There is certainly great appeal in the new PM’s technocratic, but old-school image, and it play wells in the environment of the second Trump presidency.
I can't vote for Carney because I think net-zero is a fancy way of saying energy poverty and high taxes. The end result of this net-zero vision will be little to no economic growth, expensive and unreliable energy and ultimately an ever declining standard of living. "Death by a thousands cuts" or the "boiling frog" .... choose your analogy. Canada won't be better off down the road.
1. Achieving Net Zero will not be quick, easy, or cheap. It will require diverting trillions of dollars away from other priorities into rebuilding the entire world’s energy system. We’re talking investments on the order of what major countries spent during the Second World War, but for 25 straight years. Or smaller investments per year but it’ll take a century.
2. If we don’t do it, we’re headed serious global physical impacts, massive population movements, and destabilization (which eventually means nuclear war). No, we won’t go extinct, but maintaining anything close to an industrial civilization not ravaged by war will become increasingly difficult.
Mark Carney strikes me as someone who is both intelligent and serious enough to recognize that both are true.
Canada can’t do this on its own — really no action matters without India and China. But recognizing the pickle we’re in is the first step. A post-Trudeau climate policy needs to involve a lot more “teeth” diplomatically than the Paris Agreement had. Which would be a good CPC policy. But I’m not seeing any of it out of Poilievre yet. He’s still pretending #2 isn’t true.
The first and last paragraphs of your rebuttal are accurate, the rest not so much, Read the fine print, The ocean will warm 1degree over 300 Years, I think we have plenty of time to address CO2 well before any of the catastrophic predictions come to pass, Science is the answer, not taxes. Taxes will not solve scientific problems, they never have and they never will. Also Canadas emissions are a rounding error, NOT significant except to the climate cult which masquerades as our Liberal government. Every democratic nation that ever adopted harsh climate policies has been walking them back, except Canada. Also,The USA has Never adopted draconian climate policies and they have actually achieved better results than canada!
Very smart people like Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger have argued - successfully in my opinion - that whatever may come from climate change is best tackled by facilitating abundant and cheap energy and devising engineering solutions to potential climate problems.
The opposite, taxing us into oblivion and making energy expensive WILL lead to abject poverty and an exacerbation of whatever problems we will face.
In other words, rich countries (whose level of wealth is directly correlated to the cost and availability of energy) will be much better equipped.
When the shit hits the fan, would you rather live in the US, Switzerland, Singapore or The Congo, Sri Lanka or Bengladesh? I know my answer to that question...
Energy = progress and prosperity.
PS - net zero is physically impossible to achieve (ask any engineer) with our current standards of living. It's a political canard designed to get us on board with the left's anti-human agenda.
Make no mistake, net zero means a literal return to the stone age.
THere is no NetZero, because no one knows how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a scale sufficient to offset unavoidable emissions even if fossil fuels are banned. NetZero is just a catch phrase, like “Reconciliation Now!” or “Tough on crime!” There is only Gross Zero. Let that sink in. No emissions. At all.
The sad fact is that the green fanatics could tax us into oblivion and reduce our standard of living to poverty levels in their quest for net zero AND BE WRONG.
Much of the climate alarmism is bolstered by computer models which project outcomes within a wide range of probability. Over time these models could remain constant or make swings in either direction.
The missing components in a public dialogue are humility (to admit the boundaries of our understanding of the planet) and pragmatism. Spending trillions of dollars on a hunch isn’t sound public policy and let’s say so.
Your counsel for "humility" offers no new policy choices. Either we as a country do nothing about reducing CO2 emissions, or we subsidize or regulate the economy in a haphazard manner to reduce emissions, or we tax emissions. Economists are consistent that taxes on emissions are less costly means of reducing emissions than regulations/subsidies.
And all western countries have reduced emissions growth by off-shoring manufacturing industries to Asia, which books the emissions there and sells the manufactured goods back to us. It’s an accounting trick. Because Canada never had a lot of heavy industry, much of our emissions come from extracting oil and gas, especially upgrading from tar sands, which we can’t reduce by off-shoring obviously.
The other accounting trick is that emissions from international shipping (air and ship) is not booked to any one country. The transportation emissions from off-shoring don’t “cost” the country at either end of the trip anything.
I agree and support consumption-based carbon metrics for this reason. It would have the effect of not giving Canada credit for offshoring all our manufacturing to China (indeed it’d be worse for our carbon footprint since it uses coal power there vs mostly hydro and nuclear here).
Consumption-based accounting would also have the effect of massively reducing Alberta’s carbon footprint and increasing Ontario’s. Since Alberta oil sands oil is largely produced for export to the US, and Ontario imports all our manufactured goods from the US and China.
You might support consumption-based carbon metrics, but the countries that would look worse because of them would say No. Do you think Europe and the UK are ever going to agree to have their Green Progress exposed as an accounting trick? China would look better under your formula but China doesn’t care about CO2 anyway.
And no, Ontario and Quebec are not going to agree to anything that makes it look bad and Alberta look good. We outvote you and that’s where the matter stops. Sorry.
I realize countries mostly solve for their own self-interest, but global cooperation sometimes does happen. I don’t share your extreme cynicism, to say the least.
Scientific research can only occur as a result of monetary investment. And monetary investment in reducing emissions will only be pursued if there is money to be gained from doing so. And there will only be money to be gained from doing so if there is a financial penalty against the status-quo (i.e. carbon prices/taxes).
Global revenue from fossil fuel production is well into the trillions. The prize for commercializing new energy sources is enormous enough that no additional government incentives are required. All government intervention will do is slow progress by picking winners and losers.
New energy sources do not decrease emissions. It is human nature to consume more energy as it becomes more accessible and cheaper. So as long as there are no monetary incentives to specifically reduce emissions-intensive energy use (i.e. a financial penalty), new energy sources will merely complement rather than displace traditional energy sources.
A new energy source that is denser than fossil fuels would have a competitive advantage. The only possibility on the horizon is nuclear. No government penalties are going to incentivize inferior energy sources such as wind and solar.
Great. So you’re with the people who believe #2 isn’t true. By the time you realize you’re wrong, it’ll be far too late.
We are going to have wildfires ravaging the boreal forests of Canada on a regular basis. Oh, and at some point, a heat wave is going to kill ten million people in Iran or Pakistan or India. All nuclear-armed countries.
We can figure it out later, though, sure, no need to take action now.
Canada's boreal forests have ALWAYS burned on a regular basis.
Over the course of the past two hundred years, we have artificially suppressed their natural burning cycles, and so there is a LOT of very dry fuel out there just itching to burn.
That's NOT climate change, it is however a man-made problem.
...and extreme COLD kills ten times more people than extreme heat.
The number of people dying from extreme weather rates have plummeted over the past one hundred years (down 98% from what it was a century ago).
Ten million people dying in South Asia no one would even notice, not even the affected countries. Ten million dead in Iran might slow down their nuclear ambitions by a few years. Neither is a problem for Canada.
Wildfires in boreal Canada are nothing new. We have just stopped trying to suppress them. With less demand for newsprint, the loss of all those spruce trees is less of a big deal. The world is not sufficiently concerned about Canadian forest fires to sacrifice their own energy-dependent lifestyles.
Don’t blame me for denial. If you think the world cares about CO2, get out there and get them to pass the necessary laws. Standing on a street corner yelling at people to change their sinful ways before it’s too late just isn’t very effective because you’re asking people either to do something they don’t think is necessary, or submit to government restrictions on their freedom to consume. Good luck.
I admit it’s a hard sell politically. As you can tell from all the commenters I’m arguing with here, plenty of people would sacrifice our future to be able to drive a bigger vehicle today.
Good timing, Josh Barro literally just posted this article:
It would be easier if we could get low-carbon energy to be comparable in price, or ideally cheaper, than fossil energy. The only way I see that happening is with nuclear energy. It’s a million times more energy-dense than chemical energy; there must be a way to get the regulations and construction arranged in such a way that we can have cheap, abundant nuclear energy, finally, like was promised back in the 1950s. That’s why I work in that industry.
