The simple fact is that Mark Carney presented himself as the man for the moment. He argued that Trump responds to strength and only he would stand up with strength. That it was his background, resume, experience, Oxford education that had groomed him to rise to this occasion.
It is revisionist to suggest now that “we shouldn’t be so harsh, government is hard.”
This is true. But it’s not what the man himself promised. Holding him to his own promises - and, importantly, rejecting the revisionism of Mr. Carney’s compatriots to attempt to play down his promises of 4 months ago because ‘turns out governing is hard’, and rejecting the revisionism being pushed by the author here - is entirely reasonable and fair.
Sure, he’s not Roosevelt. But Gurney’s point was that Carney premised his entire election on (1) Canada is in an emergency, and (2) only Mark Carney can lead the charge and fly the flag.
If he wants to be judged like a conventional politician, finding the policy levers and settling into office, he shouldn’t have promised the sun, moon, and stars.
Backing down every day, missing self-imposed deadlines, and declining to act with any semblance of the emergency he himself argued Pierre Poilievre wasn’t taking seriously, is disconcerting, and he should be judged accordingly.
Lastly - it is ridiculous to make counter factual arguments like “well would Pierre be doing any better???” It is functionally asinine. He is not the PM. He didn’t make Carney’s promises. Stop this absolute revisionist, Orwellian BS and hold the guy accountable to his own blessed promises.
A certain type of Canadians have no ability to smell bullshit, especially when it's being shovelled at them by 'the right kind of person' with the right pedigree and credentials.
Mark Carney preyed perfectly on this weakness by parachuting in from what might has well have been outer space with a fantastical narrative that ultimately consisted mostly of vague nonsense, but which was swallowed whole by bleating morons who then begged for more. Only in Canada could a man appear from nowhere and have few articulated ideas and certainly none that weren't lifted directly from his opponents' policy book, but just say essentially "look at me, with my grey hair and thoughtful expression, I look like a serious leader so therefore I am one!" and have the public agree.
Oh and if Poilievre had won the election and then took the summer off to do not much of anything other than capitulate to US demands, our media and pundits would be losing their minds. You see, as I've said before, our parties are graded on completely different scales.
This comments in an accurate and civilly written critique and rebuttal of the column, and by extension of the state of Canadian politics, Canadian politics as tainted by the unwelcome intervention by Donald Trump. Saved me from being a loudmouth about Carney, I can always be that later.
I appreciated this author admitting midway that he would have held Poilievre to a completely different set of standards. It is refreshing to see this kind of honesty in the punditry.
This article is well written, but it ignores the fact that this PM rode into power screaming about all the instant action he was going to take, all the wins he would rack up against the evil ogre on our southern flank, and how swiftly he would set things right.
He blatantly over-promised, and it won him the election, but just barely. Now he has to deliver on all those promises, and what we're getting instead is an escalating series of excuses.
Carney's honeymoon will be over when he releases a budget and reveals the totals of the deficit spending he is racking up at a greater rate than Trudeau ever did.
I'm enjoying the growing consensus that a critical mass of the media are now bought-and-paid-for Liberal shills. This past election should be all the information a reasonable person needs to come to that conclusion.
There were days in April where the first *metre* of the CTV news website on a desktop computer screen was nothing but hyperbolic trash about Trump, tariffs, and how this was the number one most important issue of all time over which we should be Very Very Scared.
Everything's an investment! Just jiggle around the books using tricks you learn in a first-year accounting course and no more deficit!
But no politician could get away with such an obvious and craven trick as long as there is a robust media environment full of objective reporters looking for the truth and motivated to hold the powerful to account... oh wait, shit...
KRM, as a retired CPA, I can tell you with absolute certainty that 1) we, as accountants do understand the difference between expenditures on investments and expenditures on operations and we do account for them differently; but 2) the difference between the two MUST be reconciled through the amortization of those investments as part of operations.
Oooppps! Using accounting "tricks" without understanding that they are not tricks and must work together because ultimately there is only one source of finance, in this case, taxpayers. And, yes, funny money on funny books just isn't at all very damned funny.
My point is exactly that this isn't some brilliant magic trick that could only be thought of by the World's Smartest Economist, but rather an extremely basic tactic to conceal the size of the deficit by just... calling it something else.
Of course the numbers will still be there, but thanks the the uncritical media we all know the Liberals will get away with "balancing" the operating budget by re-defining 'operating budget' to be whatever they want it to be, and then describing this as "the budget" while the CBC and G&M nod along dutifully.
I will leave it to the accountants to figure out how long our government can do this before the country's finances obviously collapse, but I bet it's good for squeezing out at least one more election win!
With respect, KRM, the accountants can figure out right now how long - not very! But, we cannot do more than that.
