Mark Carney was made for this moment
The former Governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England has a demonstrated track record of staying cool under pressure. Is that what Canadians are looking for right now? Photo via Flickr/Bank of England
Donald Trump isn’t joking about annexing Canada. That’s the message that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared with a group of business leaders at his hastily-convened “Canada-U.S. Economic Summit”, one that sought to address the growing threat posed by America’s president. In a so-called “hot mic” moment, Trudeau was heard saying that “Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing.”
In case it wasn’t already clear, the carbon tax election that Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada have spent years preparing for isn’t going to happen. Instead, Canadians are being thrust — very much against their will — into a much more serious and sobering conversation: what, if anything, can we do to survive the threat posed by Trumpism? The next election will turn on who voters think is best positioned to help Canada weather this crisis, and maybe come out stronger on the other side.
Mark Carney was made for this moment. His career has been defined by moments of high-profile leadership during major economic and political flashpoints in both Canada and Great Britain. As Governor of the Bank of Canada under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he helped steer this country through the biggest economic crisis it has ever faced. When Carney was appointed chair of the G20’s Financial Stability Board in 2011, Harper said that it was “a testament to his skills and to the strength of Canada’s financial system.”
As Governor of the Bank of England, meanwhile, Carney tried to warn Britons about the economic risks associated with Brexit in the lead up to the vote. When they voted for it anyways, he aggressively cut interest rates and provided British banks with liquidity to avert a complete collapse in business and consumer confidence. Mission accomplished, more or less.
Carney’s crisis experience doesn’t necessarily prepare him for dealing with Donald Trump and his threats to Canada’s sovereignty, if only because there’s almost nothing that could. Carney is used to operating in the more rational world of markets and data, neither of which have any purchase or pull in Trump’s political universe. Even so, the depth and diversity of Carney’s CV exposes the one-dimensionality of Poilievre’s entirely political resume — one that’s long on years and short on actual achievements.
Canadians appear to already grasp this. A recent poll by Nanos Research shows that 39.6 per cent of Canadians consider Carney as “the most qualified leader to negotiate with Mr. Trump and his administration,” compared to just 26 per cent who preferred Poilieve. Pallas Data confirmed this momentum shift in its own poll, which shows a Mark Carney-led Liberal Party of Canada in a dead heat with Poilievre’s Conservatives at 37 per cent support. Suddenly, that election that Poilievre and his caucus have been begging for might not seem like such a good idea.
None of this guarantees a Liberal victory, mind you. The Conservatives still have a Scrooge McDuck-sized vault of cash, and they’re already using it to portray Carney either as the second coming of Justin Trudeau or a representative of the Davos-Industrial complex. Expect to hear the “carbon tax Carney” nickname many, many times over the next few months.
But this will be a tough sell for many Canadians, given what they already know about Carney and his background. He is no Michael Ignatieff, a relatively blank political slate onto which Conservatives can project their own highly negative story. Carney is a known commodity in Canada, especially in its business community, and there will be no shortage of testimonials from erstwhile conservatives to both his financial acumen and grace under pressure.
So far, at least, Poilievre’s Conservatives and their proxies in the pundit class have responded by invoking criticisms of Carney from Brexiteers like Liz Truss, the short-lived British prime minister who nearly crashed that country’s economy with her reckless policies. This is remarkably thin ice for them to walk out on, given Poilievre and former leader Andrew Scheer’s own enthusiastic endorsements of Brexit at the time. If they were trying to underscore Carney’s good judgment, they couldn’t have done a much better job.
This hints at Poilievre’s key weakness: at a moment where the country clearly craves more serious leadership, his brand of sloganeering populism and own-the-Libs politicking simply isn’t fit for purpose. This wasn’t as apparent or important before November’s American election returned Trump to power. Back then, Canadians were deeply tired of Trudeau and wanted something, anything different, even if the polls showed Poilievre’s personal popularity lagged well behind the desire for change. Telling voters that their country was broken worked a lot better when there wasn’t an American president actively trying to break it.
It’s not clear that Poilievre has the ability to shift gears. Can he drop the petulance and relentless partisanship that defines his political brand and focus on the real threat to our prosperity? Or has the well-cultivated hatred of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals so thoroughly poisoned the Conservative Party of Canada that it will keep blaming the government for the threats we must resist? The answers to those questions will help decide the next election. But one thing is already clear: in trying to salt the earth for the Liberals, Poilievre may have unwittingly sown the seeds of his own once-unlikely defeat.