Mitigation will not avoid the costs of adaptation as much of the climate change trajectory is already baked in. Even if GHG emissions stabilized today, the Earth would continue to warm for decades as the oceans are huge heat sinks. Once GHG levels stabilize, natural processes will take tens if not hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to re-sequester the carbon. It took hundreds of millions of years to create Earth's oil and gas reserves. It will take hundreds of millions of years to re-create them from atmospheric CO2. Of course stabilization of GHG emissions are not even in the line of sight. Emerging economies will continue to increase their energy use. No technology can even approach the energy density and dispatchability of fossil fuels. "Net zero" is bunk.
No country will sacrifice its own interests in favour of global ones, even if it realizes it would be better for all if everyone thought that way. That’s why no country will ever agree to any international accord on anything with diplomatic “teeth.” That is a surrender of sovereignty to foreigners.
Countries only agree to international accords if it’s something they’d like to do themselves, like banning nuclear bomb tests in the atmosphere, and go along with because it’s easy to catch cheaters and apply trade sanctions against them. But most of the world doesn’t seriously want to reduce emissions and so no country will apply trade sanctions against countries that don’t play ball with little Canada. Canada will just be the sap at the poker table that the other players collaborate to cheat.
CO2 emissions are simply an intractable problem. Just enjoy the ride while it lasts and hope it works out OK. A consolation is that most of the billions of people likely to be “displaced” will just move to higher ground a few hundred yards inland, gradually over many decades. The vast majority will be too poor, or not good enough swimmers, ever to reach Canada’s airports or shores.
Canada doesn’t need to wreck itself to save the world.
Countries have rarely overcome collective action problems outside military conflict. Perhaps that is because in the past, militaries had the advanced of procuring resources without compensation and the luxury of avoiding domestic legislation. That is no longer the case.
What an awful, immoral way to think. If you truly believe that we shouldn’t even try to prevent billions of people from being displaced, you’re just in such a different galaxy from me ethically that I’m not sure we could ever come to agreement. What an evil thing to say.
I know you’re a regular commenter here — I am now going to discount everything you ever post.
If thinking that having large swathes of the planet become uninhabitable, with all the upheaval that will bring, and thinking that this is something we should coordinate to solve, makes me impractical and unrealistic, then I accept the charge.
I’m not saying it will be easy. That’s the lie that the Trudeau LPC perpetuated by ignoring Hard Truth #1 up above. But we have to solve this as a species.
I’m all for it except Canada becoming holier than the pope while the real culprits continue their dastardly ways. If every country, but especially China, India, US, and Russia , were totally committed then let’s go, but I am not in favour of Canada driving itself into the poor house for no useful purpose. Also, Liberal governments are not very good at this as the McGinty and Wynn governments proved in Ontario and Trudeau proved in Canada. (How many $Bs for not needed battery plants?). We also first need to become an energy powerhouse to raise the funds to take on such an undertaking.
In the meantime who is going to look after the developing world which just wants to catch up to us before it takes serious action?
"Really, no action without India and China" and you might add a few other countries *that will take no action.*
Canada does nothing by reducing our carbon footprint except beggaring ourselves. We'd make a far greater contribution by shipping natural gas to Europe and investing in research.
Shipping natural gas to other countries will not necessarily displace use of more emissions-intensive fuels. It is human nature to consume more energy as it becomes more plentiful/cheaper. So natural gas exports would likely just feed into greater demand rather than displace other fuels.
The carbon footprint can only be sustainably reduced by countries imposing policies of compelling changes upon consumers.
And the flaw in that argument is that people don’t have to change their behaviour just because the government tells them to. They can change the government instead. One way or another.
People do change their consumer behaviour in response to taxes, though. And if a majority are comfortable with a tax that is known to disproportionately affects a minority, then the tax in question will be politically sustainable.
Could be. But that's exactly what the Liberals attempted with the carbon tax. And (a) it did nothing whatsoever for the environment - (because Canada's emissions make no difference in any case) and (b) was politically defeated.
I think you're accidently arguing that we're simply f*cked, because clearly neither China nor India nor any of the emerging countries have the least interest in imposing such policies. Canada can impose all the environmental policies it wants and it will make zero difference to the climate.
Emerging countries will adopt low-emissions policies if many advanced democracies prove that economic growth can be divorced from CO2 emissions. And many advanced democracies will eventually adopt low-emissions policies if a country like Canada sets a strong example.
Are there any "advanced democracies" (or any countries at all) that have shown economic growth as a result of, or even in spite of policies enforcing reduced CO2 emissions?
This beautifully sums up the whole issue of the election: who's "we"?
For Carney, as for the commenter, "we" does not mean "Canadians".
Carney is indeed a viceroy, for the old American regime, driven from power (temporarily?) in the US itself, but still dominant in the provinces.
He will unblinkingly sacrifice Canadians on the altars of climate change or defeating Trump, even though Canada lacks the heft to have a significant impact on either cause.
He will speak of our moral duty and try to stampede us into leading the charge of the Light Brigade.
Of course, even here, "we" is subdivided: young Canadians, especially children or parents of children, will feel the pain, while the Boomers collect their pensions and cash in on their property values, and the Laurentian elite sit back and laugh.
It is time to let America and China, our past and possibly future colonial masters, worry about Trump and the climate, while we focus, at last, on putting Canadians first.
Further, the millions of lowland people in poor countries trying to move to higher ground may have to fight bitter and bloody civil wars with the millions of Piedmont people already there who don’t want to be driven off, but again, this is not Canada’s problem to solve for them. The important thing is to turn our backs on them and keep them there, not here.
But don’t you see? Every “climate refugee” who moves to a rich country converts himself and his family of ten from low emitters to high emitters as they adopt western economic lifestyles, unless you expect them to live in the same squalor in Canada as they did back home. The earth’s climate carbon budget can’t afford to let them move here. We have to force them to stay where they are.
I’m not parodying. I’m trying to expose the flaws in the logic of trying to fix a collective-action problem that comes from too many people needing too much diesel and fertilizer, and at the same time trying to rescue the victims and causing them to emit more.
For decades we’ve been told that the earth’s population has exceeded its carrying capacity and the population has to decline. How does that happen without more people dying than are born? This is what negative population growth just looks like.
This is how the world works, even if you think I’m an evil person for saying so. I don’t care what you think of me ad hominem.
No, because there IS a solution. Ecomodernism — abundant energy without carbon emissions.
We could easily power an industrial civilization, indeed more abundantly than we do today, and bringing the entire developing world up to our standard of living, with nuclear energy (simple-cycle fission, thorium, reprocessing, and fusion is probably only a decade or two away).
It is not the case that we simply need fossil fuels forever or else energy poverty.
Wind and solar are rapidly becoming larger sources of energy than nuclear. Of course, you can’t power an entire economy with them because of the intermittent nature, but they’ll do nicely for something like 25-75% of total energy depending on how good long-term battery storage becomes.
Of course, nuclear is essential too.
And I never said we should cut our throat for a pointless gesture. Quite the opposite — I said whatever we do is pointless unless it’s done in a coordinated way with India and China. Diplomacy, including hard-edged diplomacy like the kind used to negotiate nuclear arms reduction, needs to be part of climate treaties.
The Paris Agreement, that assumed we’d all sing kumbaya together, clearly isn’t going to cut it.
It is possible to be a hard-nosed realist about international relations and also realize what a threat climate change is.
No need to coordinate with India and China specifically, simply coordinate with our closer friends. Set a positive example for the democratic world, the democratic world will follow, and then China and India will follow thereafter when their own example becomes more embarrassing.
1). Wouldn’t China consider it a loss of face to follow the positive example of the foreign white devils sent to tutor them? That would be the Opium Wars all over again for them. They’ve got their eye on Taiwan, not on climate change.
2). China could say to the world, “Well, do you want us to make your stuff for you or not? If you want us to stop burning coal, who’s going to make your solar panels and electric cars and all the million other things you buy from us?
3). Prime Minister Modi of India chimes in: The Western world got rich from burning coal. Now it’s our turn. Stop with the colonialist temerity to deny us prosperity from cheap electricity for our people. China is our rival. We can’t afford to yield to them with commitments to continued poverty that they won’t reciprocate.