The real key is when the investment bankers say, "No more!" and decline to underwrite Canadian bonds. The investment bankers say to governments, "Slow down; not so much debt" for an interminable time until they (the bankers) realize that a) the governments aren't listening and b) they (the bankers) are at risk of being involved with a debtor who is on the verge of default, at which time they say, "No more!"
Remember something terrifically important. We, the accountants, record what has already happened, i.e. history, even if it is recent history. The bankers look to the future and try to gauge if a loan will be / can be repaid. Therefore, we can warn about past government foolishness but it is the bankers who, when looking forward, can fire the guns to stop that foolishness. But the bankers won't do it until the very, very end, at which time the government will have dug a massive hole out of which the country must crawl.
The only thing robust about Canadian media is the frequency of praise and worship reports for the Liberal party, and utter scorn for those horrible cons. The recent uptick in both are due to the upcoming payments going out to “journalists” on September 1st from the Liberal Incentive At Reporters program aka LIAR.
I was wavering over including the phrase "and accounting tricks" to the end of my second last sentence. ie: "what we're getting is an escalating series of excuses and accounting tricks"
...because that is absolutely what is coming next. He's going to spend like crazy, while pretending the budget is somehow balanced - in fact he has already telegraphed that this is what he will do.
gs, I responded separately to KRM with respect to "accounting tricks" and I repeat that response herewith.
As a retired CPA, I can tell you with absolute certainty that 1) we, as accountants do understand the difference between expenditures on investments (the "accounting tricks" and expenditures on operations and we do account for them differently; but 2) the difference between the two MUST be reconciled through the amortization of those investments as part of operations.
Oooppps! Using "accounting tricks" without understanding that they are not tricks and must work together because ultimately there is only one source of finance, in this case, taxpayers. And, yes, funny money on funny books just isn't at all very damned funny.
It's certainly wrong to say Carney has accomplished nothing in his 4 months as PM.
He has added 25-30 billion to our national debt and, according to IRCC, let in a couple hundred thousand permanent residents, and extended or approved visas for another half million temporaries.
Let’s not forget that during the seriously shortened session of parliament the Liberals with support from the Conservatives pushed through Bill C-5 which grants the federal government special powers to “override laws and regulations to advance projects in the national interest”. Every initiative going forward will be deemed by the Liberals to be in their national interest, allowing them free rein to discontinue parliament, override our constitution, and charter of rights and freedoms. (All in the National Interest you know”) 😳
For weeks Canadians have been fed a steady media diet of “Pierre Poilievre is a career politician who has accomplished little except for his own personal benefit, and is negative” and “Mark Carney is quietly, slowly setting the groundwork for all these incredible things that are going to happen in Canada, it’s unfair to criticize him since he is new and needs time to accomplish all of these incredible things” To which I say “BS” - Mark Carney was sold to Canadians as the ONLY person who could rescue Canada from certain demise at the hands of the evil conservative south of the border, and to many the bad one here in Canada who lost his riding.
PM Mark Carney became Liberal leader before the election, and has been a Liberal government Finance adviser for the past 5 years. An unaccountable Liberal insider in the PMO which is really where Canada has been governed from for the past decade.
Between his already inside position, and the fact that this is essentially the same Liberal government of the last decade, PM Carney and the Liberals should have hit the ground running and not stopped until Canada is back on track. If the first 100 or 200 or whatever days of this PM and government are any indication of what’s to come in the future, Canada is in very serious trouble.
The fact that Poilievre qualified for a full pension eons ago yet still stays on as an MP speaks more of his devotion to serving the public as opposed to merely qualifying for the pension and moving on, Jagmeet-style.
Carney has been Prime Minister for 166 days. To not understand the basic underpinnings of the Parliamentary system is troubling coming from someone who is now preaching that the public is being unfair about the man who proclaimed repeatedly that he was the only one who could move faster than anyone has seen before and was more than capable of dealing with President Trump. It turns out he was less than truthful on all accounts although lies were not uncommon from Carney before, during, and now after the campaign. What is to be done with a leader who lied and swindled their way into power and are now floundering in their own inexperience and lack of judgement?
Mr. Clarke Ries, despite his intelligence, smarts, education and knowledge, like too many has a spectacularly wrong take on Pierre Poillievre. In order for PP to be acceptable to those too many, he is expected to change himself into a NOT Pierre Poillievre. Pah to that. If some people are not OK with 'what you see is what you get, but rather want a shallow image, well they already have one - in Mark Carney.
Matt Gurney is correct re. Mark Carney. If anything, he goes on Markie too easy.
Poilievre can be disliked, which is fair ball - personally, I have never let "would I have a beer with this guy" sway my voting intentions; because at the end of the day it is the policies which matter, NOT the personality ...but for some, disliking the leader is enough to vote against them.
