Front Burner - Is Mark Carney ready for the real fight ahead?

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

The four Liberal leadership candidates - Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould and Frank Baylis - had a chance to make their case to voters and challenge each other over two debates this week. The winner of the race will go on to be the next Prime Minister and will head directly into a tariff war with Donald Trump and an imminent federal election. But with so many points of agreement, did any of the four prove they were up to the task? Especially Carney, the front-runner?Aaron Wherry, senior writer at CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau, joins us to talk about the highlights and takeaways from the debates and what it all means for the race and election ahead.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC podcast. ["The Voice of the Sky"] Hi, I am Jamie Poisson and I'm here with my colleague, Aaron Wary. Hey Aaron. Hey Jamie.

We have just watched the only English language liberal leadership race debate. There were four candidates that faced off, Mark Kearney, Christian Freeland, Karina Gold, Frank Bayless, and we are going to talk about what happened, right? Also, we're going to talk about what happened during the French language debate on Monday night. The winner is going to be chosen on March 9th. They will go on to become, for a time at least, the prime minister of this country in a time of crisis, and will go up against Pierre Poliev and the conservatives in the next election.

The front runner up until now by really a mile has been Mark Carney. So, Aaron, why don't we just start there? How did Carney do on this national stage tonight? Do you think that he met expectations? I mean, I guess it depends on what everyone's expectations were. I don't think, you know, that he, you know, ran circles around everyone on stage and blew everyone away with his command of a political forum. I think he was fine.

Canadians have been telling me that they want change. They want positive change that builds this country. I can bring that change. I know how to manage crises. I know how to build strong economies. You know, he is a central banker. He's not a natural politician. I double-checked before we started this. He's now sort of officially been a politician for I think about 39 days. And it shows. He, at least in English, did better than he did in French. Uh, you know, his, the reviews for his French performance were not super kind.

They weren't, you know, terrible, but he has some work to do when it comes to speaking French. I think he, you know, he did what he needed to do. I don't think anything that happened in the English debate sort of upsets the basic structure of this race. And, you know, now he needs to, you know, not only focus on finishing this race, but sort of getting better at sort of commanding a political stage, you know, in time for the general election.

LESLIE KENDRICK How did we see the candidates interact with each other? Did they go after each other? Were there really any standout moments? Well, the second night was at least more interesting than the first. I don't know that there were really, there were any crosswords exchanged in the French debate, really.

In the second debate tonight, the English language debate, you know, Carina Gould said right off the top... Tonight, I am going to raise the tough questions we need to confront as liberals, have an honest conversation about where we stand on the big issues We face as Canadians and present that was clearly what she set out to do and that's what she did Primarily aimed it at Mark Carney. I think your question was actually about the cost of living for Canadians It wasn't about you know, the macro economic picture which is... I think it's an interesting tact on her part.

You know, these sort of intra-party leadership debates, you know, we call them debates, but, you know, the incentives are not always on the side of there being debate because, you know, first of all, obviously, these guys are all in the same party and they agree on most things. But they're also very conscious of the fact that if there is conflict, if they do tear each other down,

then they're just providing fodder to the other parties to use against them in a general election, right? We've seen that happen in the past where a leadership candidate has a bad debate, they go on to win the race, and then the footage of it gets used against them in the general election. So, you know, there really aren't a lot of incentives for them to go after each other. But as much

as they can, I think Karina Gould tried to do that in the English language debate, specifically with Carney on a few big points. Yeah, I know one, for example, she went after him saying that, I'm glad to hear my colleague talk about housing. It's one of the first times I've heard him talk about it during this campaign. She criticized him for his promise to get to 2% NATO spending by 2030. Mark, you talked about reaching NATO targets, but of all of us on stage, you plan to reach those not until 2030,

but the imperative to do that is now. Why didn't Freeland go at him even a little bit harder than she did? I feel like this was really her final chance to try to take him, right? Considering that those two were thought of as the frontrunners. It is an interesting question of strategy on her part. I don't know whether she has calculated that it's just not in the party's interest. I don't know if she has calculated that his lead is so significant that maybe, you know, it's not worth her trying to take him down. It's not worth her trying to kind of undercut him.