I don’t see a lot of scope for inducing behavioural change with shame and embarrassment there, Stefan.
Every country in the world both resists and responds to peer pressure up to a point. Would China and India be responsive to North America's example? Perhaps not, or probably not. Would China and India be responsive to *many* countries setting positive low-emissions examples, including some number of developing countries? That's more likely. Will some number of developing countries follow Canada's example if it shows serious leadership? There's a good chance they would.
We know for sure that China and India will feel discouraged from action by a country like Canada behaving like a self-serving hypocrite that makes a virtue of self-inaction.
I did not say anything about "scolding" per se, just setting a positive example. Other countries do follow the examples of their peers to at least some level; for example Sweden's carbon tax was an inspiration for BC's carbon tax, in turn an inspiration for Alberta's carbon tax, in turn an inspiration for Canada's carbon tax.
China has plenty of friends, even if few of those friends would trust China to the point of forming a military alliance. It can and will feel embarrassed if it starts to look like it is rejecting the example of most countries instead of just rejecting the scolding of western countries.
I have thought long and hard about my decision to vote conservative in this election. And I am not about change my mind based on the appearance of a politically untested technocrat. I don't care if Poilievre is strong-minded and vocal. We need that right now. And the crazy 180 pivots done by the liberals to adopt his positions is proof enough that he can lead us in the right direction. I also think - and let me be delicate about this - Poilievre will be the better trade negotiator with our friends to the south.
I have my own problems with Carney, but Poilievre is ignorant on public policy due to his blinkered partisanship. Poilievre is incapable of considering that the Conservative base or its patriarchs are ever wrong on any policy issue ever.
Carney has stolen about 2 policies from Poilievre. Poilievre has been ignorant on many issues (not the capital gains tax though), with the Harper legislative record being the best broad example.
Carney stole the opposition to the carbon tax from Poilievre because Carney is a political neophyte who can be spooked my misinformation and who thinks that being cynical in abandoning a good policy can provide a political advantage.
There are chinks in the Carney armour that are deserving of scrutiny by an inquisitive media, should they overcome their current fascination with the “who is best equipped” tunnel vision.
Carney, when not skating with the Oilers yesterday took a moment to stop in and visit with Premier Smith. By most accounts, the meeting wasn’t a meet n greet photo op, but a bruising session with Smith demanding a new relationship with Ottawa where everyone stays in their lane. After the meeting, the new Environment Minister confirmed that Ottawa will not abandon oil and gas emissions caps.
There are little tells there. Carney did not take ownership with the continuance of the emission caps, but left it to an underling to make a public statement. Hmmm.
The green fanaticism that runs through the Liberal Party has not dissipated with the departure of Trudeau, but the Liberals find themselves with a new leader who has even crazier ways to hobble our economy with rules, regulations and diversion of capital to green energy projects. Talking up pipelines in every direction is an insult to people who are following what is really going on behind the scenes.
“A law firm was looking to hire someone to look after their accounting books. The first applicant that attended an interview was an accountant. The 2 lawyers asked him ‘What does 2 + 2 equal? “4.” He answers. Thank you for coming in,we will be in touch. The second applicant is an economics major. They ask her what does 2+2 equal? She answers ‘4 and/or 22! Excellent they respond. We will be in touch. The 3rd applicant is a former banker with several degrees in international finance. They ask him what does 2+2 equal? He rises,goes to the office door and closes it. Returns to his seat,looks to his left,then to his right. Then responds “What would you like it to equal?”.
-no one has asked Carney if he will stay on as leader till the next election in 4 yrs should the L's be in opposition.
-and my final deal breaker - can you vote for a Party that froze it's citizens bank acc'ts for donating small sums of money to a legal protest. What is very scary is that the protest of these actions was loader around the globe than it was here in Canada.
I think Carney is even less legitimate than Kamala, as she had been part of the executive at least.
Carney has been hand-picked (by whom I would love to know) and parachuted in the hopes of salvaging the party/government.
But let's not forget that the liberals have been in power for 10 years and that if nothing else, they've run out of steam and people are tired of them and want change, regardless of what the polls say.
As an Albertan we do shake our heads, and begrudgingly marvel at the the hypnotic trance the Liberal government are able to place large swathes of (mostly urban) voters into. Don't look here - look over here.
Misrepresentation. More than a hundred thousand members of the Liberal Party voted to elect Carney their leader. It has been well-reported and there was NOTHING that was not aboveboard about it.
That’s still not addressing the fact that he didn’t have to be elected in a general election, which is what I was referring to when saying he’s illegitimate.
The manner in which he was installed is highly unusual, even by Canadian standards.
You have heard that he has suggested that he needs a broad mandate and has thus hinted, quite transparently, that he intends to move forward with a general election, no?
It wasn’t a legal protest. That’s why bank accounts were frozen: it was an unlawful protest the government was trying to starve of funds.
My advice is if you want to defeat the Liberals, don’t bring up the convoy except in taverns where no one is going to vote for them anyway. Everywhere else, the Convoy *helps* the Liberals with undecided voters in places like Ontario where the election will be decided. Sucks but them’s the facts.
No, but they ought to have known that by contributing to the financing of an illegal action they were going to get themselves into trouble. Contributing to the defence funds of anyone charged with a crime is OK. But buying gas for the getaway car used by a bank robber is abetting a crime.
Never mind. It’s in the past. Memory-hole it. Do us a favour and don’t wave it around as reason why we in swing ridings should vote against the Liberals. PP needs votes in Ontario. He knows he’s got the West anyway so please keep quiet about Convoy Resentment Syndrome.
They didnt freeze any accounts of people who donated money. Yes, they could have and it was threatened, but it didnt happen. As far as all investigation could tell, they froze accounts of some people who were at the protest. People who had their account locked for some routine security reason would beak off online about it being tied to the convoy but vanish with no follow up because they were wrong. I am 100 percent against the use of the emergency act there and was supportive of most of the reasons that convoy was there for. But man, lets stop going on about how a bunch of canadians who donated 25 dollars lost their banking. That just didnt happen and there is no evidence as such.
The protestors who blockaded rail lines in early 2020 also broke the law. Why were no bank accounts frozen or emergency powers enacted? The legal system has to be seen as fair and consistent to be seen as legitimate.
But to be fair, at the rail blockades there was no sense that the civil authority had lost control of the situation as happened in Ottawa because of police mutiny. It’s true that the OPP were afraid to enforce the Court injunction CN had obtained against the blockaders but eventually they screwed up their courage when it appeared that Quebec might run out of propane to heat its poultry barns. They cleared the tracks in a few minutes without violence at the site or elsewhere in sympathy, although there have been ructions in the years since.
But Surete Quebec never did act at the blockade of CP’s tracks south of Montreal. It persisted until the government *gave* the protestors money, rather than stopping it with debanking.
I hear you in the larger issue you are raising. The rail blockades made me more lastingly pessimistic about the future of Canada than the trucker occupation did. The state at least showed it knew what to do to meet challenges to its authority from the latter but I don’t think it has the faintest clue about the former. So it tranquilizes the Constitutionally enshrined activists with Dane-geld money. Gotta hand it to the truckers: they weren’t after money, and that’s why the government hated them so much. They couldn’t be bought off.
I disagree. The convoy was already de-escalating on its own prior to the government over reach in freezing bank accounts and invoking the Emergency Powers Act. The rail blockades were attracting vigilante action, which is a huge loss in civil authority. I guess inconveniencing civil servants in dt Ottawa is fair more serious than grinding actual economic activity to a halt.
Er, that surely is a gross simplification (and misrepresentation) of what happened in February 2022 and who was involved.
Hint: Not just truckers, but people who advocated:
* "accelerationist" ideology leading not just to the ouster of the then just-re-elected government in Ottawa, but the destruction of public institutions;
* vandals who thought nothing of urinating and defacating at will on public and private property; and
* others who showed little consideration for the tens-of-thousands of downtown residents who had to live through the disruption (horn-honking and aforementioned assaults on their property).
