At Issue - Carney government’s priorities

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

At Issue this week: Prime Minister Mark Carney has assembled a new cabinet, but what do his choices say about his priorities? The government comes under fire for delaying its first budget. And, a Quebec riding at the centre of a recount and mail-in ballot fight. Rosemary Barton hosts Althia Raj, Aaron Wherry and Rob Russo

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Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, May 15th. We're going to deliver that mandate with a new team, purpose-built, for this hinge moment in Canada's history. Fourteen Trudeau ministers are now in Carney's cabinet. It's more of the same when Canada needs real change. So what's to be made of Mark Carney's cabinet? What do his choices tell us about his priorities for the government? I'm Rosemary Barton, here to break it all down tonight. I've done a cabinet shuffle of my own a little bit.

Althea Raj is here, Erin Wary is in for Andrew Coyne, and in for Chantelle Bear is Rob Russo, but delighted to have you all here. Althea, I'm gonna start with you. What did you think of when you saw the people that Mark Carney put in, both the front bench and others? What was sort of the thought that you had about what he was trying to do there?

Number one, wake as many people as possible happy, which is why we have this 28-member cabinet, which is larger than his initial cabinet. And we have secretaries of state, which we haven't had for a very long time, which is not really a make-work project, but it's like a junior minister that will still get the perks of being a minister. Unfortunate for Mr. Carney that because of the order of precedent, the image was the old Trudeau cabinet right in front of him at Rideau Hall, as opposed to all the new people that were sitting behind the people who'd been there longer.

There are familiar faces in key positions, but I think you want to have people with experience who know how to drive change in their departments. If you harken back to 2015, a lot of those ministers, you know, kind of struggled in the early years. There were a couple of faux pas, there were some cabinet shuffles to put them into new positions to give them longer time to get a feel for how to drive change, and he doesn't have that time. So I think it's normal and natural that he would have a set of experienced hands.

I do think for people who are upset, and there are a lot of people in caucus who are upset, there is an interesting message about who's in the inner circle and who's out of the inner circle. And it's like, who is Mark Kearney's friends and who's friends with his friends and who helped him get to where he is and who has fundraised for him. It will be interesting to see whether the anger at the moment festers or if it calms down when they all return to work in two weeks. Yeah and what he does to manage that. Some of the

the conversation too, Erin, has been okay there is not a lot of change, but if the change at the top is so significant, maybe that will catalyze, to use one of the prime minister's words, catalyze change in a different way. Yeah. I mean, I think that's an important question going forward, is how Mark Carney runs his cabinet and how Mark Carney runs this government, and whether his leadership and direction and perhaps demand for results leads to a different level of performance, I guess you could say, in the government. I do think 2015 is an interesting counterpoint comparison to this because Justin Trudeau

came in and he had all of these new ministers and they'd all had very impressive resumes from outside of government and it was sort of sold as a virtue, but I think then once the government got into office, they realized that having all of these rookies in senior positions in the government actually made things harder in some ways. And so I think there's a natural, I can understand why this prime minister in particular, someone who himself is not, is essentially a rookie MP, would rely on some experienced people in those major files.

I think the question is sort of how the government excels functions going forward, and whether Mark Carney sort of drives it in a way that maybe we didn't see in the last one. Rob? Yeah, on that last point, I'm told that, in many instances, it won't matter who's in the cabinet positions because the Prime Minister believes that he is the one to drive Canada-U.S.

relations, that he is the one to drive the restructuring of the economy, that he has the contacts internationally, he has the experience. The things that strike me about this group is, number one, it pays to be a tormentor of Justin Trudeau, Wayne Long, Joe Lightbaum, Christopher Relin, all got into this cabinet. It pays to be opportunistic. Anita Anand and Sean Fraser,

after wanting to spend time with their families, decided 15 minutes was long enough with their families and came back to politics because there was a chance of getting re-elected. So opportunism pays. It does tell us, I think, a little bit about some of Mr. Carney's vulnerabilities. The people from Quebec Corps playing a large role, some of them might have been expected to be dropped, particularly if you're in Western Canada, you might have wanted to see Mr. Guilbeault dropped. But it's Guilbeau, Champagne and Jolie. I think they're there because I think Mr. Carney, from what I understand, understands he doesn't know the province of Quebec as perhaps as well

as his predecessor did surely, and it's a vulnerability and he needs people who understand the ground in Quebec given the results of Quebec given that Quebec has given him that muscular minority that he has now as well. Yeah. I mean, you do have to do some of that too when you're making a cabinet, Althea. You do have to reward some people, sort of pay some people back. That is part of what's going on here too, for sure. I think the Iggy Bo example is interesting because the former environment minister who's

