Front Burner - Liberals enter the Mark Carney era

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

After a two-month race, the Liberal Party of Canada chose Mark Carney as its new leader on Sunday night. It was an overwhelming win – Carney won with 86 per cent of the vote. The Prime Minister-Designate is expected to be sworn in, in the coming days.Paul Wells has written about Canadian politics for decades. He also has a substack under his own name.He looks ahead to the challenges facing Carney. From figuring out the pros and cons of calling a federal election straight away, to not having a seat in Parliament, to arguably the most significant challenge of all: managing Canada’s response in a trade war with the U.S. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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In first place, the next Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. Hey everyone, it's Jamie and we have just watched Mark Carney become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He is now the Prime Minister designate and will soon be Canada's 24th Prime Minister. It was an overwhelming win, 86% of the vote, bigger than the win that Trudeau got in 2013 and also that Poliev got in 2022. And now it is about to get real for the first leader of this country

who has actually never been elected to office. Canadians will go to the polls soon and Carney is facing an opposition leader who loves a fight. I am here with long time political journalist, Paul Wells, who has a sub stack under his name that you should really check out. Paul, thank you so much for spending your Sunday evening with us.

Hi, Jamie, how are you? I'm great. Okay, so a resounding victory for Mark Kearney. On the actual vote, anything interesting that you think is worth pointing out here? It's a little surprising that Karina Gould came in third. In third place, Karina Gould with 3.2% of the vote. There was some speculation that she might overtake

Christa Freeland on the basis, purely on the basis of a very strong campaign. People were not paying attention to her two months ago. And then it's a surprise that Christa Freeland as the second place candidate cratered so completely. Like it's, it's, it's going to be difficult to continue your, your political career after that. In second place, Christia Freeland with 8% of the vote.

Early in this process, I was in a cabinet minister's office having lunch sandwiches, something that doesn't happen very often. This is a very insular crowd. And this minister had just told Krista Freeland that they would be supporting Mark Carney instead of Freeland. I think that in that week, which was early in the process, she probably had a couple dozen similar conversations.

And the rationale was we can't offer change if we run with a leader who stood next to Justin Trudeau nodding for a decade. And Carney has his weaknesses, he's green in electoral politics, but at least he was not present at the scene of the decisions and acts that led to the party being 25 points behind in the polls in January. And I think that's turning out to be a wise tactical

decision on the part of most liberals. I think Carney has made the party competitive again, really against what I would have ever expected. And no other candidate could have. We just heard Carney deliver his victory speech. When we come together, we build things that last, because we are Canada strong. Vive la Canada. Some thoughts on the speech right off the top. What did you think?

I thought it was boring as dirt. I'm not sure that's a problem. He basically says we have to render rational everything that doesn't work. So my government will immediately eliminate the divisive consumer carbon tax on families and farmers and small and medium-sized businesses. And we will stop the hike in the capital gains tax. We have to have a better performing economy. I know how the world works and I know how it can be made to work better for all of us.

And that knowledge is especially useful now in the service of Canadians when we must build a new economy and create new trading relationships. And we have to show Donald Trump that we're serious and you can't do that with Pierre Pauli as the opposition leader. Mm-hmm. A person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him. Oh, so it hit all of its marks. It's interesting that John Kretchen was on for an interminable speech just before they announced the results.

Carney, it occurs to me that Carney is a little bit like Kretchen, in that his public speaking persona is unfixable. So you just work around that. Kretchen would like substantially mangle every speech he ever gave and he was still fine. Carney is there to provide voters with a briefing or an update rather than with motivation. But in Pierre Poilieff, he's essentially running against the flying Willendas. And I think it's

probably okay to be a little boring because you can't compete with Poilieff for drama. So you might as well find your own terrain on which to try and compete with them. Yeah. Do you think that there is also something people might like about that style in that it might not seem so polished, right? Maybe he doesn't read like politician, when I want to people and could that cut both ways? So another ancient historical figure that comes to mind is Robert Stanfield, who was the conservative leader who ran twice against Pierre Trudeau and didn't win. Stanfield took a lot of work to get himself elected a premier of Nova Scotia and was not a compelling figure personally. He was a kindly gent and that was about the best you could say

for him. But in Nova Scotia, they used to say if we can get him elected premier, nobody else will ever be able to get him out. And that was kind of the bet that conservatives made in 68 and 72 was that Stanfield was not nearly as exciting as Pierre Trudeau, but maybe that would come as a relief. And in 72, it almost worked. I think there is something to the idea.

I think we have seen something to the idea that for a lot of Canadians, Carney represents not just a relief from Trudeau, but a relief from Poliev, that he represents a kind of a third force. How far down the field he can get with that, I mean, that's for the voters to decide. I want to talk to you about what happens now, right? So he doesn't become prime minister tomorrow.