Since Carney has written that western society is morally bankrupt I want to know what he thinks are its vices and virtues specifically and what present society he thinks is more robust or positive than our western society.
Are we in for more “ post-national” bs with carney? I suspect so, the usual suspects are still on the scene
I looked up and read articles about him when he was governor of the Bank of England. This was a few years ago. I wanted to know about this Canadian who had done so well.
He was a thorough elitist, had a disdain for the West, was a climate zealot, and had not much regard for the common herd, us.
I don’t care about who is the best statesman. I want someone to bring back ethical government. I want someone to end the revolving door criminal Justice system. I want someone to bring sense to our drug policy. Our cities are a constant mess. When even paramedics don’t feel safe going to help people we have major internal problems. I want someone who will stop giving money to every loud group of zealots who feel they are the most important cause in the world. I want someone who will take our military seriously and not with timelines so far out every soldier knows that the announced projects will be defunded before they even start. I want an independent assessment of where Canada actually stands with net zero. One side says we are already there with our vast forests while the other side discounts our boreal forests.
You can try and pump up Pierre as much as you like, but Pierre has a clear track record of being an asshole at everything outside his rallies. There are a lot of Canadians who are tired of Liberals pandering to Quebec; one of many deserved reasons Trudeau was so hated.
But based on his utter evisceration of a Western Standard reporter at a scrum in Edmonton yesterday, it's pretty clear Carney can hold his own in a debate, and there was no flinch to a question that no PM would ever prepare for. He showed the light of leadership yesterday; something Pierre has yet to do in a public forum (and yes, I fully admit I detest Pierre, but he's earned that)
I banned both these guys for 30 days. We're heading into an election, folks, and I don't have the time or energy to moderate the comments. People are going to disagree with you on the internet. That's allowed.
So yes, I echo David's call to grow up. I include him in that. I'm not fucking around on this, friends. Behave.
I notice an Ottawa Liberal riding association just banned long serving MP Chandra Arya from running again even though he had been nominated already. This is after he had been ejected from the Liberal Leadership race. In both instances it was for secret reasons which is the way things seem to be done in Canada. Possibly opening up a safe seat for Carney.
I love the pith helmet swagger stick pukka image this article paints of Carney. He did after all describe himself as European in his heritage. So now Canada no longer faces a choice between Pepsi and poutine vs Coke and burgers. It’s now tea and crumpets/cucumber sandwiches vs Coke and burgers.
If that's the case, then they should just come out and say "this guy is a goofball and the party is done watching him shoot us all in the dick" instead of letting the rumor mill swirl.
Agree I can certainly see the Liberal rationale. But seeing the abject kowtowing to roughly 4 million hard ass old stock Quebec French rankles a lot of Canadians including yours truly. It certainly didn’t stop Arya being re-elected. To paraphrase a former Ontario premier, a 10 percent tail should not wag a 90 percent dog. And virtually all US presidents had bozo eruptions at one time or another.
Absolutely true and a good, timely article. I’m one of the “disaffected Liberal voters”. Have voted LPC my entire adult life, and was about to leave the party for the first time because of its post-2015 turn under Trudeau (honestly I probably should have left by 2021 but gave them one last chance).
I cannot vote for the Conservatives as long as they do not take climate change seriously. It is a deal-killer for me. A good CPC platform on this *could* look like technology investments along with a plan to use a European alliance to put pressure on India and China on emissions (as they are really the only two countries that matter). But instead it’s crickets; pretending that the physical effects we are already seeing will just go away. Until that changes, they won’t have my vote. I was going to spoil my ballot if Trudeau represented the LPC again.
So I’m one of these LPC voters that Carney wants to “bring home” to the party. There are a lot of us.
I want him to make it into something that believes government can do great things but needs to back off (actually almost entirely renounce) Social Justice, bring First Nations into the economic system instead of encouraging the settler-colonialist grievances, and get real projects built and diversify our trade. I want him to rebuild trust in the great institutions of the country (CBC, public health) by admitting the excesses of 2012-2022 and returning them to what they once were rather than just burning them down like latest iteration of the CPC seems to want to do. Oh, and build Arctic defence! Which will require spending money — which I don’t believe the CPC will do. Let’s not forget that the nadir of Canadian Forces funding was under Harper.
But this is a lot of hope to put into a completely untested politician — and this article is bang on that he’s never been under pressure against other skilled politicians. And he’s still got a lot of Social Justice post-2015 Trudeau people around him.
I want to believe in Carney because the thought of handing the country to the Poilievre/Smith crowd is painful. But it may turn out to be a lot of wishful thinking.
My recommendation, park your vote with the Green Party, at least you will be making a statement based on your believes while NOT rewarding the bad behaviour of this Liberal government, which will not improve without a major house cleaning!
The federal Green Party is also a no-go for me due to their insane anti-nuclear stance. I am a Green voter provincially in Ontario now that Mike Schreiner and the Ontario Greens followed the Finnish Green Party in embracing nuclear power.
But I will not cast a vote for the federal party that has as a core value renouncing the single best solution for decarbonization, based on woo-woo Mother Gaia stuff, and a misunderstanding of why Chernobyl and Fukushima happened and why they won’t happen here (or anywhere) again.
Harper? The beginning of the disrespect and chronic underfunding of our military began under Pierre Trudeau and his defense minister Paul Helyer, not sure I spell correctly his last name.
I remember this very well. I was in my late teens and my father and an uncle were in the military.
My uncle, an RMC graduate in 1960, retired early , over this and he was far from alone.
Try to imagine how Poilievre feels right now about Singh, who prevented Canadians from casting ballots when the Conservatives would have won in a landslide.
what Singh did was reprehensible and egotistical and I hope the NDP gets wiped out for it so they can have a hard reckoning and rebuild in a better way.
It is beyond staggering to me, that anyone thinks Carney is a good choice at this juncture, His policies are as bad or worse than the Trudeau policies which has lead to 25% of the population suffering from food insecurity. The Canadian government is no longer distributing the Canada food guide because too many people cannot afford to follow it! Do Canadians REALLY want MORE of that?
Inspte of all of the postings, do NOT know Carney, but I bloody well support ANY efforts to resist Trump.Trump is a bully and arseh*sle. I'se a Newfoundlanter, and b'y Gawd I don't give a maggoty butter for yer Trump.
I can't vote for Carney because I think net-zero is a fancy way of saying energy poverty and high taxes. The end result of this net-zero vision will be little to no economic growth, expensive and unreliable energy and ultimately an ever declining standard of living. "Death by a thousands cuts" or the "boiling frog" .... choose your analogy. Canada won't be better off down the road.
Two hard truths at the same time:
1. Achieving Net Zero will not be quick, easy, or cheap. It will require diverting trillions of dollars away from other priorities into rebuilding the entire world’s energy system. We’re talking investments on the order of what major countries spent during the Second World War, but for 25 straight years. Or smaller investments per year but it’ll take a century.
2. If we don’t do it, we’re headed serious global physical impacts, massive population movements, and destabilization (which eventually means nuclear war). No, we won’t go extinct, but maintaining anything close to an industrial civilization not ravaged by war will become increasingly difficult.
The Trudeau Liberals pretended #1 wasn’t true. Today’s CPC pretends #2 isn’t true.
Mark Carney strikes me as someone who is both intelligent and serious enough to recognize that both are true.
Canada can’t do this on its own — really no action matters without India and China. But recognizing the pickle we’re in is the first step. A post-Trudeau climate policy needs to involve a lot more “teeth” diplomatically than the Paris Agreement had. Which would be a good CPC policy. But I’m not seeing any of it out of Poilievre yet. He’s still pretending #2 isn’t true.
The first and last paragraphs of your rebuttal are accurate, the rest not so much, Read the fine print, The ocean will warm 1degree over 300 Years, I think we have plenty of time to address CO2 well before any of the catastrophic predictions come to pass, Science is the answer, not taxes. Taxes will not solve scientific problems, they never have and they never will. Also Canadas emissions are a rounding error, NOT significant except to the climate cult which masquerades as our Liberal government. Every democratic nation that ever adopted harsh climate policies has been walking them back, except Canada. Also,The USA has Never adopted draconian climate policies and they have actually achieved better results than canada!