February 7th 2025
Comments
Granted Mark Carney is a far better choice than Conservative Pierre Poilievre, do we really need to idolize the Liberal front-runner? Did Carney really rescue the British economy after Brexit or was it simply the failure of highly exaggerated predictions of post-Brexit decline propagated by him and other self-interested business and financial elites who most benefited from the EU connection?
Similarly, the interests of the broad Canadian public are not the same as Canadian bankers and investment fund managers, the cohorts that Mark Carney is close to, and in my view, most represents.
Carney's views on climate change are not exaggerated, but yes they come in part from the research conducted by an insurance industry that puts its financial existance on the line. They are also well informed by climate science, a very important observation fir a high finance globalized industry. It's pulling out of Florida and California as other decision makers continue to promote fossil fuels. The irony is as thick as the smoke over LA last month.
Carney's intervention in a Brexit drunken UK may have prevented a collapse, but it may have also dulled the knife edge of pro-Brexit critics on the short term effects. Of course intervention will cushion the ride and downward slide, but the effects are far from over. Long term analyses are now dedging up troubling labour shortages in jobs in agriculture and domestic services that Britains have always detested and preferred to leave to immigrants and migrants. Shipping goods across the channel is orders if magnitude more diffucult than before, and many employers in the UK are seeing their incomes drop, leading to layoffs. Smuggling migrants into the UK as ultra-cheap illegal labour, often in near slave-like conditions by unscrupulous employers is now big business.
Brexit also brought out the racists and shameful behaviour abounded all over. Anti-immigrant sentiments were front and centre, as was the hypocrisy of the then ruling Conservatives who themselves empoyed illegal nannies or underpaid immigrants in theur own busineses. Labour Party members voted for Brexit because they thought brown people were taking away their jobs, simplistically ignoring the decades of knock on effects of Conservative policies since Thatcher.
It is highly premature to minimize the results of Brexit not even six years after Boris prorogued the British parliament. It is very telling that (i) Labour won the last UK election in a landslide and, (ii) that party is now vocally discussing negotiating rejoining the EU.
Apparently, Labour bigwigs have had an adult conversation and concluded the arguments supporting Brexit were bullshit all along, playing on the insecurities of inflation and change, focusing on Brussels bureaucracy as the root of all evil (a bureaucracy that has employed a fellow named Farage for years in a Europe that has underpinned his family's own well being), pushing racist theories into the position of blame instead of conservative policies to concentrate wealth and to protect their fossil fuel laden investment portfolios.
Lately, pro Bexiteers are using discredited UK politicians like Liz Truss to provide "expert" testimony on Carney's "failure" as an economic leader. Other critics are providing evidence to his astute management of a crisis, and how pro-Brexit alumni are trying to cover up their own gross miscalculations.
What can we in Canada learn from thus? I think we have the power to change trade relationships without a wholesale reordering of society based on lies and coverups abd misinformation. Funny how Carney's narrative focuses mainly on clean energy, not on expandibg fossil fuels or applying whitener to immigration policy.
Re: "Brexit insanity" and "lies and coverups and misinformation", you may wish to read up on the effect of EU fiscal rules has had on members, even those not part of the Eurozone:
Why Britain walked out by Serge Halimi
"But instead of a community, it built a market. Bristling with commissioners, rules for member states, penalties for its peoples, yet wide open to competition among workers, soulless and with only one aim - to serve the wealthiest and best connected in financial centres and major metropolises. The European dream has been reduced to a world of penances and austerity, invariably justified as the lesser evil."
***
Michael Hudson
"The real problem is not merely that bureaucrats are making the laws, but the kind of laws they are making: pro-bank, anti-labor austerity. Tax and public spending policy has been taken out of the hands of national governments and turned over to the banking centers. They insist on austerity and scaling back pensions and social spending programs.
The Maastricht and Lisbon treaties – along with the German constitution – deprive the eurozone of having a central bank to spend money to revive the European economy. Instead of working to heal the economy from the debt deflation that has occurred since 2008, the European Central Bank (ECB) finances banks and obliges governments to save bondholders from loss instead of writing down bad debts.”
