Prime Minister Mark Carney appears to have found the electoral sweet spot, a little further to the right, but not so far as to give up support to his left, Andrew Coyne writes.Patrick Doyle/Reuters
Parliament returns, after being closed for all but four weeks since December, to a world growing darker by the hour.
Europe, having failed to offer the support needed to repel the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is now preparing for war on other fronts. Russia’s attack – call it what it is – on Poland this week is only the latest in an escalating series of hybrid-warfare assaults on Europe, albeit the most serious: it has exposed, if exposure were needed, NATO’s weakness and divisions in the face of Russian aggression.
On the one hand, European leaders seem chronically unable to muster a response serious enough to deter Russia from attacking further. On the other hand, the United States under Donald Trump can no longer be considered merely an unreliable ally in NATO’s historic role as a bulwark against Russian expansion: it is quite clearly on Russia’s side.
Democratic Europe now confronts the terrifying prospect of having to fight for its freedom alone, if not on two fronts. And not only Europe. As the United States slides further and further toward authoritarianism – the murder of Charlie Kirk will surely serve as the latest pretext for Mr. Trump to crack down on his critics – Canada finds itself wedged between two dictatorships: the full-blown version to its north, across the Arctic Circle, and the emerging dictatorship to its south.
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The wreck of American democracy has already made itself felt here in the form of Mr. Trump’s threats to annex the country, and the lunatic tariffs with which he has sought to prosecute his campaign of economic warfare against us. The Liberal government won the election on the pitch that its new leader, Mark Carney, was better placed to deal with Mr. Trump than his Conservative opponent, Pierre Poilievre. It has struggled to make good on that promise.
Mr. Trump’s tariffs have already succeeded in plunging the American economy into what looks more and more like a recession, or even 1970s-style stagflation. Canada’s economy seems likely to be collateral damage. Mr. Carney therefore faces a number of economic challenges at once. He must somehow stabilize trade relations with the United States – not only fighting off the current wave of tariffs, but preserving the North American free trade treaty that has so far limited the damage – even as he is seeking to diversify our trade in favour of more reliable partners.
He must come to grips with the deteriorating state of federal finances, already heading for a deficit of nearly $100-billion even before the economic contraction of recent months, and headed for even larger deficits under the weight of the tens of billions of dollars of new defence spending to which he has committed the country. And he must begin to tackle the alarming decline in Canadian productivity and the cratering of investment that is at its source – a problem that goes back decades, but which the policies of the government he inherited undoubtedly made worse.
Prime Minister Mark Carney in Edmonton on Thursday after announcing five major projects as part of his plan for Canada to navigate changing trade relationships.AMBER BRACKEN/The Canadian Press
Mr. Carney is in a stronger position to deal with all this than his slim margin of victory might suggest. He remains popular with the public, leading Mr. Poilievre by double digits in personal approval ratings. He heads a minority government, but a strong minority, in as much as it can govern with the support of any one of the three main opposition parties. Put another way, all three would have to vote against his government at the same time to bring it down. That is not going to happen any time soon.
To his left, the NDP is barely registering a pulse, and will not be troubling him for months to come – certainly not until it has chosen a new leader, in a vote scheduled for next spring. To his right, Mr. Poilievre will be preoccupied with surviving a vote on his leadership in January. Mr. Carney has seized the opportunity to steer his party several degrees to the right – an overdue course correction, many would say, after the leftward lurch of the Trudeau years.
Some of this has indeed been welcome – postponing the electric vehicle mandate; rescinding the digital services tax; cancelling the increase in capital gains tax. Some of it has been regrettable: it is unclear what will replace the consumer carbon tax, but it is almost certain to be something costlier and less effective; the cuts in immigration go far beyond what is needed to restore order to a couple of programs.
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And some of what he has put forward is simply dreadful. Denying some asylum claimants the right to a hearing, based on how long they have been in the country, as provided for in the Strong Border Act (C-2), is sure to be struck down by the courts. So, probably, will the increased police surveillance powers contained in the same bill. Exempting certain favoured “nation-building” projects from the usual interminable regulatory reviews, rather than reducing red tape across the board – the centrepiece of the Build Canada Act (C-5) – is a recipe for dirigiste error, at best, cronyism at worst.