Very smart people like Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger have argued - successfully in my opinion - that whatever may come from climate change is best tackled by facilitating abundant and cheap energy and devising engineering solutions to potential climate problems.
The opposite, taxing us into oblivion and making energy expensive WILL lead to abject poverty and an exacerbation of whatever problems we will face.
In other words, rich countries (whose level of wealth is directly correlated to the cost and availability of energy) will be much better equipped.
When the shit hits the fan, would you rather live in the US, Switzerland, Singapore or The Congo, Sri Lanka or Bengladesh? I know my answer to that question...
Energy = progress and prosperity.
PS - net zero is physically impossible to achieve (ask any engineer) with our current standards of living. It's a political canard designed to get us on board with the left's anti-human agenda.
Make no mistake, net zero means a literal return to the stone age.
THere is no NetZero, because no one knows how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a scale sufficient to offset unavoidable emissions even if fossil fuels are banned. NetZero is just a catch phrase, like “Reconciliation Now!” or “Tough on crime!” There is only Gross Zero. Let that sink in. No emissions. At all.
The sad fact is that the green fanatics could tax us into oblivion and reduce our standard of living to poverty levels in their quest for net zero AND BE WRONG.
Much of the climate alarmism is bolstered by computer models which project outcomes within a wide range of probability. Over time these models could remain constant or make swings in either direction.
The missing components in a public dialogue are humility (to admit the boundaries of our understanding of the planet) and pragmatism. Spending trillions of dollars on a hunch isn’t sound public policy and let’s say so.
Your counsel for "humility" offers no new policy choices. Either we as a country do nothing about reducing CO2 emissions, or we subsidize or regulate the economy in a haphazard manner to reduce emissions, or we tax emissions. Economists are consistent that taxes on emissions are less costly means of reducing emissions than regulations/subsidies.
So what would be your choice?
I have read both, bought in hard cover and loaned to others as well!
Steven Koonin's "Unsettled?" makes a nice addition to the two authors you have mentioned.
Perfect. Saved me writing my comment.
And all western countries have reduced emissions growth by off-shoring manufacturing industries to Asia, which books the emissions there and sells the manufactured goods back to us. It’s an accounting trick. Because Canada never had a lot of heavy industry, much of our emissions come from extracting oil and gas, especially upgrading from tar sands, which we can’t reduce by off-shoring obviously.
The other accounting trick is that emissions from international shipping (air and ship) is not booked to any one country. The transportation emissions from off-shoring don’t “cost” the country at either end of the trip anything.
I agree and support consumption-based carbon metrics for this reason. It would have the effect of not giving Canada credit for offshoring all our manufacturing to China (indeed it’d be worse for our carbon footprint since it uses coal power there vs mostly hydro and nuclear here).
Consumption-based accounting would also have the effect of massively reducing Alberta’s carbon footprint and increasing Ontario’s. Since Alberta oil sands oil is largely produced for export to the US, and Ontario imports all our manufactured goods from the US and China.
You might support consumption-based carbon metrics, but the countries that would look worse because of them would say No. Do you think Europe and the UK are ever going to agree to have their Green Progress exposed as an accounting trick? China would look better under your formula but China doesn’t care about CO2 anyway.
And no, Ontario and Quebec are not going to agree to anything that makes it look bad and Alberta look good. We outvote you and that’s where the matter stops. Sorry.
I live in Ontario.
Not everyone is entirely self-serving.
I realize countries mostly solve for their own self-interest, but global cooperation sometimes does happen. I don’t share your extreme cynicism, to say the least.
Scientific research can only occur as a result of monetary investment. And monetary investment in reducing emissions will only be pursued if there is money to be gained from doing so. And there will only be money to be gained from doing so if there is a financial penalty against the status-quo (i.e. carbon prices/taxes).
Global revenue from fossil fuel production is well into the trillions. The prize for commercializing new energy sources is enormous enough that no additional government incentives are required. All government intervention will do is slow progress by picking winners and losers.
New energy sources do not decrease emissions. It is human nature to consume more energy as it becomes more accessible and cheaper. So as long as there are no monetary incentives to specifically reduce emissions-intensive energy use (i.e. a financial penalty), new energy sources will merely complement rather than displace traditional energy sources.
A new energy source that is denser than fossil fuels would have a competitive advantage. The only possibility on the horizon is nuclear. No government penalties are going to incentivize inferior energy sources such as wind and solar.
Great. So you’re with the people who believe #2 isn’t true. By the time you realize you’re wrong, it’ll be far too late.
We are going to have wildfires ravaging the boreal forests of Canada on a regular basis. Oh, and at some point, a heat wave is going to kill ten million people in Iran or Pakistan or India. All nuclear-armed countries.
We can figure it out later, though, sure, no need to take action now.
Canada's boreal forests have ALWAYS burned on a regular basis.
Over the course of the past two hundred years, we have artificially suppressed their natural burning cycles, and so there is a LOT of very dry fuel out there just itching to burn.
That's NOT climate change, it is however a man-made problem.
...and extreme COLD kills ten times more people than extreme heat.
The number of people dying from extreme weather rates have plummeted over the past one hundred years (down 98% from what it was a century ago).
FACTS matter in this conversation.
Ten million people dying in South Asia no one would even notice, not even the affected countries. Ten million dead in Iran might slow down their nuclear ambitions by a few years. Neither is a problem for Canada.
Wildfires in boreal Canada are nothing new. We have just stopped trying to suppress them. With less demand for newsprint, the loss of all those spruce trees is less of a big deal. The world is not sufficiently concerned about Canadian forest fires to sacrifice their own energy-dependent lifestyles.
Don’t blame me for denial. If you think the world cares about CO2, get out there and get them to pass the necessary laws. Standing on a street corner yelling at people to change their sinful ways before it’s too late just isn’t very effective because you’re asking people either to do something they don’t think is necessary, or submit to government restrictions on their freedom to consume. Good luck.
I admit it’s a hard sell politically. As you can tell from all the commenters I’m arguing with here, plenty of people would sacrifice our future to be able to drive a bigger vehicle today.
Good timing, Josh Barro literally just posted this article:
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/abundance-liberals-have-a-carbon
It would be easier if we could get low-carbon energy to be comparable in price, or ideally cheaper, than fossil energy. The only way I see that happening is with nuclear energy. It’s a million times more energy-dense than chemical energy; there must be a way to get the regulations and construction arranged in such a way that we can have cheap, abundant nuclear energy, finally, like was promised back in the 1950s. That’s why I work in that industry.
Mitigation will not avoid the costs of adaptation as much of the climate change trajectory is already baked in. Even if GHG emissions stabilized today, the Earth would continue to warm for decades as the oceans are huge heat sinks. Once GHG levels stabilize, natural processes will take tens if not hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to re-sequester the carbon. It took hundreds of millions of years to create Earth's oil and gas reserves. It will take hundreds of millions of years to re-create them from atmospheric CO2. Of course stabilization of GHG emissions are not even in the line of sight. Emerging economies will continue to increase their energy use. No technology can even approach the energy density and dispatchability of fossil fuels. "Net zero" is bunk.
No country will sacrifice its own interests in favour of global ones, even if it realizes it would be better for all if everyone thought that way. That’s why no country will ever agree to any international accord on anything with diplomatic “teeth.” That is a surrender of sovereignty to foreigners.
Countries only agree to international accords if it’s something they’d like to do themselves, like banning nuclear bomb tests in the atmosphere, and go along with because it’s easy to catch cheaters and apply trade sanctions against them. But most of the world doesn’t seriously want to reduce emissions and so no country will apply trade sanctions against countries that don’t play ball with little Canada. Canada will just be the sap at the poker table that the other players collaborate to cheat.
CO2 emissions are simply an intractable problem. Just enjoy the ride while it lasts and hope it works out OK. A consolation is that most of the billions of people likely to be “displaced” will just move to higher ground a few hundred yards inland, gradually over many decades. The vast majority will be too poor, or not good enough swimmers, ever to reach Canada’s airports or shores.