I don't know if she, you know, just generally doesn't see much to take on with him. I mean, it's a very curious strategy because she is sort of the presumed sort of, second place runner at this point. And if she was going to try to kind of upset the basic running of the race at this point, this would have been the moment to do it. And she didn't do it. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— three. How do you think they did? Like, who came out of this really well? Did anybody

really blow it? I mean, I think Karina Gould, in terms of someone who has improved their standing, you know, in the race amongst liberals, she would be the one who's done that in the over the course of the last two nights. You know, I think people sort of already saw her as an impressive person, but I think she showed a command of things and, uh, uh, comfort on stage. And an ability to communicate, you know, I don't know that it's, she's going to necessarily change where she finishes in this race. I don't think it probably changes the final result

in terms of Mark Carney winning. But she sort of has burnished her image and, you know, probably built up a kind of base of support for herself. I think the, you know, not just in the fact that she did well, but, you know, she sort of found, I think, a groove in this debate as being kind of this voice of saying, you know, not only do we, you know, does the Liberal Party need to be mindful of its sort of progressive values, its socially liberal values, but also that it can't completely

abandon, you know, the ideas and the policies it pursued over the last nine years. I also just want to say that I'm actually really proud of a lot of the work that we did as a government, whether it was the Canada Child Benefit that has lifted over half a million kids out of poverty, the early learning and childcare agreements, or the work that we did on fighting climate change. I'm proud.

That's maybe not a winning hand to play in this leadership race, but is a contrast to Mark Carney and sort of the ideas that he is emphasizing. It's an interesting tact for her to take. I guess you could say she won the debate in that sense. Again, it's not necessarily going to change the shape of the race.

But I think in terms of just sort of the last two nights, in terms of who performed well, I suspect most people are gonna say her. Yeah, just as one example of what you're talking about there with Krutigold, she's the only candidate that hasn't abandoned the carbon tax, but I just was watching her in the scrum and she basically doubled down on it.

We allowed Pierre Poliev to take up space on the price on pollution and quite frankly to mislead Canadians. What was really happening was inflation. So my plan is to freeze the planned increase, to cancel the planned increase, to ensure that we can give Canadians that break that they need. But I'm not going to take checks away for millions of people who rely on that money. So this is a good policy that does two things. Expanding on what we were just talking about,

like, where else did we see in the debate divergences between the candidates? I think if there was a kind of big split, so to speak, it was kind of on the, you know, sort of macro economic issues, I guess, that Mark Carney is emphasizing, and then more on the sort of affordability, uh, cost of living, you know, worrying about poverty and homelessness,

and those issues that, that Karina Gould and and to a lesser extent Krista Freeland were really emphasizing and I think that is There's sort of an interesting split here, right? Because the the the campaign overlapping with the you know, Donald Trump's presidency has really kind of thrown a wrench into things in that you've got sort of the, you know, the pre-Trump issues, not that they've gone away, but the pre-Trump issues of affordability and cost of living, and then you've got sort of

the post-Trump issues of economic strength and economic sovereignty and national sovereignty. And there's a bit of a kind of push-pull between those two issues. And I think you can sort of see that play out a bit on the debate stage in terms of what the next liberal leader is going to have to emphasize. And I think the kind of the ultimate answer is the next liberal leader is going to have to be able to talk about both of those issues.

have to be able to talk about both of those issues. How did Carney or really anyone else criticize or try to distance themselves from the Trudeau reign and the prime minister specifically during the debate? Yeah, so there was this interesting moment at the end where the moderator asked, you know, quite specifically, how would you differentiate yourself from Justin Trudeau? And Christopher Greenland quite conspicuously first tried to answer a different question,

and then came around to trying to answer it in a way, you know, and saying... You know, for me, this campaign has been a personal liberation, and I am my own person, and it is great. Without exactly quite saying, you know, exactly what she'd do differently. And then you had again, to go back to this sort of Carney-Gould split of Mark Carney saying, I'm going to be laser focused on the economy.

I'm going to be, you know, more hands-on. Good jobs, people's wages growing faster than inflation. It means getting prices down. It means building homes. It means building a future for this country. And then you had Karina Gould saying, we shouldn't be running away from what we did for the last nine years. We need to remember our values and so on.

