— Feature, Musings —03.10.2025 06:32 AM
The banker vs. the beast
Tough act to follow.
Jean Chretien, that is. Following Canada’s best-living speech-maker is a pretty tall order. Newly-minted Liberal Party leader Mark Carney was never going to beat Chretien at the podium.
And, actually, now that we are on the subject, Carney’s daughter Cleo was actually a bit better than her old man, too. She was charming and fun.
Mark Carney? He ain’t going to set the world on fire with his speechifyin’, Virginia. Personally, I’ve been more excited by bowls of Cream of Wheat. I didn’t fall asleep during Carney’s victory lap, but I gave it some serious consideration.
But we all knew that already about Carney, the former Governor of both the Banks of Canada and England. He got hired to do those jobs – and he did them well, by all accounts – precisely because he was not a flame-breathing ideologue. He was a banker. So, let’s be honest with ourselves: when you go in to the bank to talk about your mortgage, do you want the person on the other side of the desk to sound and look like Kid Rock in the midst of two-week bender in Vegas? Nope.
In other words, Mark Carney’s bland, boring banker persona is not his weakness: paradoxically, it is actually his secret power. At a time when the world is quite literally on fire, and when we are facing a threat to our very existence, being dull is arguably a big asset, not a liability.
So, there are three main reasons why the Carney Grits have obliterated Pierre Poilievre’s 30-point lead. One, Justin Trudeau left, and the country was quite happy about that. Two, voters suspect that the Conservatives secretly (and some, not-so-secretly) love Donald Trump.
Three, Carney is a typical Canadian: he is calm, collected and courteous. He is the polar opposite of the ugly American – in this case, Donald Trump. Carney reminds us of our better selves. We don’t want a Prime Minister who acts like the guy we despise.
But there is a risk in all that, of course. The Canadian who has given Donald Trump pause – more than any other – is Doug Ford. Ford has been anything but polite about Trump. He has been very direct and very tough about the American president – threatening to cut off his power, removing American booze from the shelves, going on Fox to growl about betrayal. Ford has metaphorically taken Trump into the boards, many times, and Canadians have cheered every single time.
That, then, is the danger that Mark Carney faces. And it is the worry that many Canadians will have, too: that the new Grit leader will be the typical Canadian. And, when Donald Trump treads on his loafers, Carney will be the one who says he’s sorry. As some Canadians are wont to do.
Right now, we want a fighter – like Ford, like Chretien, like Don Cherry. We don’t want to become the doormat of North America. Knowing this, and towards the end of his speech, Carney talked about dropping his gloves in a hockey fight. But literally no one can picture Mark Carney dropping his gloves for a fight. (He was a backup goalie, after all.)
In the leaders’ debates, the aforementioned Poilievre and the Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet are going to make mincemeat of Carney. But as my Postmedia colleague Tasha Kheiriddin said to me on my podcast this week, that still may not matter. Sometimes, voters want a leader like Ontario’s Brampton Bill Davis – someone also calm, cool and collected. Not Bob Probert.
Who will be the one who fights best for Canada? That’s what elections are for. We are going to decide that. And the election, if the Liberals are smart – and not all of them are dumb – will happen very soon. Conservatives may think it is wise to keep demanding an election right away, but I don’t think they are.
What if Trump abruptly calms down? What if someone medicates him? The best asset of the Liberal Party, right now, is the rabid, crazier-than-an-shithouse-rat Donald Trump. Why do Tories think having an election now is in their interest? Why not wait until the Fall, when Trump has inevitably moved on to some other issue?
Liberals won’t wait. They’ve benefited from Justin Trudeau’s departure, yes. They aren’t going to wait for Donald Trump to move on to his next chew toy.
They are going to go now – because, even with a bland banker at the helm, they might just pull this off, the biggest political comeback in recent Canadian political history.
And Jean Chretien, who I know rather well, would smile about that.
Random thoughts:
1. Carney’s speech was a clunker. If this is the best he can offer, he’s going to have trouble gaining serious traction on the campaign trail.
2. Voting results announced: Gould & Freeland looked humiliated. Total rejection by a party that they worked super hard for.
3. Poilièvre drew crowds of 5,000 + 2,000 on the weekend. Carney never came close to having these kinds of crowds
4. Canadians fear Trump. But there’s an even stronger message: they want change. Poilièvre is tapping into that
5. CBC’s David Cochrane said something unexpected last night: Poilièvre is good at politics, and he knows how to pivot. What the heck!
Perhaps David and Rosie, who also mentioned Pierre’s London rally yesterday, are just trying to protect their jobs?
My immediate hunch, as well
They are reverting back to form. Natasha Fatah looks like a giggling schoolgirl on the CBC this morning in anticipation of the coronation.
Douglas,
The MotherCorp is gone if Pierre wins. They might as well not waste their breath.
Just like the Seinfeld episode, Poilievre was the half eaten éclair at the top of the Conservative trash heap. He just happened to be there at the right moment when the base was fired up about trucker convoys.
That moment is passing before our eyes.
One of the themes of the next election will be how that guy squandered a 20 point lead and why would Conservatives be willing to put up with that?