Canada doesn’t need to wreck itself to save the world.
Countries are capable of overcoming collective action problems: that is exactly how the Nazis were defeated in World War II.
Canada had no chance of single-handedly defeating the Nazis and by waging war it was pursuing long-term gain at the expense of short-term pain.
Countries have rarely overcome collective action problems outside military conflict. Perhaps that is because in the past, militaries had the advanced of procuring resources without compensation and the luxury of avoiding domestic legislation. That is no longer the case.
What an awful, immoral way to think. If you truly believe that we shouldn’t even try to prevent billions of people from being displaced, you’re just in such a different galaxy from me ethically that I’m not sure we could ever come to agreement. What an evil thing to say.
I know you’re a regular commenter here — I am now going to discount everything you ever post.
Give your head a shake.
You are a nice person, and also impractical and unrealistic.
If thinking that having large swathes of the planet become uninhabitable, with all the upheaval that will bring, and thinking that this is something we should coordinate to solve, makes me impractical and unrealistic, then I accept the charge.
I’m not saying it will be easy. That’s the lie that the Trudeau LPC perpetuated by ignoring Hard Truth #1 up above. But we have to solve this as a species.
I’m all for it except Canada becoming holier than the pope while the real culprits continue their dastardly ways. If every country, but especially China, India, US, and Russia , were totally committed then let’s go, but I am not in favour of Canada driving itself into the poor house for no useful purpose. Also, Liberal governments are not very good at this as the McGinty and Wynn governments proved in Ontario and Trudeau proved in Canada. (How many $Bs for not needed battery plants?). We also first need to become an energy powerhouse to raise the funds to take on such an undertaking.
In the meantime who is going to look after the developing world which just wants to catch up to us before it takes serious action?
Great comment.
"Really, no action without India and China" and you might add a few other countries *that will take no action.*
Canada does nothing by reducing our carbon footprint except beggaring ourselves. We'd make a far greater contribution by shipping natural gas to Europe and investing in research.
Shipping natural gas to other countries will not necessarily displace use of more emissions-intensive fuels. It is human nature to consume more energy as it becomes more plentiful/cheaper. So natural gas exports would likely just feed into greater demand rather than displace other fuels.
The carbon footprint can only be sustainably reduced by countries imposing policies of compelling changes upon consumers.
And the flaw in that argument is that people don’t have to change their behaviour just because the government tells them to. They can change the government instead. One way or another.
People do change their consumer behaviour in response to taxes, though. And if a majority are comfortable with a tax that is known to disproportionately affects a minority, then the tax in question will be politically sustainable.
Could be. But that's exactly what the Liberals attempted with the carbon tax. And (a) it did nothing whatsoever for the environment - (because Canada's emissions make no difference in any case) and (b) was politically defeated.
Stefan , how would you explain the Atlantic Provinces having the ability to politically motivate the Carbon carve out for a minority.
I think you're accidently arguing that we're simply f*cked, because clearly neither China nor India nor any of the emerging countries have the least interest in imposing such policies. Canada can impose all the environmental policies it wants and it will make zero difference to the climate.
Emerging countries will adopt low-emissions policies if many advanced democracies prove that economic growth can be divorced from CO2 emissions. And many advanced democracies will eventually adopt low-emissions policies if a country like Canada sets a strong example.
Are there any "advanced democracies" (or any countries at all) that have shown economic growth as a result of, or even in spite of policies enforcing reduced CO2 emissions?
This beautifully sums up the whole issue of the election: who's "we"?
For Carney, as for the commenter, "we" does not mean "Canadians".
Carney is indeed a viceroy, for the old American regime, driven from power (temporarily?) in the US itself, but still dominant in the provinces.
He will unblinkingly sacrifice Canadians on the altars of climate change or defeating Trump, even though Canada lacks the heft to have a significant impact on either cause.
He will speak of our moral duty and try to stampede us into leading the charge of the Light Brigade.
Of course, even here, "we" is subdivided: young Canadians, especially children or parents of children, will feel the pain, while the Boomers collect their pensions and cash in on their property values, and the Laurentian elite sit back and laugh.
It is time to let America and China, our past and possibly future colonial masters, worry about Trump and the climate, while we focus, at last, on putting Canadians first.
Further, the millions of lowland people in poor countries trying to move to higher ground may have to fight bitter and bloody civil wars with the millions of Piedmont people already there who don’t want to be driven off, but again, this is not Canada’s problem to solve for them. The important thing is to turn our backs on them and keep them there, not here.
Okay now I genuinely can’t tell if you’re trying to do a parody.
“The important thing is to turn our backs on them and keep them there, not here”.
Absolutely, we should call it the MS St Louis policy
But don’t you see? Every “climate refugee” who moves to a rich country converts himself and his family of ten from low emitters to high emitters as they adopt western economic lifestyles, unless you expect them to live in the same squalor in Canada as they did back home. The earth’s climate carbon budget can’t afford to let them move here. We have to force them to stay where they are.
I’m not parodying. I’m trying to expose the flaws in the logic of trying to fix a collective-action problem that comes from too many people needing too much diesel and fertilizer, and at the same time trying to rescue the victims and causing them to emit more.
For decades we’ve been told that the earth’s population has exceeded its carrying capacity and the population has to decline. How does that happen without more people dying than are born? This is what negative population growth just looks like.
This is how the world works, even if you think I’m an evil person for saying so. I don’t care what you think of me ad hominem.
No, because there IS a solution. Ecomodernism — abundant energy without carbon emissions.
We could easily power an industrial civilization, indeed more abundantly than we do today, and bringing the entire developing world up to our standard of living, with nuclear energy (simple-cycle fission, thorium, reprocessing, and fusion is probably only a decade or two away).
It is not the case that we simply need fossil fuels forever or else energy poverty.
...there you go again, using that word = "easily"
I thought you had said we shouldn't shine people on about this transition being easy?
Wind and solar are rapidly becoming larger sources of energy than nuclear. Of course, you can’t power an entire economy with them because of the intermittent nature, but they’ll do nicely for something like 25-75% of total energy depending on how good long-term battery storage becomes.
Of course, nuclear is essential too.
And I never said we should cut our throat for a pointless gesture. Quite the opposite — I said whatever we do is pointless unless it’s done in a coordinated way with India and China. Diplomacy, including hard-edged diplomacy like the kind used to negotiate nuclear arms reduction, needs to be part of climate treaties.
The Paris Agreement, that assumed we’d all sing kumbaya together, clearly isn’t going to cut it.
It is possible to be a hard-nosed realist about international relations and also realize what a threat climate change is.
No need to coordinate with India and China specifically, simply coordinate with our closer friends. Set a positive example for the democratic world, the democratic world will follow, and then China and India will follow thereafter when their own example becomes more embarrassing.
1). Wouldn’t China consider it a loss of face to follow the positive example of the foreign white devils sent to tutor them? That would be the Opium Wars all over again for them. They’ve got their eye on Taiwan, not on climate change.
2). China could say to the world, “Well, do you want us to make your stuff for you or not? If you want us to stop burning coal, who’s going to make your solar panels and electric cars and all the million other things you buy from us?
3). Prime Minister Modi of India chimes in: The Western world got rich from burning coal. Now it’s our turn. Stop with the colonialist temerity to deny us prosperity from cheap electricity for our people. China is our rival. We can’t afford to yield to them with commitments to continued poverty that they won’t reciprocate.
I don’t see a lot of scope for inducing behavioural change with shame and embarrassment there, Stefan.
Every country in the world both resists and responds to peer pressure up to a point. Would China and India be responsive to North America's example? Perhaps not, or probably not. Would China and India be responsive to *many* countries setting positive low-emissions examples, including some number of developing countries? That's more likely. Will some number of developing countries follow Canada's example if it shows serious leadership? There's a good chance they would.
We know for sure that China and India will feel discouraged from action by a country like Canada behaving like a self-serving hypocrite that makes a virtue of self-inaction.
