— Feature, Musings —05.08.2025 12:08 PM
Mark Carney is doing a good job.
CALGARY – Mark Carney is doing a pretty good job so far. Sorry, folks, but he is. Three reasons.
One has to do with that meeting with Donald Trump. If you’ve worked for a Prime Minister (and I have), your job is to just avoid disaster, pretty much. Achievements are few and far between. So, the job is mainly to keep the boss from stepping on landmines.
There were a lot of landmines in Donald Trump’s office, this week. They weren’t easy to see, because that room has now been done up in so much gold and gilt it resembles the receiving room at Wild West brothel. But the landmines were there.
Trump was going to say something crazy about Canada – that was a given. He was going to say something that was wildly, provably false. He was going to make stuff up, just to see how Mark Carney would react.
Those were the landmines, and guess what? Mark Carney didn’t step on any of them. Closely resembling the central the banker that he is – a job which typically involves listening to idiot politicians say idiotic things, and keeping one’s cool – Mark Carney kept his cool.
He let Trump talk, and then delivered the one line he’d flown to Washington to deliver: namely, that Canada wasn’t for sale, ever. Huzzah! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, as George W. Bush might say.
Reason number two has to do with Pierre Poilievre, who Mark Carney wants you to think is his adversary. But he isn’t. After blowing a 30-point lead, losing an election that was in the bag, and then getting the pink slip in the riding he’d held for two decades, Pierre Poilievre is someone Mark Carney really, really wants to keep around.
So, when a reporter asked Carney about accommodating Poilievre’s desire to run in an Alberta seat where a fence post painted blue could win in a landslide, Carney was all magnanimous and whatnot, and said he’d do what he could to grease the wheels of democracy, blah blah blah.
I was impressed by his acting skills, on that occasion. If there’s anybody who really, really – REALLY – wants to keep Pierre Poilievre around, it’s Mark Carney. But he didn’t show that. He was sort-of lowkey about it, and the commentariat predictably ran around saying how refreshingly Prime Ministerial he was. But that’s nonsense: Mark Carney gave himself a big gift, and he tricked everyone into thinking he was being a charitable nice guy. Clever.
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Like with dating you should never get to serious as folks can only hide their bullshit for about a year and then it starts to slip out.
Ok fine it’s been 2 weeks, so let’s reassess in 5o more weeks if 1 year is the marker.
Lol calm down…. He won just like Justin did Took Canadians 9 years to tire of his shit so that says something. Maybe he’ll be the knight in shining armour we all hope for but by next year probably not. Won’t make a difference to the devoted ones and 4 years from now anther Switch- a-roo a quick reset and back we will go again. But in his defence no one will walk from Trump smelling good so maybe it’s a good thing he wears the stench. IMHO.
Warren,
Just wait until Carney quite deliberately sinks his own government with legislation that no opposition party can support. That poison pill is coming as soon as the polls are consistently in majority terrritory — it will happen in less than a year and probably this fall. As usual, Pierre won’t see this coming and we’ll be toast. But then again, what else is new?
Ronald, my guess as well: possibly a November vote.
If the trade deal that Trump pushes in front of us is grim, then Carney will need a majority to ram it through
Ronald you are probably correct but seriously if you watched Carney with Trump Some part of you must have been going thank God it isn’t Pierre in there.
Carney, doing a good job? I suppose so.
I mean, too early to say he’s doing a bad job.
Watching Carney’s Oval Office get together with the Donald, I recalled so many times during the election that Poilièvre was insinuated to be a wimp.
That Trump would walk over him, and take our country away from us.
That Carney would not be shy to go mano a mano with the POTUS.
Well, Carney’s body language was weak.
And he did not come across like he had the capacity to protect us and our interests from the lunatic.
But hey, that day in the White House, Carney kissed the ring like a pro
Douglas,
It was Liberal bullshit: no verbal concessions and no written ones. A typical Liberal achievement.
Douglas you can’t possibly have wants Pierre is that room. We needed the adult that we got.
Carney isn’t who he says he is.
I see an empty suit
Douglas,
He will learn on the job like Zelenskyy has but he’s far too phoney for my liking. What’s his net worth again NOW that he’s an MP? Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock…
He is worse than an empty suit. He talks about equality of outcomes on PAGE TWO of his book. Taibbi and Kirn had a good laugh about the fact that Trump basically trolled an entire nation(including a few folks posting on this thread) into thinking it would make a difference who is talking to him. Quite funny. We had grown adults standing in lines squawking like chickens thinking that was all going to actually accomplish something. Worse than falling for a name a nice hair.
As far as hyperbolic comments like thanking GOD Pierre wasn’t there-seriously? I have been saying from the start that this will sort itself out, telling my clients the same thing and literally putting my money where my mouth is by buying into this “chaos”. It already started with the UK(why didn’t Carney bear them to the punch). This is not 1987, 1998, 2000, 2008 0r 2020. Not even close. I’d like to know how many of the sky is falling bunch shorted the market because that is what you should have done if you had the courage of your convictions. Now I may be ultimately wrong but I do have the courage of my convictions. And acted accordingly.
