“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” — John Adams
Introduction
The actions of Justin Trudeau looked like he had taken the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) over the electoral cliff. That is until Mark Carney came along. What do we know about him, and what are his plans for Canada? It is not enough to admire his resume, and follow the advice of Liberals, who use the usual strong leader slogans to suggest he is the person to lead us. Perhaps it is time to reflect not on the polls, but the troubling reality of Mark Carney.
A Resume of Prestige and Power
It may be advisable to look past his impressive resume, the values he holds and has expressed in his book “Value(s)”. But let’s give him some credit. He worked for Goldman Sachs for 13 years after graduating from Oxford. This is one of the prestige banks and a good place to learn about finance banking but perhaps not the place he learned to exercise his values, beyond hard work. Is Goldman Sachs where he learned about the finance system or is it where he was indoctrinated/recruited into the finance cult?
After a stint working in the Canadian civil service, he became the governor of the Bank of Canada (BOC).
There is no doubt that he proved to be an effective leader as governor of the BOC. In that role he offered advice to the Harper conservatives to pull through the financial crisis of 2007-09. He was then recruited by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the British Government, to be the governor of the Bank of England. Regardless of the hapless British Prime Minister, Liz Truss’s critique of Carney, he fared well and was helpful in weathering Brexit.
From Global Finance to Canadian Politics
He then went on to fill various roles at the highest levels of all things finance and economics, including as UN special envoy for climate change and finance. Most recently he has been taking on various senior executive level positions at Brookfield Investments as well as being an advisor to the Liberal party from 2021 until now.
Now Carney has moved onto the biggest challenge of his life, running to be leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC). This is where his story gets complicated and the veneer fades. Some would like to revisit his time at Goldman Sachs and wonder what that bloodless institution has in common with his alleged values but let us leave that alone.
Insider or Outsider?
He burst on the scene on Jon Stewart’s nightly show and claimed he was not an insider. That’s some proclamation, given his tenure at Goldman, Bloomberg, the World Economic Forum, Special Envoy for Climate Change at the United Nations and so on. He later came clean on the podcast The Rest Is Politics and clearly described himself as an insider and globalist.
He also had to walk back on the statement he made during his tenure at Brookfield Investment Corporation that his firm had more investments in renewables than in oil, gas and pipelines. When he was challenged on this, he admitted that indeed Brookfield invested more in hydrocarbons than renewables. A mistake or a deception? It also may be of interest that the corporation owns 83,000 single unit homes that they have commodified for the benefit of their faceless investors.
Climate Change Contradictions
So, let’s give him the benefit of being able to correct himself. However, I find it more than curious that a special envoy of climate change would want to be associated with Brookfield, especially if one had an eye on being the prime minister of Canada and was acting as an advisor to Trudeau’s LPC. But then, is it even more curious that he affiliates himself with the Trudeau Liberals, who after all have seen oil and gas production rapidly expand during their tenure over the past 9 years? Perhaps he finds himself at home with institutions and powerful people that have complicated tales to tell.
Champion of the Middle Class?
One of the values that Carney talks about is helping the middle class and those who are unfortunate. I am sure he is sincere, but then are Goldman Sacks, governorships of two G7 banks and Brookfield Financials the places to sink your teeth into and put your values into action?
One of his first actions was to cut Poilievre off at the knees when he said he would end the Trudeau Liberals’ carbon tax. A carbon tax which is redistributed back to lower-income working Canadians to the tune of $700 dollars annually on average. No matter that, solid journals like The Economist consistently support the idea of a carbon tax as a major financial instrument in reducing carbon emissions. Carney’s justification is that the tax is divisive, so in the middle of a very slow international response to an international climate crisis, he muddies the waters and removes a major effective tool, since supporting a carbon tax may not get him into the Prime Minister’s Office.