I did not say anything about "scolding" per se, just setting a positive example. Other countries do follow the examples of their peers to at least some level; for example Sweden's carbon tax was an inspiration for BC's carbon tax, in turn an inspiration for Alberta's carbon tax, in turn an inspiration for Canada's carbon tax.
China has plenty of friends, even if few of those friends would trust China to the point of forming a military alliance. It can and will feel embarrassed if it starts to look like it is rejecting the example of most countries instead of just rejecting the scolding of western countries.
There are no rich Low-energy consuming nations. None.
Please add that "net zero" policies end up leading to higher emmissions because they run it on dogma not on what actually works.
I have thought long and hard about my decision to vote conservative in this election. And I am not about change my mind based on the appearance of a politically untested technocrat. I don't care if Poilievre is strong-minded and vocal. We need that right now. And the crazy 180 pivots done by the liberals to adopt his positions is proof enough that he can lead us in the right direction. I also think - and let me be delicate about this - Poilievre will be the better trade negotiator with our friends to the south.
I have my own problems with Carney, but Poilievre is ignorant on public policy due to his blinkered partisanship. Poilievre is incapable of considering that the Conservative base or its patriarchs are ever wrong on any policy issue ever.
Why are you all over every Line post with your nonsense? If PP is so ignorant why is Carney stealing his policies?
Carney has stolen about 2 policies from Poilievre. Poilievre has been ignorant on many issues (not the capital gains tax though), with the Harper legislative record being the best broad example.
Carney stole the opposition to the carbon tax from Poilievre because Carney is a political neophyte who can be spooked my misinformation and who thinks that being cynical in abandoning a good policy can provide a political advantage.
You are describing the Liberals 2015-2025.
No, the Liberals have the *opposite* problem. Trudeau actually *burned* the Liberal base with his dishonest promise for electoral reform.
Trudeau actually implicitly smears some of his own Liberal predecessors when he accuses Canada of being a state guilty of genocide.
There are chinks in the Carney armour that are deserving of scrutiny by an inquisitive media, should they overcome their current fascination with the “who is best equipped” tunnel vision.
Carney, when not skating with the Oilers yesterday took a moment to stop in and visit with Premier Smith. By most accounts, the meeting wasn’t a meet n greet photo op, but a bruising session with Smith demanding a new relationship with Ottawa where everyone stays in their lane. After the meeting, the new Environment Minister confirmed that Ottawa will not abandon oil and gas emissions caps.
There are little tells there. Carney did not take ownership with the continuance of the emission caps, but left it to an underling to make a public statement. Hmmm.
The green fanaticism that runs through the Liberal Party has not dissipated with the departure of Trudeau, but the Liberals find themselves with a new leader who has even crazier ways to hobble our economy with rules, regulations and diversion of capital to green energy projects. Talking up pipelines in every direction is an insult to people who are following what is really going on behind the scenes.
“A law firm was looking to hire someone to look after their accounting books. The first applicant that attended an interview was an accountant. The 2 lawyers asked him ‘What does 2 + 2 equal? “4.” He answers. Thank you for coming in,we will be in touch. The second applicant is an economics major. They ask her what does 2+2 equal? She answers ‘4 and/or 22! Excellent they respond. We will be in touch. The 3rd applicant is a former banker with several degrees in international finance. They ask him what does 2+2 equal? He rises,goes to the office door and closes it. Returns to his seat,looks to his left,then to his right. Then responds “What would you like it to equal?”.
I love this joke, Perfect fit to that man.
Thin skin and refusing to answer questions from real media....coward
You mean the idiot from Western Standard looking for soundbites, while making the stupidest assertion in recent history?
No his pr firm run by Rosie Barton and the Globe and Mail. And you might view it as an evisceration but he would again not answer a question.
Random thoughts:
-isn't this the same path Kamala was on?
-no one has asked Carney if he will stay on as leader till the next election in 4 yrs should the L's be in opposition.
-and my final deal breaker - can you vote for a Party that froze it's citizens bank acc'ts for donating small sums of money to a legal protest. What is very scary is that the protest of these actions was loader around the globe than it was here in Canada.
I think Carney is even less legitimate than Kamala, as she had been part of the executive at least.
Carney has been hand-picked (by whom I would love to know) and parachuted in the hopes of salvaging the party/government.
But let's not forget that the liberals have been in power for 10 years and that if nothing else, they've run out of steam and people are tired of them and want change, regardless of what the polls say.
Lets hope your correct.
As an Albertan we do shake our heads, and begrudgingly marvel at the the hypnotic trance the Liberal government are able to place large swathes of (mostly urban) voters into. Don't look here - look over here.
Well, I live in downtown Toronto, so consider yourself lucky.
I shake my head all day, every day.
Misrepresentation. More than a hundred thousand members of the Liberal Party voted to elect Carney their leader. It has been well-reported and there was NOTHING that was not aboveboard about it.
150k out of 400k+ is hardly a popular plebiscite.
That’s still not addressing the fact that he didn’t have to be elected in a general election, which is what I was referring to when saying he’s illegitimate.
The manner in which he was installed is highly unusual, even by Canadian standards.
You have heard that he has suggested that he needs a broad mandate and has thus hinted, quite transparently, that he intends to move forward with a general election, no?
That's the second straw man argument you make. I'm out.
It wasn’t a legal protest. That’s why bank accounts were frozen: it was an unlawful protest the government was trying to starve of funds.
My advice is if you want to defeat the Liberals, don’t bring up the convoy except in taverns where no one is going to vote for them anyway. Everywhere else, the Convoy *helps* the Liberals with undecided voters in places like Ontario where the election will be decided. Sucks but them’s the facts.
But the people who sent the money weren’t protestors.
No, but they ought to have known that by contributing to the financing of an illegal action they were going to get themselves into trouble. Contributing to the defence funds of anyone charged with a crime is OK. But buying gas for the getaway car used by a bank robber is abetting a crime.
Never mind. It’s in the past. Memory-hole it. Do us a favour and don’t wave it around as reason why we in swing ridings should vote against the Liberals. PP needs votes in Ontario. He knows he’s got the West anyway so please keep quiet about Convoy Resentment Syndrome.
you sound like a law and order Maga nut.
Ad hominem. You lose.
They didnt freeze any accounts of people who donated money. Yes, they could have and it was threatened, but it didnt happen. As far as all investigation could tell, they froze accounts of some people who were at the protest. People who had their account locked for some routine security reason would beak off online about it being tied to the convoy but vanish with no follow up because they were wrong. I am 100 percent against the use of the emergency act there and was supportive of most of the reasons that convoy was there for. But man, lets stop going on about how a bunch of canadians who donated 25 dollars lost their banking. That just didnt happen and there is no evidence as such.
The protestors who blockaded rail lines in early 2020 also broke the law. Why were no bank accounts frozen or emergency powers enacted? The legal system has to be seen as fair and consistent to be seen as legitimate.
You know that reason as well as I do, Doug.
But to be fair, at the rail blockades there was no sense that the civil authority had lost control of the situation as happened in Ottawa because of police mutiny. It’s true that the OPP were afraid to enforce the Court injunction CN had obtained against the blockaders but eventually they screwed up their courage when it appeared that Quebec might run out of propane to heat its poultry barns. They cleared the tracks in a few minutes without violence at the site or elsewhere in sympathy, although there have been ructions in the years since.
But Surete Quebec never did act at the blockade of CP’s tracks south of Montreal. It persisted until the government *gave* the protestors money, rather than stopping it with debanking.
I hear you in the larger issue you are raising. The rail blockades made me more lastingly pessimistic about the future of Canada than the trucker occupation did. The state at least showed it knew what to do to meet challenges to its authority from the latter but I don’t think it has the faintest clue about the former. So it tranquilizes the Constitutionally enshrined activists with Dane-geld money. Gotta hand it to the truckers: they weren’t after money, and that’s why the government hated them so much. They couldn’t be bought off.
I disagree. The convoy was already de-escalating on its own prior to the government over reach in freezing bank accounts and invoking the Emergency Powers Act. The rail blockades were attracting vigilante action, which is a huge loss in civil authority. I guess inconveniencing civil servants in dt Ottawa is fair more serious than grinding actual economic activity to a halt.
