What are they really like?

When you are a political staffer – like this writer was, back in the Palaeolithic Era – you get that question a lot. People find out that you work for a notable politician, and they want to know the real deal: what is he/she like when the microphones and cameras are tucked away?

Mark Carney first.

On Monday, the newly-minted Liberal leader was asked totally legitimate questions about his “blind trust” by the CBC’s Rosemary Barton and the Globe’s Stephanie Levitz. Barton and Levitz essentially wanted to know why Carney didn’t disclose his financial holdings when he could have.

Levitz went first, querying Carney about the whereabouts of his millions. Carney’s response: “What possible conflict would you have, Stephanie?…Point final.”

Get that? “Point final.” That’s kind of the English equivalent of saying, in French, “This discussion is over, child.”

Barton wasn’t deterred by that. She said it “was very difficult to believe” Carney could have no possible conflicts of interest. At that point, Carney’s patrician mask fully slipped. “Look inside yourself, Rosemary,” he actually said. You are “trying to invent new rules,” he snapped at her. You are acting with “ill will,” he barked at the CBC veteran broadcaster.

Well, no. She was just doing her job. But in those few seconds, Carney revealed himself to be arrogant, pompous, evasive and condescending. He looked terrible; all that was missing was him gnawing at an apple.

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Justin Trudeau – finally, blessedly – is gone.

Mark Carney, the charisma-free zone who takes showers in three-piece suits, is the Selected Prime Minister. The polls suggest he could soon become the Elected Prime Minister. So, is Pierre Poilievre toast? Could he still win?

No, he’s not toast. Yes, he could still win. Ten reasons.

1. Poilievre has lots of money. In 2024, his Conservatives raised $41.8 million. That’s just about double what the Liberals and the New Democrats raised – put together. The year before, 2022, Poilievre had another record-smashing year, and raised $35 million – more than doubling what the Liberals raised. Now, money doesn’t always guarantee wins – recall the fates of billionaires like Ross Perot and Pete DuPont, for example – but the absence of money always guarantees defeats. Money buys ads.

2. Poilievre has organizational strength. Money alone doesn’t win elections – people do. And, right now, Poilievre has many more candidates nominated than his opponents. And, critically, he has a Tory-blue army on the ground, from sea to sea to sea. The Liberals, meanwhile, have entire ridings that exist in name only – they are effectively political ghost towns. To win, you need people to knock on doors, put up signs, and get out the vote. Poilievre has that.

3. Poilievre has a disciplined team. In 2015, Stephen Harper lost because of lack of discipline – substituting a focus on the economy for scaremongering about veils. His successors lost, in 2019 and 2021, because of lack of message discipline, too – Erin O’Toole embracing a carbon tax, Andrew Scheer allying himself with social conservative causes. This time around, Poilievre and his team have run a much tighter ship: there have been no big verbal missteps about abortion, equal marriage or other policy Vietnams. Voters have noticed.

4. Poilievre sticks to his key messages. When hunting bear, the legendary Romeo LeBlanc once said to this writer, don’t get distracted by rabbit tracks. Poilievre didn’t and doesn’t. After becoming leader in 2022, the Ottawa-area MP maintained a laser-like focus on pocketbook issues, and mostly stayed away from everything else. The top issue for voters was cost-of-living, too. It worked.

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All the polls show the same thing. The race has tightened up. The big Conservative lead has vanished. The Liberals are competitive again.

Could Mark Carney win? Of course he could. Ten reasons.

1. Trudeau is gone. Towards the end, Justin Trudeau wasn’t just his party’s leader. He had become a political death sentence – for them. The Liberals had become very, very unpopular, and Trudeau wasn’t the only reason. But he was the main one. When he was forced out – by Chrystia Freeland, by his caucus, by reality – Liberals who had parked their vote with the Conservatives or the NDP were always going to come back. They have.

2. Conservatives didn’t have a Plan B. In politics, you always have to plan for change. The Tories didn’t. Justin Trudeau is a narcissist, they’d say, and they were right. But they had convinced themselves that his narcissism would persuade him to stay. That’s not how narcissism works. Narcissists always leave so that someone else can clean up their messes. The Conservatives – arrogantly, stupidly – didn’t plan for Trudeau’s departure. It shows.

3. Liberals overwhelmingly support Carney. There’s a name for winning 90 per cent of the vote: a landslide. Mark Carney won his party’s leadership by a landslide. Conservatives can bleat about the number of Liberals who ultimately voted, or weave conspiracies about marginal candidates like Ruby Dhalla. But the bottom line is that Mark Carney won, big. And Tories are now doing what they did three times in a row with Justin Trudeau: underestimating the Liberal leader.

4. Carney is likeable. In politics, you don’t need to be the most likable person on Earth. You just need to be more likable than the alternative. And the fact is, a growing number of Canadians don’t find Pierre Poilievre particularly likable. For a long time, Poilievre’s angry man shtick worked – because a majority of Canadians were mad at Justin Trudeau, too. With Trudeau gone, their anger has disappeared, like air out of a balloon. Donald Trump has cornered the market on anger, and voters want something different from him. They want someone who loves Canada, like they do. Not a perpetually angry guy who says that Canada is “broken.”

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