***
"Because they're using finance as the new means of war. There is a war going on in Europe but it's not a military war anymore. They're now using finance instead of war and they're using finance to say, we can grab your country. We can put you out of work. We can control you and we don't have to kill you, we can just make you immigrate by taking away your pensions and taking all your money. There's a land grab just as if it were an invasion to grab Greece's ports, to grab Greece's railroads, and to grab everything else. This is war."
***
William Mitchell
“ One option is to to establish a true federation, with a European level fiscal capacity to ensure that total spending in the Eurozone is sufficient to generate enough jobs to satisfy the desire of the workers. This is the Werner and MacDougall Committee option. However, the differences between the European nations are so great that such a choice is highly unlikely."
***
"When I tweeted it was a ‘great outcome’ I didn’t say that good would come out of it. I also didn’t suggest that it would be a short-term recovery of prosperity or that the workers would benefit. I was referring to the fact that class struggle now has a clearer focus within the British political debate. There is now a dynamic for a truly progressive leadership to emerge and bring the disenfranchised along with them and wipe out the neo-liberal hydra once and for all. That is why the Brexit vote is excellent. British politics is now in chaos. How it sorts itself out will determine what the outcome leads to. But progressive leadership now has space to challenge the orthodoxy. That is a great outcome."
The destruction of Greece – “only a down payment” according to the IMF
William Mitchell is Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=35856
"But the head of the IMFs European Department “and Greece’s original bailout architect” one Poul Thomsen, claimed last week that Greece’s:
… fiscal and structural reforms…pension reforms, tax reforms, are only a down payment … deep structural reforms, many of which are not yet on the books … This is a long-term project …
Yes, they have only been in Depression for 9 years and have only shrunk by 27 odd per cent. There is more destruction to be done."
William Mitchell:
"But progressive leadership now has space to challenge the orthodoxy."
That orthodoxy has now morphed into Brexit. And indeed, the progressives in the landslide-winning Labour government are actively seeking closer relations with their former EU economic partners. According to the polls, the British are also starting to think they'd vote to rejoin the EU if another referendum was scheduled, but the divisiveness of the debate still rankles. Note that over 6,000 EU laws were kept after Brexit came into effect. Of that, about 700 were eliminated after analysis of their legitimacy.
Then there's post Brexit analysis like this.......
"In 2018, the Mayor commissioned leading economic analysts Cambridge Econometrics to study the potential impact of different Brexit scenarios on London and the whole of the UK. Cambridge Econometrics has now revisited that analysis, with support from the Greater London Authority’s Economics team, to project the economic impacts of the UK’s departure from the Customs Union and Single Market, in particular the impact of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The report shows that:
. The UK has 1.8m fewer jobs now that it would have been had Brexit not happened – a drop of 4.8 per cent. There are approximately 290,000 fewer jobs in London in 2023 compared to a scenario in which Brexit did not occur.
· There are 523,000 fewer jobs in construction nationwide, with 81,000 less in London under this scenario.
· There are 388,000 fewer jobs in financial services nationwide, with 92,000 less in London under this scenario.
· The average Briton is nearly £2,000 worse off, while the average Londoner is nearly £3,400 worse off as a result of Brexit.
· UK real Gross Value Added (GVA)- a measure of the size of the economy- is approximately £140bn less in 2023 than it would have been had the UK opted to remain in the Customs Union and Single Market - a drop of six per cent. The capital’s real GVA is more than £30bn less in 2023 under this scenario.
· This economic damage is set to increase should the UK retain its current relationship with Europe. For example, by 2035, the UK’s real GVA would be about £311 billion lower (10.1 per cent) than had it not left the EU. London’s real GVA would be about £63bn lower.
. Brexit has also made the cost-of-living crisis more severe in the UK. City Hall analysis shows that 30% of the increase in food prices between December 2019 and March 2023 could be attributed to the effects of Brexit, and other research from the LSE confirms this by showing that Brexit added an average of £210 to household food bills over the two years to the end of 2021, costing UK consumers a total of £5.8 billion."
https://www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-uk-economy-almost-ps140bil….