Wow, you are on fire today. You go girl.
"A legal protest".
Er, that surely is a gross simplification (and misrepresentation) of what happened in February 2022 and who was involved.
Hint: Not just truckers, but people who advocated:
* "accelerationist" ideology leading not just to the ouster of the then just-re-elected government in Ottawa, but the destruction of public institutions;
* vandals who thought nothing of urinating and defacating at will on public and private property; and
* others who showed little consideration for the tens-of-thousands of downtown residents who had to live through the disruption (horn-honking and aforementioned assaults on their property).
Since Carney has written that western society is morally bankrupt I want to know what he thinks are its vices and virtues specifically and what present society he thinks is more robust or positive than our western society.
Are we in for more “ post-national” bs with carney? I suspect so, the usual suspects are still on the scene
I looked up and read articles about him when he was governor of the Bank of England. This was a few years ago. I wanted to know about this Canadian who had done so well.
He was a thorough elitist, had a disdain for the West, was a climate zealot, and had not much regard for the common herd, us.
That is what I gleaned from my readings, anyway.
As long as Butts and Telford are pulling the strings from behind the curtain Canadians really should not dare to hope for new/different outcomes!
I don’t care about who is the best statesman. I want someone to bring back ethical government. I want someone to end the revolving door criminal Justice system. I want someone to bring sense to our drug policy. Our cities are a constant mess. When even paramedics don’t feel safe going to help people we have major internal problems. I want someone who will stop giving money to every loud group of zealots who feel they are the most important cause in the world. I want someone who will take our military seriously and not with timelines so far out every soldier knows that the announced projects will be defunded before they even start. I want an independent assessment of where Canada actually stands with net zero. One side says we are already there with our vast forests while the other side discounts our boreal forests.
Well said - thank you!
Yes, they've just given bail to a guy in Toronto who's charged with (a) advocating genocide (b) with having loaded handguns in his house, and (c) various hate-motivated arson charges and whatnot.... https://nationalpost.com/opinion/alleged-synagogue-attacker-hit-with-rare-charge-of-advocating-genocide-but-released-on-bail-anyway
And it’s the same Liberal gang that brought you all of that. It’s like giving your old beater a paint job and telling everyone it’s your ‘new’ car.
You can try and pump up Pierre as much as you like, but Pierre has a clear track record of being an asshole at everything outside his rallies. There are a lot of Canadians who are tired of Liberals pandering to Quebec; one of many deserved reasons Trudeau was so hated.
But based on his utter evisceration of a Western Standard reporter at a scrum in Edmonton yesterday, it's pretty clear Carney can hold his own in a debate, and there was no flinch to a question that no PM would ever prepare for. He showed the light of leadership yesterday; something Pierre has yet to do in a public forum (and yes, I fully admit I detest Pierre, but he's earned that)
Yes sir, I will grow up as instructed
I banned both these guys for 30 days. We're heading into an election, folks, and I don't have the time or energy to moderate the comments. People are going to disagree with you on the internet. That's allowed.
So yes, I echo David's call to grow up. I include him in that. I'm not fucking around on this, friends. Behave.
Yes, because killing the carbon tax and getting rid of Trudeau are not what Canada needs lol.
Liberals do parachutes often enough, witness Ignatieff, who was also just visiting from another, unrelated, career.
I notice an Ottawa Liberal riding association just banned long serving MP Chandra Arya from running again even though he had been nominated already. This is after he had been ejected from the Liberal Leadership race. In both instances it was for secret reasons which is the way things seem to be done in Canada. Possibly opening up a safe seat for Carney.
I love the pith helmet swagger stick pukka image this article paints of Carney. He did after all describe himself as European in his heritage. So now Canada no longer faces a choice between Pepsi and poutine vs Coke and burgers. It’s now tea and crumpets/cucumber sandwiches vs Coke and burgers.
It may just be that the Liberal party is fed up with his bozo eruptions: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-leadership-race-meeting-rules-1.7426292
If that's the case, then they should just come out and say "this guy is a goofball and the party is done watching him shoot us all in the dick" instead of letting the rumor mill swirl.
Agree I can certainly see the Liberal rationale. But seeing the abject kowtowing to roughly 4 million hard ass old stock Quebec French rankles a lot of Canadians including yours truly. It certainly didn’t stop Arya being re-elected. To paraphrase a former Ontario premier, a 10 percent tail should not wag a 90 percent dog. And virtually all US presidents had bozo eruptions at one time or another.
Absolutely true and a good, timely article. I’m one of the “disaffected Liberal voters”. Have voted LPC my entire adult life, and was about to leave the party for the first time because of its post-2015 turn under Trudeau (honestly I probably should have left by 2021 but gave them one last chance).
I cannot vote for the Conservatives as long as they do not take climate change seriously. It is a deal-killer for me. A good CPC platform on this *could* look like technology investments along with a plan to use a European alliance to put pressure on India and China on emissions (as they are really the only two countries that matter). But instead it’s crickets; pretending that the physical effects we are already seeing will just go away. Until that changes, they won’t have my vote. I was going to spoil my ballot if Trudeau represented the LPC again.
So I’m one of these LPC voters that Carney wants to “bring home” to the party. There are a lot of us.
I want him to make it into something that believes government can do great things but needs to back off (actually almost entirely renounce) Social Justice, bring First Nations into the economic system instead of encouraging the settler-colonialist grievances, and get real projects built and diversify our trade. I want him to rebuild trust in the great institutions of the country (CBC, public health) by admitting the excesses of 2012-2022 and returning them to what they once were rather than just burning them down like latest iteration of the CPC seems to want to do. Oh, and build Arctic defence! Which will require spending money — which I don’t believe the CPC will do. Let’s not forget that the nadir of Canadian Forces funding was under Harper.
But this is a lot of hope to put into a completely untested politician — and this article is bang on that he’s never been under pressure against other skilled politicians. And he’s still got a lot of Social Justice post-2015 Trudeau people around him.
I want to believe in Carney because the thought of handing the country to the Poilievre/Smith crowd is painful. But it may turn out to be a lot of wishful thinking.
My recommendation, park your vote with the Green Party, at least you will be making a statement based on your believes while NOT rewarding the bad behaviour of this Liberal government, which will not improve without a major house cleaning!
The federal Green Party is also a no-go for me due to their insane anti-nuclear stance. I am a Green voter provincially in Ontario now that Mike Schreiner and the Ontario Greens followed the Finnish Green Party in embracing nuclear power.
But I will not cast a vote for the federal party that has as a core value renouncing the single best solution for decarbonization, based on woo-woo Mother Gaia stuff, and a misunderstanding of why Chernobyl and Fukushima happened and why they won’t happen here (or anywhere) again.
Harper? The beginning of the disrespect and chronic underfunding of our military began under Pierre Trudeau and his defense minister Paul Helyer, not sure I spell correctly his last name.
I remember this very well. I was in my late teens and my father and an uncle were in the military.
My uncle, an RMC graduate in 1960, retired early , over this and he was far from alone.
Agreed. (See … I’m not a rabid partisan.)
It started under Trudeau Sr.
But it did reach the nadir (low point) under Harper. Military funding has increased under Trudeau Jr.
Wait until you find out the climate models are bogus.
Try to imagine how Poilievre feels right now about Singh, who prevented Canadians from casting ballots when the Conservatives would have won in a landslide.
what Singh did was reprehensible and egotistical and I hope the NDP gets wiped out for it so they can have a hard reckoning and rebuild in a better way.
It is beyond staggering to me, that anyone thinks Carney is a good choice at this juncture, His policies are as bad or worse than the Trudeau policies which has lead to 25% of the population suffering from food insecurity. The Canadian government is no longer distributing the Canada food guide because too many people cannot afford to follow it! Do Canadians REALLY want MORE of that?
So, we await the debates to see how Carney and Polievre do?
Inspte of all of the postings, do NOT know Carney, but I bloody well support ANY efforts to resist Trump.Trump is a bully and arseh*sle. I'se a Newfoundlanter, and b'y Gawd I don't give a maggoty butter for yer Trump.