Trudeau insists that he is staying on. Poilievre is delighted.
Posted August 16, 2024
There has been a steady drumbeat of stories speculating that Mark Carney will join the Liberal cabinet. Typically the stories suggest that he would become Minister of Finance, replacing Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
He would be wise to stay away. A new set of tires is not a fix for a car with a broken engine.
Carney has a distinguished biography. Born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, he did his undergraduate degree at Harvard and postgraduate studies at Oxford. He left a lucrative position at Goldman Sachs to return to public service in Canada, becoming Governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008 and Governor of the Bank of England in 2013. He is the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.
There are many good reasons to avoid joining the cabinet at this juncture.
- He will have noted the experiences of former Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Both Morneau and Prime Minister Trudeau had close connections with WE Charity. Their families had received significant financial benefits from the charity, but they did not recuse themselves from the cabinet discussion of WE receiving a $43.5 million untendered contract to administer a $912 million program to support young job seekers during the covid epidemic.
Morneau resigned because of that, but also because of his relationship with the Prime Minister’s Office. In his book he wrote, “My job of providing counsel and direction where fiscal matters were concerned had deteriorated into serving as something between a figurehead and a rubber stamp.” In other words, he was supposed to parrot questionable instructions from the PMO. - Current Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is having a similar experience. Her job is to defend the PMO’s ideas, and she gets the blame when the explanation lacks credibility.
Thus, she was unable to show that the carbon tax is offset by the quarterly rebate cheques because the PMO ignored the impact on household heating and the indirect cost of many pass throughs from municipal and provincial vehicles and buildings.
Nor is she able to defend the falsehood that only a tiny minority of Canadians will be affected by the changes to the capital gains tax.
She is now the subject of leaks , perhaps from the PMO, that Trudeau is looking for a replacement, i.e., Carney. - Carney would have one shot at a budget before the election. He would find it immensely frustrating to receive direction from the economically inept Prime Minister’s Office. In any event, it would take two or three budgets for him to make his mark.
- Some of the other ministers are making a mess. Former Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, followed by Marc Miller, enabled an unplanned doubling of non-permanent residents.
Waiving visa requirements caused a surge of asylum seekers at airports. Loosened rules enabled a doubling of low-wage temporary foreign workers, as did the number of international students. All three exasperate the housing crisis.
Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier has triggered a walkout by fisheries officers by not supporting them. A retired field supervisor reports that the Public Prosecution Service of Canada is refusing to prosecute additional Fisheries Act charges against Indigenous persons, citing changes made to guidelines for their work. The result is massive illegal fishing for lobsters in advance of the season. - Voting surveys show the Conservatives having an entrenched 18% lead. On present form the Liberals would lose 90 of the 160 seats they won in 2021. It will not be a fun four years on the opposition side in Parliament.
On August 12th, The Globe and Mail ran an article with the headline reading, “Most Canadians think adding Mark Carney would have no benefit to Trudeau.”
They might have added that it will be of no benefit to Carney, nor would he find the job a great opportunity to serve the country for the next twelve months. In the absence of a huge shift in public opinion, the Conservatives will win a substantial majority in the election scheduled for October 20, 2025.
Trudeau is deaf to the message that he is the problem. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is delighted that he is staying on.
In the Liberal Party leadership process following a stinging electoral rebuke, Carney would stand out as a credible new face. As leader, he would bring needed integrity and competence, but he will still have to suffer through at least four years on the opposition benches.
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