But what Poilievre cannot be accused of is being anything other than transparent - he says what he means, and has been consistently delivering the same message for a very very long time. If there are ANY skeletons in his closet, surely they would have already come out during his so far 25 years of political life.
What we experienced in this past election was a master class in gas-lighting. The Liberal Party stole all of Pierre's rhetoric verbatim (but really just the words, and just to win the election) but there was no intention to actually DO any of the stuff they were putting in the shop window.
Post-election, we have been drip-fed a climb-down from all those positions. Suddenly we are told "Trump is unpredictable and difficult to deal with" as if this is a revelation we had no way of knowing in March or April of 2025....
Liberals will say anything to get elected, then they govern as they please.
There is nothing new under the sun, this is as it always has been in Canada.
No considerations about a politician should really matter other than:
1) What are his stated policies and how do those affect me?
2) How likely is he to successfully implement those policies?
3) Is he corrupt and will he abuse power in unexpected ways?
I don't give a rat's ass whether I like a politician as a person or what their personalty is. I'm not going to have a beer with them.
And yes, this past election was THE master class in gaslighting, far beyond anything I was expecting. It has dramatically changed how I view Canada, its politics, the Canadian people, the media, and in some ways changed my outlook on life overall. Any hope of returning to pre-2015 Canada is gone now and we all have to live with those implications.
Sadly, there is no going back, and the path forward is bleak. Confederation is a marriage on the rocks, and the economic kick in the teeth that will follow a failed renewal of the trade deal with the US will be the catalyst for dissolution.
Canadians - even the Alberta and Quebec varieties - are too risk-averse to dissolve Confederation. That would be too dramatic and interesting for a country like ours.
No, the future is a gradual reduction in standard of living, ever more dysfunctional government and useless services, lower incomes, higher taxes, more crowding, and huge voting blocs defending that situation to their death because they can convince themselves we are still better than the fictional funhouse mirror version of the US presented to them by their TV's and curated social media.
You are most likely correct. However, polls in PQ show the majority of GenZ want out. If combined with the base support of the Boomers separatists there is hope PQ will go,
I've also read there's been an uptick in separatist sentiment among young Quebeckers, but I will believe it when I see it.
They are welcome to try though - Quebec becoming even quasi-separate would be the worst thing they could do to themselves but probably the best thing that could happen to the rest of Canada.
It reminds me of the endless angsting over 'oh well I would have voted for the Progressive Conservatives if they were still a thing'.
What most people refuse to acknowledge is the old PCs were quite literally losers for nearly the last three-quarters of a century of their existence, who people would only park their vote with after the Liberals had exhausted public goodwill after decades with a plural of ineptness and corruption, and then quickly run back to the Liberals after a couple of terms. So it's telling when they say 'Oh, if only the Liberal-lites were around, so I wouldn't have to vote for Liberals'.
I can't stand those disingenuous "if only there were a true centre right option" people - most of whom found O'Toole, Scheer, Harper and sometimes Mulroney all unacceptable.
But they inevitably have the most long-winded arguments about how everything here is actually just fine and things would be perfect if we only did the absolute status quo a tiny bit better. You know, like arguments Liberals make.
Clarke Reis has written an excellent article and one that I agree with. Perspective, sense and patience seems to be his point. AND from now on EVERYONE should refer to Jen Gerson as the Warrior Poet. That is perfect.
Getting into the details of the FDR comparison is a bit of a reducto ad absurdium, missing the forest for the trees. The key point of the FDR analogy is that political capital is a perishable commodity. A victorious politician has a lot of it immediately after winning an election, but it diminishes as time elapses after that election. The supply of political capital can be renewed, but that requires accomplishments and successes, which in turn requires *doing things*.
Yes, Carney has had the traditional idle summer political season interrupt his first few months in office. Yes, he's spent time studying issues and figuring out the lay of the land. Still, he'd better burst into action when Parliament returns in September, or he'll have squandered a lot of political capital simply by failing to use it. FDR understood politics and had been involved in politics for decades before he was elected president; Carney's only been peripheral to politics, and it's different being the man in the arena instead of the spectator in the gallery.
I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to expect exceptionalism when confronting an existential shift in the world and rethinking our place in it. All of this sounds like excuses for a complete lack of the kind of hustle that should be commensurate with what has been framed as (and is) an emergency. Mark Carney isn’t an emergency-response guy, and he should be judged for that when he was framed as the one to get us through such a crisis. That’s why I don’t think he should have been elected, actually - while he might have been fine in somewhat stable times, he’s far too slow and steady for a completely unsteady world. You can’t take your time when things move this quickly. I don’t care who else would have done what - we don’t live in times where we can afford the luxury of wasting time and making excuses anymore. And I think it’s fair to judge him immediately for wasting it. We may not get the chance to make up for that waste - time could run out sooner than we think. We’re already relying way too much on the fact that the USMCA isn’t up for review until next year, as if Trump cares about rules. That’s not strategy, it’s wishful thinking - real strategy begins with honesty and ends with action, not excuses. I am beyond tired of excuses.
