, for a short time anyway. But against Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, and facing the entire country, not just Liberal voters, the kindly everyman bit risks wearing thin fast, particularly at a time when the country is in a less than cheerful mood.
As a politician, speaking like a human doesn’t mean executing small talk about the weather or your favourite hockey team’s chances this year. It means saying true things in a way that resonates with those you would be elected to serve, and offering solutions to their problems that sound credible and sincere (a practice Poilievre has mastered, even if his “solutions” are unlikely to solve Canada’s problems). And while Carney might get closer to the mark than Freeland, eventually people will catch on to the bit — and tire of it. Fast.
Comments
In the end..
Whose solutions are likely to solve Canada’s problems.. ?
That person gets my vote..
I think we've reached the point where Canadians need to learn more about those exact points:
1. What, in fact, are our true problems (and, equally, what are their origins/ root causes)?
2. What are candidate solutions and what sort of future would those proposals lead us towards? (i.e. let's avoid jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire)
Nobody's really. Even the NDP don't have the guts, although they come closer than the other major parties.
Freeland should be in Jail and if she was in China.. she would be.. something I respect about China is corrupt unaccountable government representatives don't get to act above the law
In your opinion, on what charges and with what evidence should Ms. Freeland have been charged, convicted and sent to jail?
Ditto that question.
https://ncio.ca/briefings/mp-chrystia-freeland-continues-to-blatantly-v…
how about her part in the unconstitutional emergencies Act and the abitrarily freezing of Canadians bank accounts to name just a couple.. lying about balancing the budge, [its not a crime in Canada, but in china it is bc they are not to be decieving the taxpayers] over spending, investing in vaccines and over buying so many that ended up in the dump, then of course the fact that her and her gang paid to have mercenaries sent to Ukraine .. I could go on and on.. same with Traitor Trudeau,, he should be hung for treason.. maybe it would set an example.. jailed at the very least.. but of course government agents are above the law aren't they..
https://ncio.ca/briefings/chrystia-freeland-defined-as-a-war-criminal-f…
Someone check the padded room. I think its occupant might have escaped!
Meanwhile, despite speaking human, Carney hasn't been able to convince a bunch of major banks to stick with his pet project in green capitalism: https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/carney-esg-climate-finance-1.7428281
If people think poilievre's "solutions" sound credible and sincere we are are really, really screwed.
Sorry name one solution Pollievre has come up with. Other than to tear down everything the Liberals built and slogans. Thats all he is, slogans.
It's unfortunate that a conspiracy theory is swirling about, regarding the World Economic Forum, because even considered critique of the forum can be instantly tarnished and ignored. Which is too bad.
If one is content with the current look of, and the likely future prospects for, the global situation as exemplified by what's happening in the USA, then just keep on keeping on and don't seek any further understanding.
For me, on a feel-good vibe level, I really enjoyed the interview, while also wondering why a wannabe prime minister would be playing coy on an American TV show. Ultimately, however, the interview was simply candy. And who doesn't like the person handing out the candy?
Beyond that, however, I really would like to know if Mr. Carney is content with the state of the Global North's financial and economic systems, and their priorities, and the tight linkages they have with the deteriorating state of politics and societal well-being.
PAUSE FOR A CUP OF TEA
CONTINUING...
There's a tremendous book out now which takes a learned, critical look at the state of the world and looks at who the true beneficiaries are. The author is NY Times economics journalist, Peter Goodman. The book is called -- and if you're sensitized to the conspiracy theory, please set it aside for the moment:
Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World.
I highly recommend it.
Mark Carney obviously has a connection to the WEF, how could he not given his past positions as central banker. What I have yet to devine is Mr. Carney's views regarding the current trend towards ever increasing concentration of wealth, monopoly in commerce, plutocracy/ oligopoly/ fascism, and continuing destruction of both the demos and the biosphere.
In short, are his pronouncements regarding climate finance, and his book, indicative of anything beyond simply dealing with an annoying bump on the road to "prosperity". That is to say: is he, or is he not, a Davos Man?
It is that question to which I seek a clear answer.
Great question!
I saw the Daily Show episode with Mark Carney, and I was surprised at how affable and likable he is. And he's supposed to be a boring banker?
He used the example of the insurance industry reaction to climate events in California to counter climate denial narratives regurgitated ad nauseum by skeptics. On that one comment, he got my attention. But he will have to distance himself farther from oil and gas (unlike the Liberals under Trudeau, despite his rhetoric) and get closer to directly supporting renewables and making our cities better to earn my vote.
Now is the time to toughen him up. Affability will not stand up well to attack dog politics, bullying and shouting in debates, unless he learns to use humour to launch venomous, one phrase retorts and not give way to constant interruptions in a discussion. Humour is disarming. Winston Churchill and Tommy Douglas used it very effectively. It takes a lot of wisdom to master it.
Of course, that's only about style and delivery. Carney would excel in substance over Poilievre any day of the week. But so would Donald Duck, meaning Poilievre's substance and content of character bar is really, really low.
Being an angry asshole wins votes because anger is so often mistaken as strength. Poilievre and Harper specialize in it. But delivering policy in plain language while using humour to both disarm a political opponent and deliver complex ideas in plain language is an art.
In addition, Carney needs to come down from the boardroom to working folk's world and show that he truly understands the circumstances fast food servers, bus drivers and single mom students experience every day. Poilievre's lack of experience in the real world (desks in the House of Commons are not in the real world) is plain to anyone that looks, photo ops at McDonalds and crunching on apples notwithstanding. But I also see Carney's dainty, uncalloused hands too. He needs to get some dirt under those nails, learn to drive a farm tractor and be seen playing hockey with torn, bloodstained gear.
Anyway, a bit of natural scruff on Carney's obvious large intellect can only help him connect and defeat the loudmouth on the other side.
Chrystia Freeland is also a very capable and smart person with expertise and good leadership qualities. However, she's part of the stale Old Guard just as Canadians are now looking for fresh blood. She offers far more good than Poilievre could ever muster, but Carney's outsider experience seems to be a more beneficial asset to governing. Freeland speaks something like five languages, and I thought she was a great international affairs minister.
Lastly, both Carney and Freeland should give serious thought to engaging positively with the NDP. This is a new century and governing as mature adults includes considering building coalitions with other parties that have good ideas.
Carney seems like a nice fellow. He wants capitalism with a human face. So did Justin Trudeau. So did a bunch of small-l liberal saviors. Where are they all now?
As supporters of the status quo, none of them were willing to do anything to help people that might disrupt the status quo and the wealthy interests status quontrolling it. And it turned out, "solutions" that don't do that, don't do anything. So they all did basically nothing useful, and disillusionment grew.
Two kinds of politics have grown as a response to the failure of the centre: The Maga, Pierre Poilievre, fascist-if-given-the-chance kind, and the left that's far enough left to be into some serious redistribution. But the wealthy-owned media know that only one of those two kinds of politics targets the rich, so they know which kind to yack about and which kind to quietly cancel. As a result, alt-right politics have grown much, much faster in most places. And are beginning to gain control.
Unfortunately, alt-right politics just replace do-nothing governments with do-horrible-useless-things governments. Actively making problems worse and inventing new ones is not an improvement on doing nothing about problems. I just hope by the time people get disillusioned by the right in turn, there will still be democratic mechanisms for turfing them out.
History suggests that by the time people get really fed up with the alt right, they will go crawling back to the do-nothing centre, never really considering the possibility of a politics that actually reduces the power of the people screwing them over . . . the wealthy capitalists.
Are you saying there are two kinds of politics and both of them are futile?