Today marks one year since Mark Carney’s election as Prime Minister of Canada. Carney is riding high with a coveted majority and strong polling numbers, owing to a combination of exceptional luck, an impressive resumé, reassuring promises, energetic foreign outreach, and backroom deals. Daunting economic and strategic weaknesses have, paradoxically, worked in his favour. Canadians are clearly willing to give him time to deal with a difficult American president and severe, if mainly self-inflicted, economic and strategic problems — even if, according to the Business Council of Canada, his first year was defined “more by direction than by deliverables.”
A Honeymoon Built on Hope
There is no known precedent in any Westminster-style parliamentary democracy for a minority government to achieve a majority due to floor crossings alone. Transparent cynicism has not unduly tarnished Carney, however, beyond making clear that power comfortably trumps values for a governing party whose big-tent diversity will doubtless be throttled by ruthless central control.
Resource Development Rhetoric vs. Reality
Eventually, we will learn just how genuine Carney’s transformation into a champion of natural resources development is after decades of climate alarmism. His rhetoric is enthusiastic but the rules and regulations that impede resource development remain. His language evokes the past Conservative government when, as minister of natural resources, I was accused by the Liberals of “gutting” the regulatory process for tabling legislation to achieve “one project one review in a limited time period” — which is now Carney’s mantra. Needless to say, the legacy media now lauds his approach as much as it condemned mine, and does so while still touting the alleged existential threat to human survival posed by man-made climate change.
The Clock is Ticking on Deliverables
At a certain point, the honeymoon will end and Carney will have to deliver on his promises to implement much of the Conservative agenda, diversify markets, and land a trade deal with the U.S., which was the principal reason for his (minority) election victory. Yet, with no election in sight, his recent “fireside chat” tempered expectations and even made allusions to military resistance to the invading Americans in the War of 1812. Let’s hope memories of the British burning down the White House don’t trigger President Donald Trump to order the 7th Fleet to sail up the St. Lawrence.
Upcoming CUSMA Talks
Even without the provocation of Carney’s war stories, our negotiators face a chilly reception at the upcoming CUSMA talks. The president loves his own tariffs but for some reason resents ours, while Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick thinks we “suck” because the U.S. runs a trade deficit with us — which is generated by their buying our oil and gas at below international prices.
The Liberal Advantage
Justin Trudeau won three elections in spite of an atrocious track record, so anything is possible in a country whose media, academia, judiciary, and corporate elite are predominantly liberal. And the Liberals have benefited enormously from the NDP’s collapse into far-left ideological and woke irrelevancy, which its new leader, Avi Lewis, seems to want to double-down on, given his desire to nationalize even grocery stores.
