Carney risks boosting Western alienation by leaning on his ‘wise men from the East’

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Preston Manning is the former leader of the Reform Party of Canada and a former leader of the Opposition.

Many years ago, a Liberal prime minster, Lester B. Pearson, failed to secure a majority government after several tries, and prepared to retire. But before doing so, he wanted to inject new blood into the upper echelons of his government, and particularly to bolster its base in Quebec, where support for secession was increasing. So Mr. Pearson recruited three impressive Quebeckers into federal politics.

Becoming known as the “three wise men from the East,” they were Jean Marchand, a strong champion of labour rights in Quebec; Gérard Pelletier, a prominent Quebec journalist and intellectual; and Pierre Trudeau, another Quebec intellectual, constitutional scholar, and champion of individual rights and Canadian federalism.

Mr. Trudeau, of course, is remembered nationally as Canada’s 15th prime minster. He was the successful proponent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a fierce opponent of Quebec secession. In the Canadian West, however, he is primarily remembered as the instigator of the National Energy Program, a federal intrusion into the natural resources sector that transferred billions of dollars’ worth of wealth from the Western provinces and petroleum producers to the federal treasury and Eastern consumers. More than any other federal initiative since the Second World War, the NEP laid the seeds of Western alienation.

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Fast forward 60 years, and lo and behold, another Liberal prime minister leading another minority government needs to surround himself with strong lieutenants to bolster the ship of state as it sails into stormy seas. And who does he pick? Three wise men from the East, again.

This time, it’s Marc-André Blanchard, formerly a senior executive with Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, appointed by former prime minister Justin Trudeau as ambassador to the UN, and now selected by Prime Minister Mark Carney to be his chief of staff; Michael Sabia, former CEO of Quebec Hydro and a deputy minister of finance in the Trudeau regime, now appointed Clerk of the Privy Council; and David Lametti, a less-than-stellar minister of justice in the Trudeau administration, now appointed as Mr. Carney’s principal secretary.

Something obviously had to be done under Mr. Carney’s leadership to visibly improve the competence of the federal administration, and only time will tell whether these latest appointments will do so. But many Western Canadians will view these latest appointments with great trepidation for at least three reasons.

First, despite the ethnic, regional and economic diversity of Canada, all three of these appointees are Quebeckers with primarily public-sector backgrounds and preconceived biases on the energy file. Thus the interests of the Canadian West – with its preference for private enterprise over public enterprise and strong support for the petroleum sector’s key role in sustaining and rejuvenating the national economy – are grossly under-represented in Mr. Carney’s inner circle.

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Secondly, Mr. Carney, in the recent federal election, went to great lengths to distance himself and the Liberal Party from the Trudeau administration and its fixations with wokeism, identity politics and climate-change extremism. But now that the election smoke has cleared, what is the composition of the Carney administration? One-third of the current cabinet were Trudeau ministers just six months ago, singing off a very different song sheet. And every one of the three wise men just appointed were once Trudeau appointees and loyalists. Can the leopard change its spots, and even if it could, is it still not a leopard?

Thirdly, and most worrisome of all, as columnist Lawrence Martin has observed, “They [the three appointees] are about as populist as you can’t get.” Or put in plainer English, Mr. Carney and his closest associates are about as elitist as you can get. They are therefore most likely to misunderstand and oppose populist sentiments and expressions at home and abroad in an era when democratic populism versus aristocratic elitism is becoming the defining political axis in much of the Western world.

Why is this a worry, especially for Western Canadians? Because populism – these bottom-up surges of political energy that occur from time to time in freely democratic societies, usually in reaction to top-down policy prescriptions imposed by political elites – is as much a distinguishing feature of the politics of the Canadian West as nationalism is the distinguishing feature of Quebec politics. For example, the current increase in support for Western secession is fuelled in part by populist sentiments. Visibly strengthening the influence of political elites in Ottawa, insensitive or even opposed to Western concerns and aspirations, will only further fuel that smouldering fire.

Of even greater concern – a concern that should be shared by all Canadians – is the inadequacy and unpreparedness of an elitist administration in Ottawa to deal with an American President brought to and sustained in office by the recent surge in American populism. Mr. Carney cannot approach or deal with Donald Trump on issues such as tariff protectionism or defence the way he approaches and deals with the elitist leadership of the European Union. If he does so, relying heavily on the counsel of the three wise men and other like-minded members of his elitist inner circle, all Canadians will suffer from the inadequacies of that approach.

There are Canadian leaders, in particular several Western Premiers, who do understand American populism, because populism is a prominent feature of their own political constituencies. Mr. Carney would do well to take counsel from them on dealing with a populist President. Perhaps in doing so, he will also discover a healthy and broadening corrective to the increasingly Quebec-centric, Trudeau-tainted and elitist character of his current inner circle.