— Feature, Musings —10.25.2025 10:49 AM
Not as advertised: Mark Carney reveals himself
Mark Carney has been Prime Minister of Canada for more than seven months, now. In politics, that represents several lifetimes.
So, the past few months have given us lots of time to learn about the political strengths and weaknesses of the former banker.
His main strengths are obvious: he’s intelligent, he’s experienced, he’s calm, and he’s not Justin Trudeau or Donald Trump.
But Carney’s personal shortcomings have become evident, too. There are five. Arrogance; under-delivering; contradictions; fuzziness; Ottawa-washed. All five weaknesses were seen in his Wednesday night State of the Union-style speech to the nation (which reminded us of another failing: he has a fetish for glitzy American-style governance.)
My take, as a former speechwriter to a guy who became Prime Minister: much of the speech reads like as first-year university history lecture. But much of it tells a story – about the man.
Arrogance. Arrogance, conceit, solipsism, condescension: whatever you call it, it all represents the thing that always defeats Liberals. In his 3,000-word and too-long speech, Carney showed flashes of that: on the future, Carney actually said he and his government are “going to give it back to you.”
Really? We don’t have a future unless and until Mark Carney “gives” us one? The forthcoming budget, meanwhile, “will be about…winning.” Charlie Sheen might approve of that sort of mission statement, but history is littered with the metaphorical remains of politicians who promised “winning” – and then only delivered the opposite.
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Warren,
On our side we’re in heaven. The supplicant media is already panicking and trying to stretch out the Pierre and the RCMP thing in hopes of rescuing Carney. Not a mention of Duff Conacher and Democracy Watch. Hypocritical POS who refuse to practice fair journalism. Notice I didn’t say impartial because they couldn’t and wouldn’t do that if their lives depended on it. But I digress.
Carney is a walking free trade disaster. He will get nothing substantive or of value in the end. He will completely surrender to Trump, desperate to get a fig leaf on paper so he can bullshit the Canadian people during the spring election campaign. We already know that his government will live or die based on the so-called agreement with Trump. It’s looking good for us so far. Carney and Dom are as inept and incompetent as can be. But it’s Canadians who will pay the price when POS rolls Carney but good. At least Freeland is discretely having a good laugh.
November 4th budget is going to grim.
And tough to defend.
Expecting the Prime Minister to be out of the country for the remainder of the month.
And then recess Parliament until late January
For me the speech was disappointing because we learned nothing new. It was so predictable. Maybe the honeymoon period is over.
I am currently fast forwarding Carney giving the same speech in Asia that is on the 6am news. I think I have figured out his strategy. Put us all to sleep while the world burns. And the usual suspects think that is a feature not a bug.
He has a lot of government experience, just not as much political experience. I think Canadians appreciate him for his competence and demeanour.
How has he shown his competence as PM so far? I’ll wait. He hasn’t even reported to the “owners”(his word, not mine) yet. That kind of a delay in a company like Brookfield and you lose your listing. And wait until he finally does! I will have lots of news.
Actually he has no political experience. I’ll also disagree that he’s intelligent. I don’t find any politician to be intelligent if they drive up the national debt and think it won’t come back to bite us. Too many years of far too low interest rates create noticeable inflation and Carney was a part of that, both in Canada and the UK. Him splitting the budget between an operating budget and an investment budget is beyond disingenuous. Spending is spending and it all involves tax payers money. The last time I voted Liberal had for Paul Martin. I voted for Chretien as well. They weren’t perfect, no politician is, but they were fiscally responsible. If either of them ran for office today they’d be labeled ‘right wing’ conservatives.
Concur with your observation with one exception
His stint as a banker
The governor of the bank of Canada and the equivalent in the UK is more a senior bureaucrat.
No different than say a deputy minister or assistant deputy minister.
And like all senior bureaucrats they like receiving credit when things go right, and deflect blame on their enemies when they go wrong.
Another feature of senior bureaucrats is that they tend to discount direction from the minister in charge of their ministry and only defer and scrape for the clerk of the privy council.
This is where Carney gets his arrogance and he isn’t “Ottawashed” as much as having a history of being the one doing the Ottawashing.
Here’s a prediction
Carney’s demise will come at the hands of the bureaucracy when he displays his disdain on them
Sir, your prediction is exactly where I am. There is a code in the bureaucracy called the MAD treatment. Maximum Administrative Delay. This has the potential to drive Carney to burn out. I like Carney, I am hoping for him but I fear the MAD treatment…
He is also bumping up against Parkinson’s Law and The Mathematics of Bureaucracy. Good luck with that.
Joseph,
Agreed. Our collective fondest memory of bureaucratic self-serving agenda is Global Affairs. Harper’s PMO had to do an end run around them because they knew better than Harper what Canadian foreign policy should be. Personally, I would have immediately canned the DM and all those assorted ADMs. But that’s just me.
And if that wasn’t sophisticated enough for the public service, I would have immediately promoted all of them and sent them to postings in bureaucratic Siberia. Play hard ball or else they inevitably win in the end.