Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers remarks at the Liberal caucus holiday party on Dec. 11, after MP Michael Ma crossed the floor from the Conservative caucus.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
A big gap and the lack of a gap together define the state of today’s federal politics. The gap in question is the wide lead that Prime Minister Mark Carney has over Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on leadership. By contrast, there is a statistical tie between the federal Liberal and Conservative parties in nationwide popular support.
Mr. Carney runs well ahead of his Conservative rival on the question of preferred prime minister: 50.1 per cent opt for him, with just 27.6 per cent picking Mr. Poilievre, according to a Dec. 5 Nanos poll.
But that gap vanishes on the question of party support: 39.1 per cent of respondents support the Liberals, while 37.8 support the Conservatives – a statistical tie. Other opinion polls show that same pattern: a consistently wide lead for Mr. Carney, running well ahead of the Liberal Party, but a neck-and-neck race with the Conservatives. And Mr. Poilievre’s numbers lag well behind those of his party.
In our view, that dichotomy reflects the ambivalence of Canadians, both toward Mr. Poilievre’s style of politics (more on that tomorrow) and on the question of whether Mr. Carney truly represents a break with the leftward-drifting Trudeau government.
To be sure, the Prime Minister has charted out policies that are, effectively, a repudiation of much of the Trudeau years. The federal carbon fuel charge is gone, along with the digital services tax, the increase in capital-gains taxation, and the luxury tax on boats and private aircraft. Personal income taxes have been trimmed. Defence spending is rising, and is promised to rise further still.
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On immigration, the Carney government has taken necessary measures to re-establish control of – and Canadians’ confidence in – the system. Some of the measures proposed, such as generally disallowing asylum claims made more than a year after entering Canada, would have been roundly decried by the Trudeau incarnation of the Liberals. Such is the ability of Canada’s natural governing party to transmogrify itself.
Similarly, on crime, these new Liberals have rolled out policies that break with the ethos of the Trudeau years, most recently amendments to mandatory-minimum sentencing laws that are designed to preserve tough sanctions against serious offences such as child pornography.
Climate policy has been upended, starting with but not ending with the end of the fuel charge in the spring. The emissions cap on fossil fuel production is likely to dissipate, the EV sales mandate is under review, and the clean-electricity standards could be suspended for Alberta. And, of course, Alberta’s memorandum of understanding with Ottawa focuses on a new oil pipeline to the Pacific coast.
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The Carney Liberals’ break with their predecessors on the economy has been less complete. On one hand, Mr. Carney has acted quickly to dismantle internal trade barriers specific to the federal government, and generally has signalled his preoccupation with economic growth. A possible oil pipeline is a notable divergence with Trudeau-era policy, of course.
But Mr. Carney’s Liberals still have the same interventionist reflexes, of overregulating business while offering reprieves in the form of subsidies and detours around a sclerotic regulatory system in the form of the Major Projects Office. Last month’s budget, despite the government’s rhetoric, was entirely in line with the spending excesses of the Trudeau Liberals. Indeed, as we noted at the time, Mr. Carney’s fiscal anchors are less restrictive than the Trudeau-era measures they replaced.
The dichotomy between a big-spending fiscal agenda and right-of-centre policies in immigration, crime, climate and taxation explain to some extent the gap between Mr. Carney’s numbers and those of his party. Canadians hoping for progressive conservative governance from Mr. Carney have reason to be ambivalent.
The rest of the gap is the distance between hope and change. Mr. Carney is clearly seen as someone capable of delivering change, and a decisive move away from the Trudeau years. But many of the measures he has announced have yet to fully take shape. The pipeline deal is a case in point. Real-world results will close that gap, one way or another.
Will support for the Liberal Party move up toward Mr. Carney’s personal numbers, or will his popularity dip downward to match those of the government? How that gap will be resolved is the big question for federal politics in 2026.