now the minister of Canadian identity, was basically slammed by the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilé, of today as being a threat to Canadian identity. Yesterday, I think it's yesterday, in the lead-up to cabinet, he made some comments about the pipeline, basically arguing that there is no need for an additional oil pipeline, because the one the government built, taxpayers built, that you and I and everybody else paid for, isn't operating at full capacity and there is nobody, no corporation lining up to build another one at the moment. East-West is the one that we keep talking about. And Monsieur Blanchet, the Bloc leader, had a press conference and said, well, I agree

with Stephen Kibbeau. And so you see that tension that is playing out that exists within the Liberal Party, that exists within this country. But I think we all need to remember that the Liberals won 44 seats in Quebec. They have the most seats in the province. And they probably would not be in government were it not for that. And so he does need to absolutely speak to that and to allow those cabinet ministers the space to speak.

I think the tension that is going to come is if mr Carney wants to be the prime minister and the decision maker of all things and to not have a cabinet government Which is not what he said actually earlier this week How does he exert? Discipline because you now have people who feel like they were in their position because they have opinions and they can talk and we saw Kind of the chaos emerged from that this week where everybody was venturing in their own direction and commenting on this that and the other thing. It'll be very interesting to see if he tries to empower people and like say you can

speak but stay in your lane or if this is like a Stephen Harper type government where you're only allowed to say what the Prime Minister's office says you're allowed to say. Aaron and what's your impression on what will happen on that front? Yeah I think everyone says they want cabinet government and empowered ministers until those ministers start speaking and saying their piece and then suddenly everyone realizes, oh right, message discipline has its uses. I think, you know, for all the talk about experience in cabinet, I think actually the two most interesting and possibly important

appointments are two rookies essentially, Tim Hodgson at Natural Resources. Seems to be very close to Mr. Carney, worked at Goldman Sachs, but I think crucially was a member of the board for a major oil sands producer. I think that, you know, he'd be in an interesting position regardless,

but I think his background makes it particularly interesting about how this government's going to deal with Alberta, and then I think the other one is housing. You know, Rob mentioned a couple people who came back and decided they didn't need to spend so much time with their families. One of the people who did also come back was Nate Erskine-Smith, at least under Justin Trudeau's request to be housing minister, and then Mark Carney has now dumped him, and Mark Carney has instead put Gregor Robertson in that position, who I learned over the last few days while the rest of Canada kind of sees him

as an impressive former mayor of Vancouver, people in Vancouver and BC are not so fond of his record particularly on housing in Vancouver. And so I think that is an interesting position for him to be in and I think it's also important to remember that for everything else that's going on I don't know that there's a domestic file that's as important as housing for this government. And so that puts a lot of pressure on Gregor Robertson to get it right. About a minute to you, Rob. What struck me in terms of those left out?

I was struck by Carlos Letao being left out. I think he was probably struck by that as well. Jean-Yves Duclos' exclusion makes sense if Mr. Lightbound is coming in and he's kind of like the next wave. There are three or four people who are feeling hurt. Nate Erskine-Smith has made his bitterness public. I think Mr. Wilkinson, Jonathan Wilkinson is feeling surprised. I think Carina Gould is surprised. I think they're also surprised because they didn't get a call.

I think they had to pick up the phone themselves when they didn't get a call and ask, is no call coming? And they were basically then told, yeah, no call is coming. So I think the way that was handled probably hurt them as much as anything else. Mr. Hodgson is the guy to watch. He has the Prime Minister's ear, worked together at Goldman Sachs, worked together at the Bank of Canada. If there is one person who will not have the PM looking over his shoulder, I think it's Tim Hodgson.

Okay, we're going to leave that part there. Good conversation everyone. Thank you. When we come back, we're going to take a look at the Liberal government's decision to not deliver a budget. The first step of this government is a middle-class tax cut. That's the first thing. You start with that. Then you say, well, you need to have a tron speech to say, what are the priorities of the government? And once you've done that, then you do an economic statement statement which is going to be the far-comic statement. If he does indeed have a plan, if he does know what he's doing then he would introduce a budget so that Canadians know exactly what the finances are. So what's been made of this decision to not release a budget right now? How are the Liberals justifying it? Let's bring

everyone back. Althea, Aaron and Rob Rob. I'm going to make Aaron start on this because I made him talk about it in the newsroom today. Does this matter, I guess, Aaron, is the first question, or what does this tell us in terms of what the government is thinking? Because in my mind, they haven't really justified this in a substantive way yet. Yeah, I think their explanations are a little all over the place. I mean, I do think, you know, to be clear, a government doesn't need to present a budget to function. Sure.

