Front Burner - Mark Carney’s first days as PM

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

On Friday, Mark Carney was sworn in as Canada’s 24th prime minister. He wasted no time in appointing a new cabinet, getting rid of the carbon tax, and heading off on a diplomatic trip to Europe.Today, Rosemary Barton, CBC’s chief political correspondent, joins us to talk about what Carney’s first days in office indicate about his political priorities, how the Conservatives are responding, and when we might expect an election.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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and let your email do the talking. This is a CBC Podcast. It's a solemn duty to serve as Prime Minister at this time of great consequence for our country. Hi everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. It's only been a few days since Mark Carney became the 24th Prime Minister of Canada, but a lot has happened already. He has a new, leaner cabinet, just 24 members,

compared to 39 under Justin Trudeau. Just a few hours after being sworn in, Carney got rid of the consumer carbon tax. And right now he is in Europe, meeting allies in London and Paris. So what do Carney's first few days tell us about his priorities as Prime Minister? How are the Conservatives responding? And when can we expect an election? I'm here with my colleague Rosemary Barton, CBC's chief political correspondent. Hi, Rosie. Hey, Jamie. Thank you very much for making the time for us today. You and I are talking on Sunday

afternoon and Carney is headed to Europe later today. You're actually going with him on the plane to cover that trip. He's expected to meet with King Charles, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. And what do you think the calculus is here? A couple of things. I will just say it's a very circular trip for me personally, because I did Justin Trudeau's first foreign trip in 2015, which was also London and Paris and Malta. So it's a kind of weird moment for, destabilizing moment for me. Listen, I think there's a couple of obvious goals here. One, he wants to send a message to Donald Trump

and to other allies that these are Canada's closest, longest-standing economic and security partnerships. And that's where he wants to start on the stage, the world stage, as Prime Minister. He has some very practical things. He also wants to talk about trade being one of them. Canada does have an agreement with the European Union, is seeking to do more with the United Kingdom. And that audience with King Charles matters. We saw Justin Trudeau do it on his way out the door. And now Mark Carney is doing it on his way through the door as an attempt, I think, to get some support. Now, when the Prime Minister was asked about this on Friday about whether he was going to be seeking out support, he said, It's always nice when people say nice things about you, but we don't need it.

We're not seeking it. But the reality is that we do. And by going over there and sending that message to everyone, including Canadians, about who and what matters right now, I think that's really important. It's also politically super wily. You know, we're going to talk about election timing, but to show Canadians how you would go about taking on Donald Trump and who you would talk to right in your first days as prime minister, I think is pretty smart politics.

Is there a sense that he's going to get like a sufficient amount of support or an adequate amount of support because I know there have been criticisms directed at the King, for example, for being pretty quiet on all the annexation, 51st state stuff. Keir Starmer was criticized for not really standing up for us when he went to the White House. Yeah, I mean, we don't know. I mean, that's the short answer. King Charles, we know, is very limited in what he can do publicly. So for now, he's been planting maple trees and wearing Canadian medals to be these subtle signs of support.

Keir Starmer probably bungled that answer, I think, in the Oval Office. You mentioned Canada. I think you're trying to find a divide between us that doesn't exist. We're the closest of nations and we had very good discussions today, but we didn't discuss Canada. Thank you. His foreign secretary talked to our friend Catherine Cullen on Friday and he was much more resolute in terms of support.

Canada is a sovereign nation and will continue to be a sovereign nation. Of that I have no doubt I recognize... Emmanuel Macron is someone that Mark Carney already knows. So listen, I think even just being seen with them is probably a good thing for the new prime minister. Whether or not they come out and say that they'll stand with Canada is another. But I think it will be a recognition of Canada's sovereignty in this critical moment for sure. I saw Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe criticize the decision to go immediately to Europe. He said essentially that Kearney needs to engage with and concentrate on the countries that we are in a trade war with, the United States.

And he also talked about China, who is planning a 100% tariff on canola. Engage immediately with the Chinese government. Continue and engage and lay his plan out with respect to how he is going to engage with the United States of America. And I would suggest that plan should not... What do you make of that argument? Should Carney be going straight to Washington? I mean, I think that's a fair criticism for sure sure that you should be going to meet with the president to deal with these issues immediately. The reality is that the prime minister has

said a couple things. First of all that he is not going to rush down there to meet with the president so long as these overt signs of disrespect continue and by disrespect he means those exact comments about annexation. I also don't know whether internally, domestically, it serves Mark Carney to be seen in Washington, you know, trying to get Donald Trump to do something. Like politically, that is not probably a great move for Mark Carney if we are heading into an election. He will, I think, probably get on the phone with him at some point this week. And remember, we have all these other connections and relationships between ministers and secretaries of Donald Trump.

So there are ways to engage and to move things forward. But I think Scott Moe makes a fair point. But I think for politics, the liberals are probably making a probably astute calculation here. Right. If I'm like one of his handlers, one of Carney's handlers, I guess I'm watching that meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office the other week and probably thinking, my God, I don't want my guy to be in that position, right?

Totally. And they don't have any baggage, personal baggage, the two of them between them. But still, who knows how that could go off the rails and what that might look like. So we saw Carney sworn in as prime minister on Friday. I Mark Kearney, who solemnly and sincerely promise and swear that I will truly and faithfully and to the best of my skill and knowledge, execute the powers and trust reposed in me as prime minister.