***
It amazes me that the anti-Carney right wing media at the Toronto Sun and elsewhere pull out highly discredited Brexiteers like Liz Truss to testify on how Carney "destroyed" the UK economy merely by cushioning the chaotic blows of the negative impacts of both Brexit and the pandemic at the same time, but remain silent on Truss's own extremist right wing policies that were so controversial that she was quickly turfed by her own party. Her stint as prime minister lasted less than the lifespan of a head of lettuce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss_lettuce
However, Brexit is a sidetrack from our situation in Canada. Whether the EU is nothing more than a massive collection of bureaucracies bent on destroying individual nation's economies in a fit of imperialistic hubris from the largest EU countries, or actually accomplishes some genuine good, the fact is that 27 nations are still left in the organization and willingly stay because there are great mutual benefits. There's the odd freeloader, like Hungary which stays to enjoy the free multiple billion euro grants despite the fact its leader, Viktor Orbán, prefers the promise of totalitarianism now represented by a war weakened Putin, but it works. Democracy is sometimes messy. Democracy is often bureaucratic. The EU has 27 sovereign governments largely cooperating in one overall organization. The US has 50 states, but it solves the complexity by giving individual states total control over too many things, like federal elections. Canada has 13 individual governments wrapped up in one federation that largely works.
Democracy has no alternative than dictatorship. The EU was and still is a US$28B alternative economy to the US$29B American economy. The EU is far more advanced in climate action and lowering its emissions than North America -- as is the UK even under Conservative rule and Brexit. The EU is also far more socially evolved and its social programs are often superior. Its urbanism is a lot more efficacious than Canadian and US cities.
Given Trump's 51st state schtick, do we have a choice to not look to the EU? Or can we pull a Tariffexit and go it alone? We have 60% of the population of the UK. Are we big enough to turn completely inward, or is it wiser to seek diversified alliances?
No one is idolizing him.
That world-class cohort is in charge, so why on earth would we NOT want someone versed in that I ask. Especially when our economy is so threatened that covid level assistance is anticipated.
Please can we need to retire once and for all the quaint notion of wanting some guy you can have a beer with as our leader. It`s ridiculous.
We`re beyond lucky to have someone of Carney`s caliber as one of our own ready to come home.
In addition to having been thrust into the maw of the UK's special kind of Brexit insanity, Carney also had to deal with the international financial ramifications of COVID. Twin concurrent crises. He rose to the challenge as best or better than anybody else could.
When Canada moves beyond the US in its economy, Carney already has many contacts in Europe who will answer his calls, and a widely respected worldwide reputation as a problem solver and crisis manager in economics and international relations.
Who else do we have? Freeland? Too close to fossil fuel interests. Singh? Frankly, no relevant experience to address this crisis, though he and his party's more intelligent MPs may well work through the thought process that supporting economic expertise and leading Canada into a better future based on renewables at this time means getting behind Carney in a minority government, which is far better than electoral oblivion. The Bloc? The same.* May? Ditto. Poilievre? His ignorance and lack of real world experience mixed with his oversupply of angry hubris is very dangerous for Canada.
* Trump has largely unified Quebec to support Canada, with a few exceptions. They know that if Canada allows itself to become the 51st state Quebec culture and language will erode.
"They know that if Canada allows itself to become the 51st state Quebec culture and language will erode."
Rather ironic given that it was Quebec voters who got us the original free trade deal by giving Mulroney his majority in 1988.
Agreed. It's ironic.
Carney's policies almost certainly helped, but were insufficient to do anything you could call "rescue" of the British economy, which sucks horribly due in part to Brexit. Incidentally, while it's true that there are a number of things about the European Union that are very bad, they only matter if your local government had plans to do anything better. Since Britain became part of the EU, NO prominent British politician from either the Tories or Labor except Jeremy Corbyn has ever suggested doing anything that went against the spirit of the worst aspects of the EU--if anything since leaving they've done those things harder and worse. So it's only the remaining good things about the EU that were lost, along with the trade and such. Brexit has indeed been a disaster, there's little remaining controversy about that. (It should be admitted that the British economy would be sucking even without Brexit, due to government after government pursuing ruinous policies.) So no, I don't actually doubt that Carney's policies at that time were about the best that a central banker could have done in the circumstances and that they did make things less worse than they could have been.