There is a difference between Canadian conservative and Canadian Conservative. I am the former and have been the latter. I can certainly see why Conservatives feel that somehow they've been cheated. But why would you think that I, as a conservative, would be discomfited? I wanted a conservative government. I got one.
This is tangential to the thrust of Clarke's interesting article, but did he really think we needed a three-paragraph summary of Napoleon's hundred days to be aware of that segment of European history, and its significance? Is he right in his evident presumption that readers here wouldn't have properly grasped his analogy had he simply said, 'Napoleon's hundred days' and left it at that, without the helping hand of his laborious explanatory context? If so, educational standards have indeed plummeted since I was in grade school.
I consider the three-paragraph summary of Napoleon's hundred days the beating heart of this piece. I would cut all mention of Carney before I would cut the description of the Rencontre at Laffrey.
Looks like the real issue here is whether or not the Liberal party bad habits and the entrenched interests can be overcome by Mr Smith (er, sorry... Carney) Also, that video clip “What is it.. you do here?” PERFECT 👍🏻
Well put. I think there's a really interesting question to be asked about whether Canada elected a *new* government or the *same* government in April, and I think the answer depends heavily on how you perceive the interplay between a prime minister and their party.
As you say Carney will be measured on what he does. We have had no financial management since April of 2024. We have no budget. We have not stopped increasing spending. There are talks about deep cuts, grand promises. Carney sells himself as the fixer but take a look at the mess in Britain. Energy costs out of control and deindustrialization. Not all Carney, but he certainly was a big part of it. Read any of the papers from the BOE on state controlled economy published while chair. Those directed changes happened over more than a decade there. And Carney was guiding Trudeau's economic decisions throughout the early 2020's. And we are no better off than we were prior to Carney's influence on Trudeau. As Gurney said, Carney said he knew what to do with Trump. And we are still waiting. I agree with you that he should be given a chance. That chance is when Parliament reconvenes. And it will have to happen then. A budget that cuts government size, enables pipelines to be built to BC and maybe Churchill, maybe the Maritimes. Actions that actually decrease the foreign workers and asylum seekers to a level where can process them and our own youth employment is not impaired. But his crowning glory would be the achievement of a detente between the federal government and the west, primarily Alberta and Saskatchewan and now it seems a detent with Quebec as well. Giving control to all these distinct regions to manage themselves as they see fit within the construct of Canada. These steps could be the biggest transformation in our country's history. Gurney's FDR analogy is spot on in terms of crises. There is anger in Canada, often dismissed and derided. But real and unless Carney can bind us together with a vision of Canada, as a country with an identity, with a history, a place where we can believe in the value of our fellow citizens, where we can see a future in for ourselves and our children, it won't just be him that failed, the country will fail. The past decade and the casual destruction of belief in ourselves as a country of unique value and history has left us rudderless. So Carney doesn't have time, not all his problems for sure, but they were created by all the people now around him. He said he was the expert and thrives on crisis, next month we find out. And then we can start to judge him.
I probably should have put this in the piece, but to lay my marker down, I'm personally giving Carney until Christmas. I didn't expect him to have a big summer, but if he doesn't have a big fall, there's a serious problem.
We've had no fiscal competence since 2015. Carney was an advisor. That doesn't mean Trudeau listened to him.....which might be a big part of why he now has Trudeau's job.
There is nothing to do about Trump until he's dead. Nothing. There is no point in tariffs on US products because they just hurt Canadians. Trump is incoherent, and his word on anything means nothing. We'll figure out what the relationship is with President Vance; likely sooner than later.
The premise of this column is flawed.
The simple fact is that Mark Carney presented himself as the man for the moment. He argued that Trump responds to strength and only he would stand up with strength. That it was his background, resume, experience, Oxford education that had groomed him to rise to this occasion.
It is revisionist to suggest now that “we shouldn’t be so harsh, government is hard.”
This is true. But it’s not what the man himself promised. Holding him to his own promises - and, importantly, rejecting the revisionism of Mr. Carney’s compatriots to attempt to play down his promises of 4 months ago because ‘turns out governing is hard’, and rejecting the revisionism being pushed by the author here - is entirely reasonable and fair.
Sure, he’s not Roosevelt. But Gurney’s point was that Carney premised his entire election on (1) Canada is in an emergency, and (2) only Mark Carney can lead the charge and fly the flag.