The Immigration Conundrum
On the issue of what is divisive, let’s be clear. What is divisive is his silence on the absolute mess the Trudeau Liberals have made of immigration which includes family class, economic class, asylum seekers, refugees, foreign students, and temporary workers. Is this because he does not want to be perceived as racist? Yet he is fine with overwhelming our health care system, inflating home prices, increasing homelessness, putting pressure on our borders, courts, social services, hotel, sewage, water, farmland, and our already depleted ecological systems. That is divisive, especially when poll after poll clearly finds that over 70% of Canadians are against the number of immigrants and incredibly over 60% of recent immigrants also see the problems with such high numbers. All Carney can say is that we failed the immigrants. No, he and the federal political establishment failed us. Remember Carney was the economic advisor when the Trudeau Liberals were increasing the number of immigrants from already inflated levels.
What is equally outrageous is that almost 9 million people who live in our country are permanent residents, thanks to immigration. People who cannot vote or run for political office. That is, over 20 percent of us cannot engage in the full responsibilities of citizenship but get the benefits. And Carney seems to be good with that.
Misguided Economic Solutions
In a stump speech in Kelowna, February 12, he revealed himself as incredibly out of touch. In that speech he talked about helping those who have seen their wages stagnate and the unfortunate. But by taking away the carbon tax, he just removed a net benefit for those very same people. Instead, he awkwardly suggested that the loss of those carbon tax cheques would be made up by offering lower-wage earners grants for insulating their homes, and buying heat pumps and electric vehicles. First, many of these people do not own their homes so no benefit to them accrues and then who can afford a new EV when you are paying 50 percent of your income on rent or a mortgage? He struck out there; who are his advisors? And then he said that the biggest corporations would pay for these very household green rebates by way of a vague voluntary carbon market that I am sure the large corporations are rushing to use.
Questionable Fiscal Promises
Then he rows his raft into undeliverable promises. First, he proposes to balance the budget in 3 years, and although Trudeau left us 63 billion in the hole this year, he imagines that there will be plenty of dollars for the less fortunate. The last time Chretien balanced the budget, transfers to provinces shrank for social housing, health care and universities. How does Carney avoid this at the same time as he is rolling out major expensive infrastructure promises? He even noted the problems in our healthcare system, and said he would fund that as well, while at the same time acknowledging that health care is a provincial policy but in rough shape.
The Emergency Powers Debate
And then to blow whatever sanity and credibility he had left, he said he would use the emergency powers available to the federal government to remove all interprovincial trade barriers, approve all major infrastructure and mining projects and create an economic corridor (pipeline) across Canada. A pipeline the premier of Quebec said he had no social license for in Quebec and would not be good for the environment. His instincts are those of a man who has only known power in financials and is ready to use all emergency powers available to a prime minister. That is not peace, order, or good government.
Canadians should be shouting from their rooftops at this point, not because they agree that these things are good but because Carney thinks it is ok to use emergency powers to trample on our checks and balances, municipalities, and provinces, hence trample on our constitution. At least Donald Trump is transparent about his disdain for his institutions, while Carney thinks he can squeeze the hands of Liberal hacks, look them in the eye and spew such contradictory swamp talk. Please, let’s drain the swamp Carney is creating.
Questionable Trade Benefits
Then Carney reveals his disdain for the intelligence of Canadians. In a recent appearance on the esteemed British podcast, The Rest Is Politics, he said that Canada is fortunate to have free trade agreements like the Canadian European Trade Agreement (CETA), United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Shall we examine this?
I will not dwell on the USMCA. Let us just say that the Americans are proving to be untrustworthy partners in this agreement. Remember how the Americans treated the findings of international dispute tribunals on softwood or the tariffs Trump 1 put in place and now the maniacal Trump 2 evisceration of our trade relations? Next Trump will put new tariffs on us if we require Don Junior to have a hunting license on his annual Yukon Mountain Goat Hunt.