That said, Carney will not ultimately save us. He seems to be an unusually decent fellow as central bankers go, and has often said some things that are more sound than you would expect for a Liberal. But it's pretty clear that, like all the other centrist saviors, Obama, Trudeau, Macron and so on, he remains a prisoner of a certain perspective that only lets you tinker around the edges of problems because it takes the fundamental causes of those problems as given and necessary. So on housing, for instance, while he has said that the Liberal party failed to give housing the serious attention and action it deserved, I doubt he will depart from the basic Liberal approach of trying to bribe rich developers into doing things they don't want to do because doing them would cut into profits. A finance-oriented guy probably isn't going to break down and say OK, the government needs to directly build large amounts of housing like in the old days, nor is he going to say screw the market, we're regulating the prices hard. His hope and change is likely to in the end leave us with the same malaise and failure to seriously tackle our problems that has been the result of market-oriented centrist governments pantomiming hope and change without action for decades now, the same failure that allows frustration to build up and make fascism increasingly popular.
For as long as the very rich keep on getting richer, things are going to keep on getting worse. Centrists pretty much by definition don't challenge that process. Carney becoming prime minister is currently a better prospect than any other remotely plausible option. But at some point we're going to need something implausible to happen or we're just going to keep drifting into chaos.
Good points, but I don't think I'd go that far on the neoliberal multinational corporate control of government thing, if that's what you were implying.
I do note, however, that Carney talks extensively about clean energy, and in doing so he constantly cites the IEA and other data on the volcanic rise of investments in renewables, inevitably leading to their mass build out to a oil demand peak inflection point at about 2030. That narrative does tend to counter the temptation to lean toward the false nirvana of CCUS and LNG. No other PM-capable leader out there is saying such heretical things in counterpoint to the automatic worship of fossil fuel orthodoxy. Maybe he'll have his arm twisted to approach that alter, but I dunno. He's invested almost everything (talks, interviews, a really thick book) in what he calls a "clean energy superpower" and the actual transition that will actually "change everything."
The other thing is that Carney's CV in terms of today's Trumpian crisis never refers to him being a private investment banker, but always reiterates his two stints as a public servant heading central banks of two nations that both faced crises while he worked at them. Those would have been very tough gigs, stick handling regulations and interest rates that no doubt pissed off many his former private investment banking colleagues. He has also defined himself as "centre left" and a believer in maintaining a strong economy while reinforcing a strong set of social programs.
All we have right now is Carney's record and his words. So far they sound like the best of the lot.
We needed a hero in 2015 and Justin Trudeau was the right man for the job. He did well though that hurts a lot of ears.
Today we face a very different world and threats. And I believe miraculously the universe has sent along Mark Carney to help out. He is a man of broad top level skills and conviction, heart for Canada and experience in world crises. he knows the leaders and players intimately and is trusted by them. Watching him I have no doubt whatsoever about his resolution or ability to get the job done.
Whatever unfolds ahead most of us are not ready for. No experience. He s the Galahad knight who comes equipped with the best armour and will bear our standard.
Please let us not fall into the silly quibbling of the likes of pp and his inept cohorts who would drag us down into the pit that the orange guy offers.
Mark Carney will help us find out future and reach it. The world and climate too.
The metaphor I think of is more like seasoned veteran, with the scars to prove it. I've said it before, Carney already ate Poilievre's lunch on world experience and he's not even elected yet.
Havent been back to the Arthurian legends for a while so will stick with Marshall Dillon. Whatever. The Universe has done us a great favour sending this man. Please could we at least give him a majority to work with? Charlie A is leaving the NDP and they need to rebuild with people of sense or leave the field.
It is extremely important that we recognize that Carney actually sees the disasterous effects of climate change and had pushed a group of international bankers to commit to shifting funding away from fossil fuels. He chaired that group I believe. Then Trump appeared and the banks suddenly fell over each other to bolt, smelling a resugence of fossil fuel. There is a considerable difference between the leader of a country's bank, with the a broad responsibility for the entire country and all of its industries and its people, and the run-of-the mill commercial bank with a CEO that chases profit at all cost (to others) to keep the shareholders happy. If you care about the environment and care about Canada standing up to the bully down south, Carney seems the best bet by a mile.
A very astute observation! Thank you.
Yes, Carney was a public servant for years who regulated the very banks his critics acuse him of kowtowing to. He has also talked and written for years on the absolute need to get with the transition and fight climate change.
The only difference is that Carney will use international investment money and public seed money to catalyze renewables instead of the typical activist's method of trying to tear down banks. Carney will most likely get them to foster internal change in banks by pushing them to decarbonize their investments.
"There is a considerable difference between the leader of a country's bank" "and " a CEO that chases profit at all costs (to others) to keep the shareholders happy" Great point, which some apparently miss. Are we smart enough to engage in long term vs. short term thinking?