If he wants to be judged like a conventional politician, finding the policy levers and settling into office, he shouldn’t have promised the sun, moon, and stars.
Backing down every day, missing self-imposed deadlines, and declining to act with any semblance of the emergency he himself argued Pierre Poilievre wasn’t taking seriously, is disconcerting, and he should be judged accordingly.
Lastly - it is ridiculous to make counter factual arguments like “well would Pierre be doing any better???” It is functionally asinine. He is not the PM. He didn’t make Carney’s promises. Stop this absolute revisionist, Orwellian BS and hold the guy accountable to his own blessed promises.
A certain type of Canadians have no ability to smell bullshit, especially when it's being shovelled at them by 'the right kind of person' with the right pedigree and credentials.
Mark Carney preyed perfectly on this weakness by parachuting in from what might has well have been outer space with a fantastical narrative that ultimately consisted mostly of vague nonsense, but which was swallowed whole by bleating morons who then begged for more. Only in Canada could a man appear from nowhere and have few articulated ideas and certainly none that weren't lifted directly from his opponents' policy book, but just say essentially "look at me, with my grey hair and thoughtful expression, I look like a serious leader so therefore I am one!" and have the public agree.
Oh and if Poilievre had won the election and then took the summer off to do not much of anything other than capitulate to US demands, our media and pundits would be losing their minds. You see, as I've said before, our parties are graded on completely different scales.
This comments in an accurate and civilly written critique and rebuttal of the column, and by extension of the state of Canadian politics, Canadian politics as tainted by the unwelcome intervention by Donald Trump. Saved me from being a loudmouth about Carney, I can always be that later.
Excellent read rebuttal!!
I appreciated this author admitting midway that he would have held Poilievre to a completely different set of standards. It is refreshing to see this kind of honesty in the punditry.
This article is well written, but it ignores the fact that this PM rode into power screaming about all the instant action he was going to take, all the wins he would rack up against the evil ogre on our southern flank, and how swiftly he would set things right.
He blatantly over-promised, and it won him the election, but just barely. Now he has to deliver on all those promises, and what we're getting instead is an escalating series of excuses.
Carney's honeymoon will be over when he releases a budget and reveals the totals of the deficit spending he is racking up at a greater rate than Trudeau ever did.
His honeymoon with voters, possibly. His honeymoon with pundits and lapdog media? I doubt it.
That honeymoon will continue forever as long as the Liberals keep shaking the money tree towards media and pundits.
I'm enjoying the growing consensus that a critical mass of the media are now bought-and-paid-for Liberal shills. This past election should be all the information a reasonable person needs to come to that conclusion.
There were days in April where the first *metre* of the CTV news website on a desktop computer screen was nothing but hyperbolic trash about Trump, tariffs, and how this was the number one most important issue of all time over which we should be Very Very Scared.
A very good take. Markie's budget will be a blatant lie, he early on said he will use pixie dust type of accounting.
Everything's an investment! Just jiggle around the books using tricks you learn in a first-year accounting course and no more deficit!
But no politician could get away with such an obvious and craven trick as long as there is a robust media environment full of objective reporters looking for the truth and motivated to hold the powerful to account... oh wait, shit...
KRM, as a retired CPA, I can tell you with absolute certainty that 1) we, as accountants do understand the difference between expenditures on investments and expenditures on operations and we do account for them differently; but 2) the difference between the two MUST be reconciled through the amortization of those investments as part of operations.
Oooppps! Using accounting "tricks" without understanding that they are not tricks and must work together because ultimately there is only one source of finance, in this case, taxpayers. And, yes, funny money on funny books just isn't at all very damned funny.
My point is exactly that this isn't some brilliant magic trick that could only be thought of by the World's Smartest Economist, but rather an extremely basic tactic to conceal the size of the deficit by just... calling it something else.
Of course the numbers will still be there, but thanks the the uncritical media we all know the Liberals will get away with "balancing" the operating budget by re-defining 'operating budget' to be whatever they want it to be, and then describing this as "the budget" while the CBC and G&M nod along dutifully.
I will leave it to the accountants to figure out how long our government can do this before the country's finances obviously collapse, but I bet it's good for squeezing out at least one more election win!
With respect, KRM, the accountants can figure out right now how long - not very! But, we cannot do more than that.
The real key is when the investment bankers say, "No more!" and decline to underwrite Canadian bonds. The investment bankers say to governments, "Slow down; not so much debt" for an interminable time until they (the bankers) realize that a) the governments aren't listening and b) they (the bankers) are at risk of being involved with a debtor who is on the verge of default, at which time they say, "No more!"
Remember something terrifically important. We, the accountants, record what has already happened, i.e. history, even if it is recent history. The bankers look to the future and try to gauge if a loan will be / can be repaid. Therefore, we can warn about past government foolishness but it is the bankers who, when looking forward, can fire the guns to stop that foolishness. But the bankers won't do it until the very, very end, at which time the government will have dug a massive hole out of which the country must crawl.
