Mark Carney, then the Canada 2020 Advisory Board Chair, speaks during the Canada 2020 Net-Zero Leadership Summit in Ottawa in April, 2023.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Conservative MPs are targeting Liberal leadership front-runner Mark Carney, accusing the former central banker of being an elitist who is out of touch with the concerns of working Canadians.
Heading into a caucus meeting Friday, the MPs took aim at Mr. Carney, seeking to link him to unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“He lives in a completely different world. He doesn’t buy groceries in tough neighbourhoods or take public transit,” Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer told reporters.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose hefty tariffs on Canadian imports and Mr. Carney’s decision to renounce consumer carbon pricing has taken the wind out of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s plans to run an election campaign on scrapping the levy.
Recent public-opinion polls have shown a narrowing of the gap between the Conservatives and Liberals as Canadians consider who is most capable of dealing with Mr. Trump and his “America First” economic agenda.
Mr. Scheer also berated Mr. Carney for saying earlier this week that fentanyl abuse is a serious crisis in the United States but only a challenge in Canada.
Mr. Scheer said more than 50,000 Canadians have died from fentanyl overdoses since the Liberals came to power in 2015.
“A direct result of the Carney-Trudeau Liberals giving out free opioids, legalizing drug use in public spaces and to downplay that, to refuse to call it a crisis, to call it a challenge shows you that he doesn’t have to deal with these types of consequences,” Mr. Scheer said.
He also went after the Liberal government for cancelling pipeline projects and turning aside Europe’s interest in liquefied natural gas facilities on the East Coast. Mr. Carney has said that he would be open to energy projects if he is elected by his party and takes over as prime minister after the Liberal leadership vote on March 9.
Deputy Conservative Leader Melissa Lantsman said Canadians shouldn’t trust Mr. Carney’s pledge to scrap consumer carbon pricing, since he also pledged to increase the industrial carbon levy. That would hit Canadian steel and aluminum plants, industries already facing the threat of 25-per-cent U.S. tariffs, she said.
“This is not axing the carbon tax,” she said.
In response to the Conservatives' attacks, Mr. Carney’s spokesperson Emily Williams said: “Pierre Poilievre continues to pull from Donald Trump’s playbook with empty and misleading slogans. While Pierre continues to think about Mark, Mark will continue to focus on his real plan to build our economy and stand up for Canadian workers against President Trump’s threats.”
Pollster Nik Nanos said it’s understandable why the Conservatives are targeting Mr. Carney, but it also comes with risks.
“The Conservatives have to be very careful because by attacking Carney, they are validating him as a threat, and a serious threat,” he said in an interview. “If they focus on Carney, more Canadians will be thinking ‘Hey, maybe I should take a look at this Carney guy.’ ”
Mr. Poilievre has a major “Canada First” rally planned for Saturday in Ottawa as he pivots from mostly talking about carbon pricing to defending the country from Mr. Trump. The Conservative Leader needs to lay out clearly how he would deal with Mr. Trump and not just rely on clever slogans and photo ops, Mr. Nanos said
“For Poilievre, he has to be more than just a cheerleader for Canadian patriotism, Canadians want to hear details. They want to know what would be his approach, tone and strategy to dealing with Donald Trump,” he said.
Mr. Scheer suggested that mainstream media is going easy on Mr. Carney and failing to ask him tough questions even though he “is about to become prime minister because a small group of Liberal Party members are going to install him.”
Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett said Mr. Carney needs to be pressed on his corporate financial interests when he was also advising Mr. Trudeau on economic policy.
“It’s unbelievable that this guy has provided no transparency whatsoever about what his financial interests are,” he said. “Mark Carney has been in witness protection and hasn’t answered a lot of questions.”
When the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England stepped into the political arena, he resigned from a number of executive, board and advisory positions that had made him an influential and well-paid figure in the corporate world.
As a leadership candidate with no seat in the House of Commons, Mr. Carney is not subject to the rules governing conflicts of interest that apply to MPs and public office holders. That means he is not required to take specific steps to manage potential conflicts during the leadership contest, such as placing assets he earned in his corporate career in a blind trust.
If Mr. Carney wins the leadership race and becomes prime minister, however, he would then be subject to the Conflict of Interest Act, and he would be subject to the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons if he wins a seat in a federal election. He would have to put his assets in a blind trust.
Mr. Carney served as chair of both private media and finance company Bloomberg LP and Brookfield Asset Management, which controls about $1-trillion in assets globally.
He had also sat on the boards of Stripe, a financial-services company, and had an advisory role with investment company PIMCO. He was also the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance; and a member of Harvard University’s board of overseers.