The bottom line for me is that Poilievre is too disingenuous. We need to turn a corner somehow on the internal poison-pill atmosphere in Parliament and he can't get us there.
Poilievre led one of the many convoy protests in Ottawa when Ottawa came under attack by the dozens of semis the drove downtown and parked for up to 6 weeks. It was an illegal occupation and they asked the Governor General to actually oust our Prime Minister and call an election. They actually had a press conference with their own mandate and wanted Poilievre to take over as Prime Minister. 44% of registered Conservatives polled in October 2024 wanted Trump to win and Trump and Musk in turn want PolIevre to win. That's who he is.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8959365/canada-day-convoy-james-topp-far-rig…
Exactly, this wasn`t that long ago so I don`t get EITHER why people seem to have forgotten what was a bush-league coup, but a coup nonetheless. So PP leads the Convoy Party of Canada who are more than just on the same side of the political spectrum as Trump, who is also acting a lot more like Putin lately with more latitude.
Since the right wing has completely lost ALL credibility some time ago, that really should simplify all this FAR more than it does.
Trump is NOT acting like Putin. Putin is intelligent; his actions generally have the results he intends. And he certainly isn't interested in dismantling the administrative state--he faced a dismantled state when he first came to power, and put a lot of effort into getting it functional again. Putin is a ruthless but rational technocrat; Trump hates technocrats because they expose the fakeness of every claim to knowledge he ever makes. Although I think he hasn't figured out that Putin is one. To the extent that the two get along, it's because Putin is playing him. Although this time around it seems as if he sees less need to bother as compared to the last Trump presidency.
We think of the two as similar because Putin is unscrupulous enough to make use of culture war ideas to create cohesion among his supporters, and because we have a cultural need for him to be the cartoon villain that Trump actually is. But I've watched a couple of the guy's longer press conferences, and that's not where his mental centre of gravity is. Putin is happy to answer reporters' questions off the cuff and without notes FOR AN HOUR about the minutiae of economic and industrial policy. He's a wonk. To him, a bit of demagoguery is just one of the prices he has to pay to keep running the nuts and bolts of the country.
One other thing Trump and Putin have in common is lying. Trump pulls it off sporadically and laughably. But Putin tells lies like they are facts to back up his failures in war, in economics and imperialist intentions.
Trump is Poilievre's daddy.
There, that's the first soundbite of the Libs campaign.
Haha, yeah, although the outsized importance of soundbites is kind of terrifying. Personally I think they need to hire some poets to ``make it new.``
As governor of the bank of Canada (and later Bank of England), Carney has made a number of policy statements about the economic dangers of climate change as far back as 2016. That is a big plus!
Another point in his favour occurred this weekend when he toured Québec and Québec City. Saturday morning, he was interviewed by veteran political commentator Paul Laroque of the TVA television network. He was able to put forward his message « dans la langue de Molière ». He was able to cope with loaded questions about the controversy surrounding Quebec City' s streetcar projet versus « le 3e lien »(Third bridge across the St Lawrence). His fluency in French is adequate although not yet optimal. As a teacher, I can give him passing marks in the other official language....
Chantal Hebert also gave Carney's French a passing mark, but qualified it as "rusty." He's still getting his message out, and Hebert said that Trump has galvanized Quebeckers as much if not more than English-speaking Canadians. My neighbour is from Montreal, and his entire family really likes Mark Carney, mainly because they despise Trump and see Carney as the best qualified to get Canada through the churned up Trump waters and safely on a new course.
Yes, PP is vile, and would do nothing good for Canada if he became PM. But I find the premature canonizing of Mark Carney to be rather desperate and pathetic. He's probably not a crook, but he's corporate to the core, evasive about his financial dealings (https://theijf.org/liberal-leadership-financial-disclosures), and his climate banking pet project is melting down as the big banks head for the exits. So, he looks good only because the alternative sets the bar so low.
What! The guy`s frigging top-drawer.
So we are all anti-intellectual, anti-expertise, and basically anti-everything now like the churlish, creepy cons are we, incapable of giving credit where credit`s due as well. Pffffttttt.....
Okay. So put everything into a blind trust already.
Will you be happy with your company's or public pension plan's investment portfolio? 9.99 / 10 that you won't be, but that shouldn't stop you from running for office if you've got a deep well of genuine experience and talent to offer.