The only thing robust about Canadian media is the frequency of praise and worship reports for the Liberal party, and utter scorn for those horrible cons. The recent uptick in both are due to the upcoming payments going out to “journalists” on September 1st from the Liberal Incentive At Reporters program aka LIAR.
I was wavering over including the phrase "and accounting tricks" to the end of my second last sentence. ie: "what we're getting is an escalating series of excuses and accounting tricks"
...because that is absolutely what is coming next. He's going to spend like crazy, while pretending the budget is somehow balanced - in fact he has already telegraphed that this is what he will do.
gs, I responded separately to KRM with respect to "accounting tricks" and I repeat that response herewith.
As a retired CPA, I can tell you with absolute certainty that 1) we, as accountants do understand the difference between expenditures on investments (the "accounting tricks" and expenditures on operations and we do account for them differently; but 2) the difference between the two MUST be reconciled through the amortization of those investments as part of operations.
Oooppps! Using "accounting tricks" without understanding that they are not tricks and must work together because ultimately there is only one source of finance, in this case, taxpayers. And, yes, funny money on funny books just isn't at all very damned funny.
It's certainly wrong to say Carney has accomplished nothing in his 4 months as PM.
He has added 25-30 billion to our national debt and, according to IRCC, let in a couple hundred thousand permanent residents, and extended or approved visas for another half million temporaries.
Let’s not forget that during the seriously shortened session of parliament the Liberals with support from the Conservatives pushed through Bill C-5 which grants the federal government special powers to “override laws and regulations to advance projects in the national interest”. Every initiative going forward will be deemed by the Liberals to be in their national interest, allowing them free rein to discontinue parliament, override our constitution, and charter of rights and freedoms. (All in the National Interest you know”) 😳
Most governments, of all stripes, are adding to their national/subnational debts.
Exhibit A: https://www.alberta.readtheline.ca/p/rob-breakenridge-less-focus-on-ottawa
For weeks Canadians have been fed a steady media diet of “Pierre Poilievre is a career politician who has accomplished little except for his own personal benefit, and is negative” and “Mark Carney is quietly, slowly setting the groundwork for all these incredible things that are going to happen in Canada, it’s unfair to criticize him since he is new and needs time to accomplish all of these incredible things” To which I say “BS” - Mark Carney was sold to Canadians as the ONLY person who could rescue Canada from certain demise at the hands of the evil conservative south of the border, and to many the bad one here in Canada who lost his riding.
PM Mark Carney became Liberal leader before the election, and has been a Liberal government Finance adviser for the past 5 years. An unaccountable Liberal insider in the PMO which is really where Canada has been governed from for the past decade.
Between his already inside position, and the fact that this is essentially the same Liberal government of the last decade, PM Carney and the Liberals should have hit the ground running and not stopped until Canada is back on track. If the first 100 or 200 or whatever days of this PM and government are any indication of what’s to come in the future, Canada is in very serious trouble.
The fact that Poilievre qualified for a full pension eons ago yet still stays on as an MP speaks more of his devotion to serving the public as opposed to merely qualifying for the pension and moving on, Jagmeet-style.
Just imagine if he had spent the last 10 years outside of Canada before parachuting in to the CPC leadership, the media would have a field day.
For sure. The double standard is ridiculous.
Even worse is NDP Dawn Black, who, after qualifying for the federal MP pension, went on to be BC MLA, qualifying for a second taxpayer-funded pension.
Carney has been Prime Minister for 166 days. To not understand the basic underpinnings of the Parliamentary system is troubling coming from someone who is now preaching that the public is being unfair about the man who proclaimed repeatedly that he was the only one who could move faster than anyone has seen before and was more than capable of dealing with President Trump. It turns out he was less than truthful on all accounts although lies were not uncommon from Carney before, during, and now after the campaign. What is to be done with a leader who lied and swindled their way into power and are now floundering in their own inexperience and lack of judgement?
Break up the country and let the voters in his portion enjoy his Trudeau-style misrule.
Mr. Clarke Ries, despite his intelligence, smarts, education and knowledge, like too many has a spectacularly wrong take on Pierre Poillievre. In order for PP to be acceptable to those too many, he is expected to change himself into a NOT Pierre Poillievre. Pah to that. If some people are not OK with 'what you see is what you get, but rather want a shallow image, well they already have one - in Mark Carney.
Matt Gurney is correct re. Mark Carney. If anything, he goes on Markie too easy.
Poilievre can be disliked, which is fair ball - personally, I have never let "would I have a beer with this guy" sway my voting intentions; because at the end of the day it is the policies which matter, NOT the personality ...but for some, disliking the leader is enough to vote against them.