Seriously, how can Carney look you in the face and tell us that the USMCA will lift our economy above the shoals of ruin or that he expects the anemic European Union to be a receptive haven for billions of dollars of Canadian exports? In fact, the whole CETA is always in danger of ending as some European countries, including France, Italy and Cyprus, are skeptical about it. In dollar terms, the value of trade with the EU is about 72 billion Euros, up 9% when adjusted for inflation since the 2017 inception of CETA until 2023. To put this into perspective, Canada exported $412 billion to the USA in 2024. And now turning to the TPP, will this trade agreement deliver us the economic miracle Carney wants us to believe he can deliver?
To begin with, the TPP is really designed to extend patent protection and copyright protection for large corporations that trade in the Asian and South Pacific markets. These protections will mean that our poor Asian trading partners cannot steal our patents, movies, and books. In the case of pharmaceuticals, the Asian Tigers will not be able to supply us with generics for even longer than our laws currently allow. No benefit there.
Further, companies such as Nike have moved a lot of their operations to countries like Vietnam where factory wages are low. There is also the danger that Chinese branch plants in Vietnam will use the trade agreement to bypass direct trade with us. If there is a trade practice dispute between Canada and a partner then a country like Malaysia can initiate a claim to a dispute tribunal that is subject to the corrupt practices of that country, not legal proceedings we find acceptable. To top it off, tariffs between Asian Tigers and our country were never that high and even under a low tariff wall Canada never made big inroads into their markets. It is difficult to see how the TPP will deliver the kind of economic growth we will need to compensate for a hostile USA under Trump’s administration.
I do not want to sound negative, but too often Canadians become dazzled by the lies that politicians tell. Some politicians may be sincere in their fanciful dreams, like the promises that the Liberals made about reforming “first past the post” elections, big reductions in greenhouse gases and small deficits for two years. I think Carney is the same and what is so disturbing is that he is gaining momentum.
What Carney Should Be Saying
What Carney should be telling us is this. He will cut immigration to the bone and only the most skilled will be allowed in and not all of their extended families. He will ask new immigrants to become citizens and join together with our founding cultures; instead he scoffed at the idea of a Canadian melting pot. He will allow businesses to open new medical and technical schools to train Canadians for the jobs we need. He will put aside money to harden our infrastructure against more powerful weather systems and forest fires. He will slow down the expanding rate of growth in hydrocarbon exports. He will refrain from suggesting carbon capture is viable. He will work with provinces to remove as many trade barriers as possible. He will slow funding to social sciences in universities and expand STEM programs. He will stop this Liberal fascination with destroying our history by castigating our colonial history. He will end Trudeau’s love of splitting us up by identities, end the crazy deliberations over 70 plus gender identities, and men playing in women’s sports at the Olympics. At the same time he would challenge mistaken beliefs in the superiority of one race over another.
And please let us have an honest conversation about the colonial imperial powers that undoubtedly brought so many benefits, like abolishing slavery and war, but truthfully accept that their presence and actions decimated indigenous culture. The members of those cultures need to know that we acknowledge that big mistakes were made, but as our governments are clearly broke, and households struggle economically, the government will not and cannot afford the expensive remedies that are anticipated. In other words, time to stop with the grievance culture, face hard realities and create your own future and don’t expect the government to make it for you.
Lastly, Carney wants to lead the international corporate world on a fight against climate change. Who can argue with that? The only problem is that the year after year investment in clean energy needs to be about 5 times the current levels and that does not account for the investment shortfall of the last decade. In other words climate change investments are in the region of 15 trillion dollars in arrears, if you use IMF figures. And the kicker is that the 5 major Canadian banks just pulled out of the international consortium on climate change and Wall Street is pulling back. Hard realities are confronting the Carney agenda. It is time for Canadians to wake up to their own mess and take John Adams’ advice to inform themselves. Do not allow Mark Carney and the Liberal Blarney cloud your vision.
Written by Peter Stubbins — independent, ecology protector, ex-municipal politician, grandpa, strategic voter, market-orientated, against rent seekers, business owner, retired physiotherapist.