1 week Ago By Lorne Gunter
Article content You should have heard a loud ‘pop’ on Thursday — the sound of Liberal Mark Carney’s I’m-the-best-leader-to-deal-with-Trump bubble bursting. On March 28, Carney and U.S.
President Donald Trump held what Carney and his aides called a “positive” phone call. Afterwards, Carney insisted “the president respected Canada’s sovereignty ..
. both in his private and public comments.” In many voters’ minds, that settled the question of which leader would be better able to deal with Trump after Monday’s election.
Carney had made Trump back down; he would clearly be better than Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Except Carney’s version of the facts diverged from reality — by about 180 degrees. The Liberal leader hadn’t succeeded in warding off Trump’s threat to Canada’s sovereignty.
This Thursday, under persistent questioning by reporters from the CBC and Global, Carney was forced to admit Trump had repeated his plan to make Canada the 51st state. Carney hadn’t succeeded where Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford had failed. In his call with Carney, Trump had been just as condescending and belligerent as ever.
That should undercut the one and only pillar of the Liberal campaign — that somehow Carney and the 10-year-old Liberal government will save Canada from Trump’s chaos where Poilievre and the Conservatives cannot. No Canadian leader will be able to stop Trump, because even his own close aides can’t stop him. He is a narcissistic, uninformed, one-man wrecking crew.
The question for voters in this election, then, should be: Which leader and party offers the best chance of reviving and expanding the Canadian economy so the effects of Trump’s erratic, unprincipled, nonsensical trade war damages our country the least? Would that party be the one that has been in power for the past 10 years and has, through its wokeness and “progressive” ideas, managed to bring our country the “Lost Liberal Decade?” Under the Liberals, Canada has had the worst growth in the developed world, a deterioration of health care and public services in general, record government spending, record high deficits and debt, an huge spike in civil servant hiring, a doubling of housing prices, out-of-control immigration, the worst affordability crisis in 40 years or more, the EV mandate, the carbon tax, the No More Pipelines Act and an increase of over 40% in violent crime. Shouldn’t we give the Conservatives a try? I concede I’ve not been blown away by the Conservatives’ campaign. They seem to have planned their entire strategy around running against Justin Trudeau and failed to pivot sufficiently when the wildly unpopular Trudeau was replaced by Carney.
All the Liberals have changed is the face on the posters. Over 80 per cent of Carney’s staff, advisers and cabinet are the same crew that run things under Trudeau. If their policies failed under Trudeau (and they failed colossally), why would anyone imagine those same ideas will work going forward just because Carney is now in charge? Carney is every bit as “progressive” as Trudeau.
Early on, Carney talked about oil, gas and pipelines, but as he come closer to winning, all he has time for is “clean energy.” Under a re-elected Liberal government there will be no cross-Canada pipeline. On Wednesday, the “progressive” Carney rejected the idea of cleaning up homeless encampments and the crime they generate.
In his mind, ridding neighbourhoods of tent cities is “a typical American-style approach.” He favours tackling the root causes of homelessness, an approach that would take a decade or more, provided government picked the right solutions in the first place. While campaigning for the Liberal leadership, Carney also shrugged off the opioid crisis as overblown.
Why did he move the headquarters of the multi-billion-dollar company he ran out of Canada to the U.S.? And why won’t he divulge what investments he owns until after the election? A lot of people prefer Mark Carney’s style.
They find Poilievre too much of a frat boy or a pit bull or populist. Yet, the Conservatives have the platform most likely to turn around Canada’s steady decline, even in the face of Trump. We’ve just finished 10 years of Liberal style over substance.
Time to try a different approach..