But what Poilievre cannot be accused of is being anything other than transparent - he says what he means, and has been consistently delivering the same message for a very very long time. If there are ANY skeletons in his closet, surely they would have already come out during his so far 25 years of political life.
What we experienced in this past election was a master class in gas-lighting. The Liberal Party stole all of Pierre's rhetoric verbatim (but really just the words, and just to win the election) but there was no intention to actually DO any of the stuff they were putting in the shop window.
Post-election, we have been drip-fed a climb-down from all those positions. Suddenly we are told "Trump is unpredictable and difficult to deal with" as if this is a revelation we had no way of knowing in March or April of 2025....
Liberals will say anything to get elected, then they govern as they please.
There is nothing new under the sun, this is as it always has been in Canada.
No considerations about a politician should really matter other than:
1) What are his stated policies and how do those affect me?
2) How likely is he to successfully implement those policies?
3) Is he corrupt and will he abuse power in unexpected ways?
I don't give a rat's ass whether I like a politician as a person or what their personalty is. I'm not going to have a beer with them.
And yes, this past election was THE master class in gaslighting, far beyond anything I was expecting. It has dramatically changed how I view Canada, its politics, the Canadian people, the media, and in some ways changed my outlook on life overall. Any hope of returning to pre-2015 Canada is gone now and we all have to live with those implications.
Sadly, there is no going back, and the path forward is bleak. Confederation is a marriage on the rocks, and the economic kick in the teeth that will follow a failed renewal of the trade deal with the US will be the catalyst for dissolution.
Canadians - even the Alberta and Quebec varieties - are too risk-averse to dissolve Confederation. That would be too dramatic and interesting for a country like ours.
No, the future is a gradual reduction in standard of living, ever more dysfunctional government and useless services, lower incomes, higher taxes, more crowding, and huge voting blocs defending that situation to their death because they can convince themselves we are still better than the fictional funhouse mirror version of the US presented to them by their TV's and curated social media.
You are most likely correct. However, polls in PQ show the majority of GenZ want out. If combined with the base support of the Boomers separatists there is hope PQ will go,
I've also read there's been an uptick in separatist sentiment among young Quebeckers, but I will believe it when I see it.
They are welcome to try though - Quebec becoming even quasi-separate would be the worst thing they could do to themselves but probably the best thing that could happen to the rest of Canada.
A very good thing that you wrote this comment. Hopefully many will read this.
Re. the last two sentences on the "Liberals" - these are the reasons why Canada is doing so poorly and will continue to degenerate.
It reminds me of the endless angsting over 'oh well I would have voted for the Progressive Conservatives if they were still a thing'.
What most people refuse to acknowledge is the old PCs were quite literally losers for nearly the last three-quarters of a century of their existence, who people would only park their vote with after the Liberals had exhausted public goodwill after decades with a plural of ineptness and corruption, and then quickly run back to the Liberals after a couple of terms. So it's telling when they say 'Oh, if only the Liberal-lites were around, so I wouldn't have to vote for Liberals'.
I can't stand those disingenuous "if only there were a true centre right option" people - most of whom found O'Toole, Scheer, Harper and sometimes Mulroney all unacceptable.
But they inevitably have the most long-winded arguments about how everything here is actually just fine and things would be perfect if we only did the absolute status quo a tiny bit better. You know, like arguments Liberals make.
Clarke Reis has written an excellent article and one that I agree with. Perspective, sense and patience seems to be his point. AND from now on EVERYONE should refer to Jen Gerson as the Warrior Poet. That is perfect.
This is not a column worthy of The Line.
It's bad in every way and factually wrong in many others.
Cope harder.
Yes, but it gives us an opportunity to loudly contradict the contents in the comments. So there is that.
Sure.
This is not a comment worthy of the comment section.
It's bad in every way and factually wrong in many others.
Getting into the details of the FDR comparison is a bit of a reducto ad absurdium, missing the forest for the trees. The key point of the FDR analogy is that political capital is a perishable commodity. A victorious politician has a lot of it immediately after winning an election, but it diminishes as time elapses after that election. The supply of political capital can be renewed, but that requires accomplishments and successes, which in turn requires *doing things*.
Yes, Carney has had the traditional idle summer political season interrupt his first few months in office. Yes, he's spent time studying issues and figuring out the lay of the land. Still, he'd better burst into action when Parliament returns in September, or he'll have squandered a lot of political capital simply by failing to use it. FDR understood politics and had been involved in politics for decades before he was elected president; Carney's only been peripheral to politics, and it's different being the man in the arena instead of the spectator in the gallery.