Besides, going with renewables is the Number One way to fight climate change because it directly replaces carbon molecules with electrons. I wish the Laws of Physics could speak a language instead of demonstrating disruptive, severe weather. They'd back Carney any day of the week. Personally, I don't care if Mitsubishi works out a deal with the Carney Feds to bring a nice big heat pump to my house, as long as it's more affordable to my family than today.
"He's probably not a crook but.." Nothing like having your mind made up in advance.
I don't find him invasive at all. He's resigned from all his positions, and intends to provide full disclosure once he's hopefully won the leadership race.
U.S. banks have left the climate initiative because they see a chance to make profits under Trump's agenda, and also believe it prudent not to have a problematic relationship with him. He "looks good" to me due to a wealth of experience that others don't have to put it simply...
Who is afraid of Mark Carney? Not Donald Trump.
Who is afraid of Christia Freeland? Ah, now, that's the key here. And again, Freeland knows the Davos crowd too, both as a journalist and as a Foreign Minister.
Yeah, but now new, and although I regret the truth, also a woman, not ascendant at the moment shall we say.
Who IS afraid of Carney is Poilievre, which is job number one.
That's very true. But she's also pro fossil fuels and cites narratives from last century about LNG being a "transitional fuel." She upped the TMX accounts by another $20B in taxpayer backed loan guarantees that pushed the project to $50B total. Not a peep about any other form of energy or the problematic dependency and planetary damage fossil fuels have wrought.
Carney does need to clarify where he stands on today's fossil fuel industry. Will he subsidize CCUS or leave the industry to stand on its own for a change? But he certainly has a long-winded narrative in spoken and written words (his book is very dense) on the necessity to embrace the clean energy transition and constantly uses IEA data on the phenomenal rate of growth of worldwide investments in renewables compared to fossil fuels. This year the money roaring into renewables is expected to reach 3 trillion bucks, with petroleum stuck at one trillion for the third year in a row. What does that trend tell us about the future direction we need to take?
It tells us everything, one would think. In regards to CCUS, he HAS indicated interest in the past, but the question might be will he carry on the current strategy of granting subsidies for the industry to use it, where it's not effective at reducing emissions, but simply allows for more oil recovery, or will the support take the form of research? Somebody MAY be able to make CCUS work. (I'm not holding my breath) The main thing is the realization that adherence to fossil fuels is economic folly. That he can make that case effectively is exactlt what we need.
I agree completely. In my view we can afford to leave CCUS and all other subsidies for the fossil sector off the table. Ignore oil and gas. Concurrently, let's build that clean energy superpower Carney waxes on about. By some very credible organized research, petroleum has about five years left before its worldwide decline starts. Carney is the only contender for PM out there who seems ready to avoid the slide.
Trump isn't afraid of Carney because he doesn't know him or has ever dealt with him directly. Yet.
But I do agree that Freeland is very intelligent and capable and would make an exemplary international affairs minister again, if she sticks with politics and gets re-elected. She should join Carney in whatever economic junkets he takes to Mar a Lago. Neither Carney or Freeland will demean themselves and pucker up to kiss Trump's ass like Danielle Smith. In fact, I can see Carney simply leaving without saying goodbye if MAGAnomics have shorted out the American's capacity for critical thinking. Europe and East Asia await.
Thx Max. The usual reasoned comments. I particularly liked the phrase poisoned and that is what Poilievre has been doing, poisoning our minds with lies , misinformation and gaslighting. I don't believe Canada is broken. I do have the feeling that Poilievre is out to dismantle our national institutions and reduce social benefits to all. All because Conservatives believe government spending is the same as a household
I was saying before the American election that if Trump won, a possible silver lining might be that his dreadful example might turn people off from Poilievre, aka Trump-lite-wannabe. But I had no idea just how hard Trump would work to make that a reality!
I still remember very clearly all the Trump and confederate flags flapping away in the subzero wind during the Ottawa truck convoy siege. It ended when police on horses arrived and quickly scared the tough guys away. The aftereffects of court cases continues, and will continue for years. 300+ Ottawa residents and businesses are waiting for their class action suit to arrive in court after the criminal cases are done.
There's a lot of jail time currently mounting up for the so-called Freedom Convoy. Moreover, a lot of truckers are going to lose their rigs once the residents they terrorized for three weeks get their legal revenge.