I just watched Amanda what’s her name say that Joly would be and, even scarier, should be kept in the Cabinet.
Martin,
I guess she doesn’t have too many trips to Costa Rica on the agenda. How fickle.
Mr Carney won the election (fair and square as we used to say), and therefore he deserves an opportunity to govern. With respect to his trip to Washington, he didn’t really have any cards to play (sorry folks). IMHO, Trump’s trolling has given the chattering classes up here a conniption; we’re taking it seriously and he’s having a good laugh. So he (Mr Carney) stated the obvious, which nobody at the White House is really that interested in. He comes back the hero, having “stood up for Canada”. Okay, whatever. With respect to Mr Poilievre, I hope that he is not the leader the next time we go to the polls. I guess we’ll see.
I thought it was interesting that Primr Minister Carney didn’t defend Chrystia Freeland. He barely spoke while he was at the White House. How come nobody mentions the obvious? If President Trump doesn’t want anything from Canada, why does he say Canada should be a state? That makes no sense.
Melanie Joly shouldn’t be in cabinet. She’s not the right person for the job. Getting King Charles to read the throne speech is a bad idea. A lot of people in Quebec might have buyer’s remorse.
Joly is very popular in Quebec. He needs her support.
Really? Who is she popular with, Hamas supporters?
Gilbert,
Good one!
Good lord. Let’s keep Alberta and let Quebec go then.
Warren,
From Global News:
“NDP interim leader says Liberals putting out ‘feelers’ for MPs to cross the floor.
After less than a week on the job, the new interim NDP leader is already fending off a fresh attack from the Liberals. Don Davies says the Liberals are making phone calls to NDP members of Parliament, hoping to convince them to join the Liberal Party in an effort to reach a majority government.”
Targeting Leah Gazan, Winnipeg Centre?
Douglas,
Bravo! [Smiling.]
Warren,
Carney Liberals: 100% political smarts, 0% personal integrity or decency.
Bad to the bone
Bad to the bone
B-B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-B-Bad
Bad to the bone
Credit: George Thorogood & The Destroyers ‧ 1982
Douglas,
Everyone and his brother is rattling on about how well Carney did in the Oval. In short, bullshit. No written concessions were made and Trump didn’t even make verbal concessions so that some of the tariffs will go away quickly. I remind people that the Trump idiot kept tariffs in place for two years during the last so-called Administration.
Jim,
Ask yourself why Trump endorsed Carney before the vote. It’s because Trump thinks that with the Liberals that he can win the concessions casino. In other words, they’re pushovers. He knows his garage won’t work with another conservative so they’ve sized up before the election that less concessions would come from Poilièvre rather than Carney. That’s why Trump was thrilled to see the Liberals win, the party in his mind that is much more of a wet blanket.
He did well in Washington. He is the right person for the job at hand both in terms of diversifying our trade and removing domestic barriers, and also to negotiate a new trade deal with the states – he’s clearly the best option for that, thank god he won !!
Trump does not negotiate.
He gets what he wants, and if others do not acquiesce, then he hammers away until the other side capitulates
Curious,
Tell me another one. Carney is the next softwood prime minister. In short, forced to give away the store to Trump. Next.
Hey, Pedant. When are you going to get off your ass and take the battle to the Liberals on this web site? Do you expect all of us here who are Conservatives to do your heavy lifting as well?
Watching more coverage, the best most hilarious understated line Carney said in that Oval Office presser was (sic) “the president has revitalized international security and revitalized NATO” . Lol.
This was a way to give cheeto a compliment while saying “holy fuck every country in the west just realized what it can be like when your benefactor goes to the dark side.” Cool as a cucumber.
Key word up there is “benefactor”. Is there something wrong with trying to get your allies to step up to the plate and pay their fair share. Both Carney and Pierre promised that in response to…wait for it…Trump(actually Pierre did it before Carney but I digress). Should we have made that promise and, if not, why not. It was in response to Trump. I’ll wait.
And Brian just said that on the podcast.
Martin,
Except that Trump has moved the goalposts: it’s no longer two percent that will take years before Canada gets there. For quite a while, he’s been pontificating about five percent. Good luck with that, President Trump…
Not to mention that all the usual suspects were claiming that Pierre lost because they didn’t think he was taking a hard enough line with T and now you are heaping praise on Carney for sucking up to him. All quite funny.
The most hilarious line was “transformational leader”. Of course that can for the better or for the worse.
Trump’s unfavourables are at 50-52%. I’m shocked.
Liberal voters might regret they were so scared by Donald Trump’s rhetoric. It appears Donald Trump and Mark Carney are business partners. Though those on the left might deny it, there are good reasons to believe Donald Trump is happy that Mark Carney won.