Trudeau needs to submit his resignation to the governor general. Carney will need to be sworn in. It is my understanding that that will all happen in the coming days, though. I think we're talking about this week. So what happens after that? And what are the odds that we will head to an election soon after he becomes prime minister? Carney has insisted that he hadn't yet made these decisions that he was going to see based on the circumstances if he got the big job.

So now we are going to see. I can't understand why he would have any interest in trying to govern for a while before calling an election. He's not a member of the House of Commons. He can't lead the government in the Commons. He'd have to send Dominic LeBlanc or somebody as House leader and de facto acting prime minister for all parliamentary matters.

And that just undercuts his momentum and the interest that might be generated around him. So I suspect he's going to dissolve the house. He's going to visit the Governor General before he visits the House of Commons and will be in an election within several days. He is expected to announce a smaller cabinet. Who do we think will make the cut, especially in these top jobs, right? The ones that will be really crucial in dealing with the US administration and also does it matter?

It's interesting. In January, you would have thought that he would want to do what Paul Martin did when he replaced John Kretschen 20 years ago, which is to present as much change as possible, to present a starkly different cabinet to the extent possible given that he was stuck with the same caucus. I'm not sure that's at all the case now. I think he'll be quite happy to have Melody Jolie in Foreign Affairs

and Dominique LeBlanc in Finance and as a de facto appointment on the Canada US file. Francois-Philippe Champagne as sort of commercial spokesman for Canadian interests in the United States. Trudeau has had a much better final month than he had a final half decade. And I think people were reassured by the performance that that core team delivered. And so I think that Carney will be surprised at the extent to which he's better off delivering continuity than change in the short term. And this is all in the short term because we've got an election coming.

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BDC. Financing. Advising. Know-how. Entrepreneurs, we're on it. BDC, financing, advising, know how. What do you think the key things are that he has to do going forward here to kind of prove himself to Canadians? It's kind of concentric circles. Almost certainly within the next couple of days, there's gonna be some kind of response from Washington, from Trump on Truth Social, JD Vance on Twitter,

Elon Musk, X, I guess we call it. And it will be harsh, and then what response does he give? Then there'll be the response from Pierre Poliev, who has his own balancing act to do in the current context of Canada-Trump conflict. The new leader needs to give the impression that he is leading a prepared and serious action team in a difficult time. He's brought in Janice Chouretarette, a former clerk of the Privy Council as the head of his transition team.

An interesting choice because Janice Charette did used to have a political job. She used to be Jean Charette's chief of staff when he was progressive conservative leader in the 90s. So once again, I think he's seeking to demonstrate that he's more of a centrist than Justin Trudeau was. And frankly, that he's more of a centrist than Justin Trudeau was and frankly that he is more of a centrist than Pierre Poliev is. And I think we're going to see more signals to that effect.

Prime Minister has some powers of decree. Does he begin to implement concrete change that's different from what Justin Trudeau had been doing in the last several months? Right, like what could that look like? I think it'd be interesting if he was in Brussels the day after he became prime minister. And I actually haven't been sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking the rest of his prime ministership, but I think it's common in Europe for a new German Chancellor to go straight to Paris or a new French President to go straight to Berlin to show that the rest of the world matters as much as home and that we have, we choose the allies who advance our interests. Just

as every former prime minister would at some point have gone to Washington, I think it'd be interesting if a new prime minister goes, goes somewhere else that's big and symbolically important and isn't Washington. And when it comes to him going up against Poliev here, I know you mentioned earlier, he's like going up against the flying Willendas, is that what you said? Yes.

Do you think this two month leadership race has prepared him for what is coming? Absolutely not. Politics is a craft. It's something that people who are talented in other fields often have a difficult time learning on the fly. A classic case was Ken Dryden, who was Canada's greatest hockey goalie, and that turned out to be of very limited use in the political arena. hockey goalie and that turned out to be a very limited use in the political arena. And actually, I'm told by some family members who follow this more closely than I do that Carney himself was actually a serious hockey goalie in Harvard and Oxford. He got more ice time at Oxford. And with that, I've lost the train of thought.

The question. He got wrapped up on his hockey career. Is he up for the task with Polio? Oh yeah. No, he is, he's certainly not up for the task. He's capable of learning. He does have experience in highly confrontational political environments. I mean, he was the governor of the Bank of England during Brexit, and he became a bit of a poster boy for

the silly people who opposed Brexit among its advocates. And he gave as good as he got in parliamentary committees and stuff like that, you know, but he'll probably want to limit his exposure to political debates. He's not going to want five debates. He's just going to be a little bit stiff and a little bit, I'm new here. But Canadians don't consistently reward the best campaigner. They're looking for the best prime minister. And I believe Canadians will be deeply divided on who among the alternatives that would be in the next election. And which means that millions of people are going to think Carney's great. Millions of people will think that he doesn't begin to correct for all of the things that the Liberals got wrong.