Sean,
You suggest that the 20-25 point lead was due to Poilièvre when it was only due to Pierre on the margins. 95% of it was due to Justin Trudeau. Now that he’s gone, it’s no surprise to see it going the way of the dodo bird. There is little to no likability factor with Pierre, so that’s why a consistent Liberal lead will be rapidly in his future. Carney will take the lead nationally and hold it all the way to election day. It will be the shortest election campaign in Canadian history for obvious political reasons. Glad I’m not CPC leader.
And if the CPC loses, I won’t waste one ounce of energy dealing with that guy. The rest of the party: MPs, officials and members can handle that.
Pierre Poilievre is no Doug Ford. I mean, maybe we’d like that from our leader, but we won’t get it from pp – we won’t get it from Carney either, but at least he’s bright enough to outsmart trump
Just saw Ford threaten to shut off hydro to three US states. Much more productive than an elbows up hashtag on social media. And how do you know Carney is bright enough?
Bright enough to outsmart the Donald?
Says who?
The CBC + Telford + Butts?
Donald isn’t someone you outsmart. He’s someone you shake hands with while you knee him in the balls… and then, when he’s bending over… you ask him if he’s OK…. just before you kick him in the teeth with an iron toed boot. I think Ford gets that.
Curious,
A chimpanzee could outsmart Trump.
You know I am sure Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris thought that too….and where are they now?
Poilievre is an offensive jerk, just like Trump – people recognize that and it’s why they are gravitating towards a much more
Civilized Carney
You didn’t answer my question. Chauncey Gardiner was civilized too but fooled lots of people.
About that banker:
“It was a matter of time before Carney decided the moment was ripe to make a bid for power. He is one of the most transparently ambitious men in the English-speaking world. And now he has achieved it. Unelected by anyone except the Canadian Liberal party membership (Carney is not even a member of parliament), he has but a short time before an inevitable election to claim that he is different from the previous guy, his close friend, who ruled Canada with Carney’s sometime help and advice for almost a decade.”
Writer suggesting Conservatives go back to the Iggy playbook:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-slogan-that-could-doom-mark-carney/
Politicians of all stripes swap advice – and politicians solicit advice and if they take it or not is up to them – what’s your point?
I will lay it out for you since you seem to have missed it. The article’s premise is basically that Carney is Iggy with a pocket calculator. I believe our host was the first one to use that phrase. Not to mention that you haven’t answered MY question. You never do, just for the record. Understandable, actually.
Uh huh…
Iggy was an elected MP before he ran for the Leadership the first time and the second time. Didn’t help him much.
Iggy was never connected Canadian policy making. Carney was under two Prime Ministers, of two parties.
Iggy was an academic only, accountable only to other academics. Carney was accountable to elected officials and shareholders.
If they use the Iggy playbook, they will be fighting a battle long over, against a completely different enemy…. and they will lose.
Sean is clearly back in the fold! I am going to miss being on the same side!
If Mark Carbey loses, will he flee?
When Poilievre looses, will anyone care?
Warren,
Poor Ford. Feeling obliged to praise Carney publicly. Now that must have hurt. Note how he said nothing about Pierre. I smell trouble in them there parts.
30 per cent of the Ontario PC vote vote LPC federally.
Exactly, Warren.
It’s so cute that the Liberals would think that a Goldman Sachs alumni is going to save our bacon and even cuter that they would actually promote the fact that he is a Goldman Sachs alumni. GS used to be the devil to the left. How soon we forget if that will get them power back:
“Not that Goldman was personally at any risk. The bank might be taking all these hideous, completely irresponsible mortgages from beneath-gangster-status firms like Countrywide and selling them off to municipalities and pensioners — old people, for God’s sake — pretending the whole time that it wasn’t grade D horseshit. But even as it was doing so, it was taking short positions in the same market, in essence betting against the same crap it was selling. Even worse, Goldman bragged about it in public. “The mortgage sector continues to be challenged,” David Viniar, the bank’s chief financial officer, boasted in 2007. “As a result, we took significant markdowns on our long inventory positions … However, our risk bias in that market was to be short, and that net short position was profitable.” In other words, the mortgages it was selling were for chumps. The real money was in betting against those same mortgages.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/
I’m not a financial expert, but if I’m not mistaken, keeping interest rates low and printing lots of money is not the right strategy in difficult economic times. Maybe Martin and Ronald can tell us if Mark Carney did a good job as the Governor of the Bank of Canada and later the Bank of England. It seems he’s also against pipelines in Canada but loves building them in other countries, and has lived outside of Canada for many years.
He did a great job if you were one of the 1% just like Justin did. Look at all the billionaires that backed him. The job he did in the UK was not unanimously praised:
“By the time he left office, Carney had created a mess which his successors have struggled to clear up. Inflation spiked up to a peak of 11.1 per cent in the UK, compared to 5.2 per cent in France, or 8 per cent in Italy, hardly a country known for controlling prices effectively, largely because the Bank had printed too much money.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/10/canada-is-about-to-discover-mark-carney-is-a-failure/
The problem is the other 99% will fall for it likely(again). But I will be personally fine!
Martin,
Agreed. NDP and Liberal women will vote almost as one for the Carney Liberals and the only bonus: Jagmeet will lose his seat to the Liberals. Love that part!