And if we need to do anything differently, it's staying in touch with the grassroots, it's communicating better. And I think that's sort of another interesting divide for the liberals in that, Karina Gould, it's an interesting argument that if there had been a longer leadership campaign would have been more interesting to see play out.

I think the problem that Karina Gould runs into is that the record the liberals had, clearly, at least until Donald Trump became president, wasn't enough for them to get reelected. And so as much as she may have a point about, you know, Mark Carney, Mark Carney's sort of focus on the economy and where that may come up short. She's not playing a very strong hand just because it's pretty clear

at the end of the Justin Trudeau era that voters were looking for something different. And in that case, for the liberals, that's Mark Carney. Mm-hmm. I just noted, um... You know, Carney did at one point, uh, say that the economy has been driven by a big increase in the labor force, which was largely because of a surge in immigration that is now trying to be controlled, and by government spending that grew over 9% year after year after year,

twice the rate of growth of our economy. Okay, so our economy was weak before we got to the point of these threats from President Trump. That's why we need big changes. That's the reason I'm here. Which really I thought was a standout moment. It was a pretty direct criticism of Trudeau but also I guess of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. With less than anyone could imagine. But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together,

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We'd love to talk business. Okay, the other thing that I wanted to just take a moment to discuss with you is what we heard from the candidates tonight about threats coming from Trump. Because I did find it striking just how quickly things have changed. Just to hear all of the candidates talking about our longtime friend and ally like they are now this menace on the international scene. Rather than guaranteeing the rules-based order, the U.S. is turning predator.

We have to recognize that the Donald Trump of today is different than the Donald Trump of several years ago. Then his objective was to take more of our market. Now he wants to take our country. Did you find that as striking as I did?

It is. You know, it's hard. I mean, first of all, I'm not sure whether any American president has ever featured as prominently in a party leadership debate in Canadian history. Maybe there's a precedent, but I suspect there isn't. It's such a change from, you go back to remember when Justin Trudeau became prime minister, Barack Obama was in the white house and we were talking about a bromance and, and how famously they were going to get along and how they were sort of the

same kind of politician and how the, you know, Justin Trudeau, one of the points of emphasis he had in the 2015 campaign was how much, you know, the job of the prime minister was to manage Kennedy U S relations and,. relations and work with the president. And Stephen Harper hadn't been able to do that with Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau would. And it's indicative of just how much Donald Trump has changed the world, has changed the continental relationship. I think it's important to note that it's not just, you know, Canadian liberal politicians talking like this.

It's European leaders talking like this about how it's a new era. So we could be in a federal election imminently. Carney, for example, has said that he would consider calling one immediately after becoming leader. Opposition parties have also said that they would bring down the government as soon as parliament is back towards the end of March. These debates were really just as much about a general election as anything else. And Poliev and the conservatives did come up a handful of times. And what did we hear?

What were the candidates trying to accomplish there? I think for this audience and for these debates, What did we hear? What were the candidates trying to accomplish there? I Think for this audience and for these debates There was especially from Mark Carney and maybe to a lesser or to a certain extent Christian Freeland sort of making the point by bringing up Pierre Poliev that they can They can trying to show that they can take him on, that they're ready to make arguments against him, to criticize him and show that they're kind of up to that challenge. That seemed to be, especially for Mark Carney, that seemed to be kind of the implicit message

behind a lot of what he was doing when he brought up Pierre Poliev. I think the other part of it was bringing him up in the sense of Donald Trump, in the sense of the challenges going forward and trying to place Pierre Pauliev within that larger sort of debate. Let me finish by pointing out one other thing. Who's the worst person to stand up to Donald Trump? It's Pierre Pauliev. He worships the man. He uses his language. He's not the right person for our country at this crucial time.

You know, the leaders were trying to kind of, the leadership candidates were trying to kind of link the two to, like there were a couple comments that specifically, you know, from I think Karina Gulda and Mark Carney, and possibly also from Krisha Freeland, that specifically linked Pierre Paulev with Donald Trump. So there's, you know, there's kind of a couple things going on there. Yeah, Gould, I think, if I remember correctly, she said she's used to dealing with bullies. I know how to stand up to people like Pierre Polyev, who, when it comes to Donald Trump, would rather imitate him than stand up for Canada.