All the same, the overall effect – coupled with the defence buildup and the spending cuts that presumably are to follow – is to leave the Conservatives with very little room to manoeuvre. Mr. Poilievre can complain, with some justice, that most of the Liberal environmental agenda remains intact, that the oil and gas emissions cap remains in place, that no new pipelines have been approved. He can point out that the spending cuts, even if they turn out to be as large as advertised, will not be anywhere close to what is needed to bring the deficit to heel.
But so far Mr. Carney appears to have found the electoral sweet spot, a little further to the right, but not so far as to give up support to his left. The Liberals retain a lead of about five points in the polls, on average. They enjoy a clear lead in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, and are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in British Columbia. Even on the Prairies – even in Alberta – they are at levels of support they have not seen in decades, Mr. Carney’s election victory having failed to produce the predicted surge in secessionist sentiment. (Preston Manning’s proposed separatist convention was supposed to have already been held by now.)
Conservative Party members will vote in January on whether Pierre Poilievre should remain as leader after his party failed to win April’s election.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
For his part, Mr. Poilievre has been on his back foot since the election: having lost his own seat, he was obliged to win a by-election over the summer to get back into Parliament. For a while he seemed chastened, adopting a less harshly partisan style and relaxing his grip on his MPs. (The caucus’s vote, shortly after the election, to arm itself with the power to remove the leader – the Reform Act’s enduring legacy – may have had something to do with that.)
Of late, however, he has tilted further to the right. To attract attention, and to establish his conservative bona fides, he has taken to hammering again at the sort of themes that thrill the base – an important consideration, with the leadership review looming – but make centrist voters queasy: immigration (Mr. Poilievre wants to abolish the Temporary Foreign Worker program, and to tighten immigration generally, with a view to shrinking the overall population), crime (he wants to remove virtually all legal limits on the use of force by householders against intruders), and culture war issues like whether to let trans athletes compete in women’s sports.
For the moment, then, much of the political spectrum has shifted rightward, the Liberals occupying space formerly held by the Conservatives, the Conservatives sounding more and more like the People’s Party. Over time, that is likely to rebalance itself. Mr. Carney’s support will surely fade, as a slowing economy takes its toll and as his record inevitably falls short of the lofty expectations with which he began (and to which his own ill-advised rhetoric – all that rot about “building things we never imagined, at a pace we never thought possible” – has contributed).
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Assuming Mr. Poilievre survives the leadership review (he would have to be much further behind in the polls, I think, to be in serious jeopardy), he will then have more room to pivot toward the centre, taking votes from the Liberals’ right. The NDP, for all the predictions of its demise (the same has been predicted about all three parties in recent decades), is likely to bounce back after it has its leadership sorted out, enough at any rate to pose a threat to the Liberals’ left.
A return to politics as usual, then? Hardly. The situation, domestically and internationally, is too volatile. The country’s internal divisions could flare up again – the Parti Québécois is at this point the favourite to win the next Quebec election, scheduled for 2026 – with a new and dangerous potential wrinkle: a U.S. President seeking to inflame them further. Mr. Trump’s behaviour is certain to deteriorate in other ways, hastening the collapse of American civic order and increasing the threat to Canadian interests.
By this time next year, the United States may be consumed by riots, martial law and worse. Capitalizing on American weakness, Russia might by then have invaded other countries, besides Ukraine: the logical starting point is in the Baltics, where Canada has troops stationed. Amid the general breakdown in the international order, China or some other power might even test Canada’s claims to sovereignty in the North. All of these would have been considered unthinkable even three years ago. Today, none can be ruled out.
To now, Mr. Carney’s impressive resumé, moderate policies, and statesmanlike demeanour have combined to persuade much of the public to give him the benefit of the doubt. But as the economy worsens, the world around us grows more unstable, and his political opponents regroup, he will be forced to earn the support he currently enjoys by default.