And budgets, as they are now in their kind of current form, are sort of 90% political communications documents. You know, the government can still function. And to that end, you know, it usually takes six to seven months for a budget to sort of be put together and rolled out. So it's not entirely surprising that they have said we can't get a budget out in, you know, the four weeks that are currently on the House of Commons calendar. Of course, it should be noted the House of Commons calendar could be extended and they could sit through the summer. But I think the other part of it is that, you know, in addition to being a political document, it's also an update on a budget. It's typically an update on the economic and fiscal situation of the country.

And I don't know that there's anything really stopping the government from putting something like that out. Like, again, to go back to 2015, the Trudeau government was sworn in on, I think it was November 4th, and two weeks later they had an economic and fiscal projection update from Bill Morneau, a rookie finance minister. Now that may be because they wanted to get some bad news out and you can argue that now there's more uncertainty, but it's still possible and it gets you around the idea that you're maybe not being transparent and upfront with Canadians. Yeah and maybe that will happen Rob because I would think that a government that is trying to project that it is serious and aggressive about the economy would also want to be forthcoming

about the state of the economy, even if it's not going to put a full budget on the table. You're absolutely right, Rosemary. If you want to prepare Canadians for some of the bold decisions that the Prime Minister says Canada needs to make over the next little while, you would think it would behoove the government to try and lay out some of the stakes. What's going on, the state and the stakes of the economy, it would seem to be to their advantage. You look at what's happening with Honda. You look at Nancy Southern, CEO of Atco in Alberta saying that already, because of the sovereignty debate in Alberta, South Korean and Japanese money is hesitating or staying on the sidelines.

So there are things happening with two of the big priorities, I think, that the Prime Minister has, National Unity number one and the United States and its impact, tariff impact on our economy number two. But if anybody knows the dangers of a quickly, perhaps, bumpshisely delivered economic statement, it should be Mark Carney. Mark Carney is prime minister, in effect,

because an economic statement was rushed in and it was bungled and bumbled in December. It led to the resignation of Christopher Freeland, which created Mark Carney's candidacy when he decided to stay out of government that way. So he knows the dangers out of government that way. So he knows the dangers, but there are opportunities. And for context, the quickest budget ever brought in after a government was elected

was Paul Martin's in 2003. The person who took the longest was Stephen Harper in 2007. He took nine months to bring in a budget. Yeah. So, I mean, that's hard for the conservatives to criticize, I guess, that Althea, if Stephen Harper, who's also a, you know, a strong fiscal manager of the country, took that long. But it does open them up to criticism, I think, first of all. Well, they should be criticized for it. I mean, it's outrageous to think that the government would not table a budget in this entire calendar year.

Even in COVID, you know, when the liberals tried to suggest that they wanted carte blanche from the opposition so that they wouldn't have to table a budget, like that was not, like I'm sorry, but for Minister Champagne to say, well, he doesn't want to table something that's like not accurate. Well, then he should not be a politician and he should become a historian. Like stuff moves in real time and it's a snapshot in time

and at the very least he should be bringing forward a pared down version of a budget in September. I understand that you know this is kind of you know the cabinet making was rushed, I think we see that by what has happened this week and some people who even themselves seem surprised that they are in certain positions that they have been put in. There is a throne speech that requires a lot of work from the public servants as well, and a budget is a lot of work for the public service to do. But you have all summer to do it. A fall economic statement in September that frankly will be outdated a few weeks later too. But it's also about respecting Parliament. It's about you ran on being like the economic stewards and having more

economic cred than Pierre Poliev and the first action is telling Canadians no you're not gonna take Parliament seriously enough to introduce a budget and give people a snapshot of where you're going and how much it's gonna cost and what you think the challenges are in the future? Like, no, it's completely inappropriate. And the conservatives are right. And the other opposition party should probably gang on

and complain that the government is railroading and acting in completely unacceptable ways. And this is not a standard that you want to set because the next government will do exactly the same thing. Erin, do you think that this is something that will stick or is it, I don't know, is it something that Canadians are like, oh well, they'll get to it? I don't know. We're in strange times, right?

They might be more forgiving than usual. I think it's hard to predict exactly what the impact of this will be, but I do think that, you know, Mark Carney has a couple things sort of going for him or heads up to this point. One is the sense that he's sort of the adult in the room, that he's a serious person, and the other is that he is prepared to act with urgency. And you know, you can argue that they could turn

the economic update in the fall into essentially a de facto budget, but in not at least coming forward with some kind of fiscal and economic projections, not making any attempt to kind of fill the gap at this point, I think that starts to chip away at the idea that they're serious, that they're acting with urgency, that they're on top of things. They're going to sit for four weeks and then they're going to take two months off. I think they have to kind of continue the momentum rather than sort of put their feet up this summer.