I know also, Carney nailed him for not getting security clearance. This is the kind of irresponsibility at a time when our country is under threat that we cannot afford. We cannot afford a leader like Pierre Pauliet. I want to talk to you about the polls. We have to talk about the polls because these two debates this week, they come at the same time that we are seeing some really crazy polling. And I say crazy because multiple pollsters, including Ipsos and Leger, are now putting the liberals either nearly at par or ahead of the conservatives in a federal race. This is the first time that we have seen this since 2021. Also, it is a huge turnaround from where they were

in January when Trudeau stepped down. Erin, I know the last time that you were on, we talked about other examples where new leaders got a big boost and lost that boost. So John Turner, Kim Campbell. But have we ever seen a rebound quite like this before? Because depending on the poll here, this is what, like a 30 point rebound? Yeah, I mean, I hesitate to say we've never seen it, but I'm struggling to come up with anything that compares. You know, talking to someone this afternoon who works in polling, the only point of reference

he and I both had was the pandemic, where if you go back to sort of the polling in February 2020, you know, the conservatives were slightly ahead of the liberals. You know, if you think back that far, Justin Trudeau had sort of limped out of the 2019 election, kind of wounded. And then, you know, in a matter of weeks, months, the liberals were shot up to a big lead. And that was, you know, credited as kind of what's called the rally around the flag effect, right? When there's a crisis, you sort of rally around the leader. And, you know, in that case, the liberals were trailing by 20 points or whatever they were at certain points in the last year. For this to happen, I mean, it's striking on several levels,

but, you know, it is, I think, you can sort of try to explain it in a few ways. One is Trump, obviously, the crisis moment. Uh, I think part of it is, you know, I think we may have talked about that, about this in that episode, was, you know, how much of the, of the conservative polling lead was based on people liking Pierre Polyov,

how much of it was based on people being tired of Justin Trudeau. So there's probably some of that going on. You know, I think there's sort of overlapping impacts. It's really remarkable to think that, you know, when this leadership race started, the feeling, you know, there was a certain feeling of like, well, are the liberals trying to pick somebody to win the next election?

Or are they trying to pick someone to kind of save the furniture and stick around to lead them in opposition? The polling has swung things so dramatically now that now it looks like you're picking someone who could conceivably not just become prime minister for a month or two, but could conceivably win government in a new election. And that's just, that was, again, that was just implausible two months ago.

Yeah. And some of these polls, when they put Carney at the top, the numbers get better for them, right? Yeah. And that's, you know, and that, I mean, I think that really solidifies Mark Carney's argument, right? Is he can point at those polls and say, this isn't just rallying around the flag, this isn't just people feeling, you know,

differently about the Liberal Party, this is something about, you know, people seeing an appeal in what I'm offering, in what I'm doing, and that's the case for picking me. So let's end this conversation on Carney. We talked earlier about how this was a fine night for him. It was fine. Um, but we have also talked about, uh, how this debate was low on real debate. It was very polite.

It did not come to blows. Everyone agreed with each other a lot. Um, if Mark Carney does end up winning this leadership race, did we get the sense from these debates that he is prepared to duke it out in a federal election so soon with someone like Poliev, who has been training for this, uh, for years? Yeah, I don't think we got an answer to that question, really. I mean, in some fairness, we probably weren't ever going

to get an answer to that question until the general election. But I don't know that Carney emphatically answered the question of whether he's ready for the cut and thrust of federal politics, you know, with these last two nights. He makes this comment about, you know, I'm not a career politician, I'm not the usual suspect. So I think he's, to a certain extent, trying to say like, look, I know I'm not, you know,

I know I'm not Justin Trudeau, I know I'm not Pierre Poliev, but you know, that's, in this case, that's he's trying to sell it as a virtue. But I think, you know, I's, in this case, that's, he's trying to sell it as a virtue. But I think, you know, I don't want to say it's the easy part, but it sort of is. You know, winning the liberal leadership is part one. And winning a general election is a whole other thing. It comes down to how ready your party is.

It comes down to how well you can pull an organization together, yourself and the people you hire. It comes down to how well can you perform on stage, shaking hands in news conferences, in televised national debates against hostile you know, hostile political opponents, we won't really know how well he's able to handle that and until he actually goes through it. Okay. Campaigns matter. Aaron, thank you. Thank you. All right. That is all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.