I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to expect exceptionalism when confronting an existential shift in the world and rethinking our place in it. All of this sounds like excuses for a complete lack of the kind of hustle that should be commensurate with what has been framed as (and is) an emergency. Mark Carney isn’t an emergency-response guy, and he should be judged for that when he was framed as the one to get us through such a crisis. That’s why I don’t think he should have been elected, actually - while he might have been fine in somewhat stable times, he’s far too slow and steady for a completely unsteady world. You can’t take your time when things move this quickly. I don’t care who else would have done what - we don’t live in times where we can afford the luxury of wasting time and making excuses anymore. And I think it’s fair to judge him immediately for wasting it. We may not get the chance to make up for that waste - time could run out sooner than we think. We’re already relying way too much on the fact that the USMCA isn’t up for review until next year, as if Trump cares about rules. That’s not strategy, it’s wishful thinking - real strategy begins with honesty and ends with action, not excuses. I am beyond tired of excuses.
There is a difference between Canadian conservative and Canadian Conservative. I am the former and have been the latter. I can certainly see why Conservatives feel that somehow they've been cheated. But why would you think that I, as a conservative, would be discomfited? I wanted a conservative government. I got one.
What is the problem?
This is a government which makes conservative noises while spending and making policy like the progressives they actually are.
If you are satisfied because the "tone" is conservative, then you are very easy to please.
This was a good piece, written in a thoughtful manner. Thank you.
Nope.
This is tangential to the thrust of Clarke's interesting article, but did he really think we needed a three-paragraph summary of Napoleon's hundred days to be aware of that segment of European history, and its significance? Is he right in his evident presumption that readers here wouldn't have properly grasped his analogy had he simply said, 'Napoleon's hundred days' and left it at that, without the helping hand of his laborious explanatory context? If so, educational standards have indeed plummeted since I was in grade school.
I consider the three-paragraph summary of Napoleon's hundred days the beating heart of this piece. I would cut all mention of Carney before I would cut the description of the Rencontre at Laffrey.
Looks like the real issue here is whether or not the Liberal party bad habits and the entrenched interests can be overcome by Mr Smith (er, sorry... Carney) Also, that video clip “What is it.. you do here?” PERFECT 👍🏻
Well put. I think there's a really interesting question to be asked about whether Canada elected a *new* government or the *same* government in April, and I think the answer depends heavily on how you perceive the interplay between a prime minister and their party.
An excellent rebuttal, this exchange (both sides) is the best of The Line and speaks volumes for you!! :)
As you say Carney will be measured on what he does. We have had no financial management since April of 2024. We have no budget. We have not stopped increasing spending. There are talks about deep cuts, grand promises. Carney sells himself as the fixer but take a look at the mess in Britain. Energy costs out of control and deindustrialization. Not all Carney, but he certainly was a big part of it. Read any of the papers from the BOE on state controlled economy published while chair. Those directed changes happened over more than a decade there. And Carney was guiding Trudeau's economic decisions throughout the early 2020's. And we are no better off than we were prior to Carney's influence on Trudeau. As Gurney said, Carney said he knew what to do with Trump. And we are still waiting. I agree with you that he should be given a chance. That chance is when Parliament reconvenes. And it will have to happen then. A budget that cuts government size, enables pipelines to be built to BC and maybe Churchill, maybe the Maritimes. Actions that actually decrease the foreign workers and asylum seekers to a level where can process them and our own youth employment is not impaired. But his crowning glory would be the achievement of a detente between the federal government and the west, primarily Alberta and Saskatchewan and now it seems a detent with Quebec as well. Giving control to all these distinct regions to manage themselves as they see fit within the construct of Canada. These steps could be the biggest transformation in our country's history. Gurney's FDR analogy is spot on in terms of crises. There is anger in Canada, often dismissed and derided. But real and unless Carney can bind us together with a vision of Canada, as a country with an identity, with a history, a place where we can believe in the value of our fellow citizens, where we can see a future in for ourselves and our children, it won't just be him that failed, the country will fail. The past decade and the casual destruction of belief in ourselves as a country of unique value and history has left us rudderless. So Carney doesn't have time, not all his problems for sure, but they were created by all the people now around him. He said he was the expert and thrives on crisis, next month we find out. And then we can start to judge him.
I probably should have put this in the piece, but to lay my marker down, I'm personally giving Carney until Christmas. I didn't expect him to have a big summer, but if he doesn't have a big fall, there's a serious problem.
We've had no fiscal competence since 2015. Carney was an advisor. That doesn't mean Trudeau listened to him.....which might be a big part of why he now has Trudeau's job.
There is nothing to do about Trump until he's dead. Nothing. There is no point in tariffs on US products because they just hurt Canadians. Trump is incoherent, and his word on anything means nothing. We'll figure out what the relationship is with President Vance; likely sooner than later.