And that's why it'll be a very interesting fight. think that he doesn't begin to correct for all of the things that the liberals got wrong. And that's why it'll be a very interesting fight. When you're listening to the conservatives right now, what are they saying? Like, what does it tell you about what they think Carney and the Liberals' biggest weak spots are? After casting around a bit for a good message, Pierre Pauliev has settled on the notion that Carney is sneaky. You sneaky? Carbon tax Carney. He's just like Justin.

Mr. Carney is a very sneaky guy. He's being sneaky. Carbon tax Carney. He's just like Justin. Mr. Carney is very sneaky guy. He's being sneaky. That sculpt around in ivory towers all of his life. And he made the kinds of decisions that Canadians never get to find out about strikes me as a pretty sturdy choice of attack. And Carney has had a hard time talking about his role in Brookfield's decision to move his headquarters to the United States.

He's had to correct himself a couple of times. That feeds into this emerging narrative. But what Stephen Harper found was that his attack lines against liberal leaders worked and worked again and worked again and then suddenly they didn't work. And liberals have always told themselves that Justin Trudeau was immune to conservative attacks because Canadians knew him. I don't think that's true. But I think Trudeau gave the impression that he knew

himself. He gave the sense that he was more comfortable in his skin than Stefan Dion and Michael Ignatiev had been. Ken Carney gave the same impression that whatever his limitations as a public speaker, whatever his limitations as a parliamentarian, which for now can only be a matter of speculation, he's got something going for him and it's beyond being affected by conservative insult and attack. He's got to hope he can give that impression because the attack is certainly coming. Flip this for me. When we're talking about Poliev, at this moment in time, what is his biggest weakness or where are his biggest weak spots going up against Carney? Mark Carney's in some danger of being the least of Pauliev's concerns right now.

Pauliev is drifting into the kind of territory that Jason Kenney was in the late innings of his time as premier of Alberta, divided between a political mainstream that thinks he's too extreme and a party base that is starting to wonder whether he's too milk toast. There's a lot of chatter among very conservative Trump sympathetic podcasts

and social media personalities that Pauliev is a disappointment, that he's not mega enough. Donald Trump said he's not a mega guy. And I get the impression by some of Poliev's media choices lately that he's preoccupied with that. And he's trying to signal to a small but energetic and activist fringe in the party that he is their guy because he doesn't want to bleed that to apathy or to Maxime Bernier's little party. And this comes at just the wrong time because Mark Carney is competing aggressively for

the center and Poliev seems a little betwixt and between in his own political positioning now. So Poliev's got some stuff to sort out for himself and within his party and within conservatism in Canada, which is torn between people who like and dislike Donald Trump. And if he can sort that before an election, then he gets to worry about Mark Carney. Yeah. Not a ton of time for him to do that, right? Yeah, Peter Potter. Before we go though, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about the current prime minister, soon to be former prime minister, Justin Trudeau. So this was of course the start of Mark Kearney's tenure, but it's the end of Trudeau's.

And what did you make of the goodbyes that he got at this convention? He gave a speech at this convention. I can imagine that you're all expecting me to stand up and talk about all that we've accomplished together. And don't get me wrong, I am damn proud of what we've done over these past 10 years for the middle class and people working hard to join it.

But tonight, tonight is about our future as a party, as a country. Tell me a little bit about whether or not you would have anticipated that even a few months ago. Well, precisely so. It was hardly clear in January that Justin Trudeau would be allowed to speak at this event.

The party had gone back and forth for many months and had finally, very much against type, had decided they had to push this guy off the stage. And so as I say, he has had an impressive, a very impressive last several weeks fighting this Trump threat. But there's a broader context. The incoming German Chancellor, Merz, has cut a deal to spend hundreds of billions of euros on remilitarizing Germany. The European Union is freeing up fiscal space to do similar. The Prime Minister of

Poland is talking about maybe having to acquire nuclear weapons to defend Poland against Russia, because America won't. The world is moving very quickly, and Canada is terribly weakened at this crucial time, because it'll be many months before we have a government that is ready to govern. And that's all because Justin Trudeau delayed the inevitable for too long. And I think history is gonna record that he had some of his most impressive weeks,

but that it was at a time when Canada needed a government and didn't have one, and that's down to him. I think that's a good place for us to end today. Paul, thank you. Thank you so much for this. Always a pleasure. Thank you. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.