We're going to take a short break here. When we come back, we'll talk about the bloc's calls for a recount in the riding of Terbon and what that might mean for the Liberals' ongoing quest for a majority. That's next. There's a law. It needs to be clear. We have a case. We go forward because we want this election to be held properly. And that's it.

So what's been made of the bloc's calls for a new election in this riding? Let's bring everyone back. Althea, Aaron and Rob. I know Althea has much to say, but I'm going to start with Rob. So there was a judicial recount. That's where we got to the one vote that called it for the liberals. And now there are, it appears, some special ballots that had the wrong postal code on them. It's not clear if they were sent. There's complicating factors here. And the Bloc now wants a whole new election.

That is very unusual for sure. And I don't know if they're going to be able to make that case. But what do you make of that, Rob? And what do you think it tells us about, I guess about their strategy, too, to try and grab one more seat in Quebec? Yeah, I don't think that the Bloc would be as vigorous in their pursuit of this if we weren't in a parliament where the government with the minority mandate

is two seats away from a majority. There's that. I feel bad for both of the candidates. I think we should spend a moment thinking about them. Tatiana Auguste and Nathalie Sinclair-Degagné. They both are good faith candidates. Both fought hard. And if ever there was a commercial or an ad that you could script for every vote counting, this is it. That being said, this is probably going to head to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has weighed in on kind of special elections and redoing special elections, not in similar circles or circumstances, but in 2012, after the election of 2011, Ted Opitz

beat Boris Wrzeczneski in Etobicoke. Because of some irregularities there as well. The Supreme Court ruled, in effect, with Mr. Opitz winning, but the ruling is interesting. It said that the entitlement to vote cannot be annulled due to procedural errors. Now that leaves some interpretation available for those who say that the right to vote may supplant any kind of procedural problems that might have existed that prevented people to vote. So I'll be watching the Supreme Court on this one. Okay. Althea, now you, because you've got lots to say.

Well, I just, I think the numbers are worth mentioning. I want to say that I think it's unfortunate that it was only the Bloc leader who came out today and said that he thought that there should be a process. Basically, they go to the judge and they say, we think that there's been substantial irregularities in this contest, that there should be a new by-election. That is the only remedy that can happen basically at this point after their valid votes have all been counted. And that's what we're, after their valid votes have all been counted. And that's what we're talking about, valid votes. Because it would be nice, in this era where there's a lot of conspiracy theories on the internet flying around, that the other party leaders also come, looking at the liberals

here, but also say, in the spirit of making sure that this contest is not only fair, but seen to be fair, we do think that some of the information that has come to light calls into question the results of the election. And the information that came to light is basically that unfortunately the returning officer in Terrebonne, so the local returning officer, made an error in the local special ballot. So these are only the people who live in Terrebonne who asked to vote by mail.

Not the people who live abroad and say that they'd like to vote in the Terrebonne riding, but only the people in Terrebonne who were physically there but said I'd prefer to have a mail-in ballot, they, 115 of those ballots were requested. And they, basically it looks like they all had the wrong return postal code printed on the envelope. Now most of those 85 got into Elections Canada and they were counted. Five ballots

were received late and those votes were not counted. Nine people requested a ballot but showed up and voted in person. So that's how they voted. And 16 people including this one woman that has now come to light said, hey, my ballot was returned to me and I voted for the block and the person, the liberal vote won by one valid vote, which would basically mean a tie which would basically mean a by-election So that's what we're looking at which is like there are votes that should have been valid that were not counted

Okay, and I think that you know the in the election needs to be seen to be fair So it would be nice for everybody to say yes, we need a by-election. Erin, very quick last word from you. Sorry, I spoke too long. That's okay. I think it's, I mean, I do think it actually is fair that this goes to judges. I don't know, and I'm not disagreeing with what Althea said, but I do think it is important that this go to judges instead of Parliament or even Elections Canada.

I do think you need a sort of neutral third party to go through this and figure out what the numbers are. And then to figure out, I mean, I think the key questions are how many votes that should have counted weren't counted. And I think if a judge is capable of figuring that out and then applying that math to the existing result... No, he can't. The judge can only say there's sufficient evidence that there's a by-election. Yeah, at this point. Right.

Yeah, so we get it, yes. I think at some point a judge may have to make the call that it's a by-election. And that's maybe where we are headed. But I am somewhat thankful that we have a system where this gets punned to a justice that can sort it out. I will never be mad at people for doing research, okay? That way you are all very informed there. Thank you all for being here. That's at issue for this week.

What do you think about the Liberals' decision not to put forward a budget? Should there be another election in the riding of Taalbun? Let us know. You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. You can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live, Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will see you or hear you back here next week. Thanks for listening.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.