His cabinet as well, right? A leaner team, but many of the same stalwarts, Melanie Jolie in foreign affairs, Francois-Philippe Champagne moved to finance, Dominique LeBlanc will lead US-Canada trade as Minister of International Trade and Intergovernmental Affairs, Anita Anand in innovation. I'll note the conservatives immediately started attacking

Carney for a cabinet that is almost entirely made up of Trudeau-era ministers. Today, liberals are trying to trick Canadians into electing them for a fourth term in power with a cabinet that is 87% the same as Trudeau's cabinet. Do you think that matters at the moment? Is your sense that this cabinet is something more permanent or transitory? A couple of things. It is very much a cabinet with the deck chairs that Justin Trudeau bought him, right? These are the people who are there right now. So it is the cabinet of the moment. It is the cabinet to transition this prime minister towards an election. and it is the cabinet that frankly is needed for the country right

now because those people that you named there they have you know they have phone numbers they have relationships they're doing that work already. So I think it is what it is. If Barcarney were to form another government he would have to find room for more people and he would certainly have to find room for stars, quote unquote, star candidates, people that he might want to see. So when you see the lack of, you know, regional diversity and representation, for instance, I think that's a function of this being a small cabinet at a particular moment in time. And I don't, you know, it might not, might not make people in Prince Edward Island very

happy. But I don't think that this, it might not make people in Prince Edward Island very happy, but I don't think that this is like the direction going forward. I think this is doing what it needs to do for the moment. I want to ask you specifically about Krista Freeland. So former Deputy Prime Minister, Krista Freeland, former finance minister, she lost hugely to Carney in the liberal leadership race. She got just 8% of the vote. Carney got 86%. It's clear

that for a lot of voters, she represents the Trudeau version of the Liberal Party, but she is still in his cabinet as transport minister. Were you surprised by that? Either that she made it in at all or that she took, I think it's fair to say, quite a demotion from her previous posts. Listen, I'm not surprised with the demotion. I think you're right to say that it's a demotion. I am sort of moderately surprised she made it into cabinet because he didn't need to do that. He didn't have to do it, but he offered her something. And I think that that was perhaps important to some people within the party. She accepted it and she accepted part of her portfolio. The other part is internal trade

with those inter-provincial trade barriers that I know you guys have been talking about. That's a really important part of her job and she will be good at that. We know she's good at trade. She's very skilled. She has good relationships with many premiers and she'll be able to keep working away on that

as a way to contribute to the overall goal of taking on Donald Trump. But let's be honest, Christy Freeland in a role where she was gonna have to engage with the White House was not gonna work for Mark Carney. This is not someone who comes with no baggage, right? This is someone who does have all that baggage.

Donald Trump has said she's toxic, that you don't want Christy Freeland in a position right now where you are potentially going to upset and anger the White House, or you don't know what she's gonna be communicating. So this was, I think, a fairly reasonable compromise if he felt it was important for her

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Stepping up for entrepreneurs, we're on it. BDC, financing, advising, know how. A notable omission from the cabinet was Karina Gold, right? Who also didn't do very well in the liberal leadership race in the end. I believe she walked away with just under 4% of the vote. But she represented in that race, the progressive flank of the party. She defended the carbon tax as a policy. She talked about universal basic income. And do you think that that indicates

anything about Kearney's broader move towards the center of the party? Yeah, it absolutely does. These are these that Mark Carney is not interested in, universal basic income. You saw his first act as prime minister was to sign that prime ministerial directive to get rid of the carbon tax, even though he wants to tackle climate change. I also have been told that Mark Carney didn't really enjoy Karina Gould's attacks during the debate. We will only win the next election by being liberals, proudly, not conservative-lite. That didn't go over very well. So that, I think, is the practical reason why she's not

in there. The problem with that, I think, is one, she is a very strong communicator. She's in her mid-30s. She's a mom. She lives in the suburbs. She's, you know, in her mid thirties. She's a mom. She lives in the suburbs. She's got two kids. You want someone like that on your team, someone who's able to communicate effectively to a different group of people. So, so that's maybe the unfortunate part for him.

But those, those progressive or even left wing ideas are not where the liberal government is going under Mark Carney. And so I don't know that he could completely include her. There are people who are more progressive in cabinet. Nate Erskine Smith is an awfully good example of that. So it's not to say that this party is suddenly a progressive conservative party. But but it is to say that there is a limit, I think, to how much of the left flank Mark Carney wants to wants to open up. I just want to talk to you about another one that he's taken a lot of heat for, particularly from progressives and some Muslim groups.

And that is his appointment of former public safety minister Marco Mangicino as his chief of staff. And Mangicino was shuffled out of cabinet in 2023. He's been a bit controversial for a variety of reasons, but what I saw him taking a lot of blowback for online last week was his stance on Israel and Gaza. He's been very vocally pro-Israel. Jagmeet Singh criticized him last week for being one of the few liberals to have opposed a ceasefire motion last year in Parliament. And was this a risky choice for Mark Kearney? Yeah, frankly it was and maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to people given what you've just said there.

So let me try and make a little bit of sense of it. One piece of it is that Marco Mendocino has all the security clearance needed, right? He was the Minister of Public Safety, and he dealt with a lot of sensitive files. So you need someone who can be your Chief of Staff very quickly, right? We've seen in a matter of days, and know sort of all the big issues that you need to start thinking about because that security piece was not something that Mark Carney would have been overly familiar with and he got those briefings last week.

You also need someone who knows the party and knows the caucus. You're quite right that Marco Mendocino is a very fierce defender of Israel in the party, in part because there is a large Jewish community inside his own riding. But he does know the caucus. He's a very affable person and he is well-liked in caucus, even if people have different viewpoints on the Middle East. And then the final reason why it kind of makes sense, and this I'm not sure, but there's a possibility

Mark Carney could run in that writing. Marco Mendocino is not running again. He has the writing of Eglinton Lawrence. That could open up for Mr. Carney. He hasn't decided what writing he wants, but that is also a possibility. So, yeah, it was a risky move, maybe not super well thought through,

but again, it's a temporary thing. It's a temporary move. And so if Mark Amindicino does damage in any way in this transition place, it will be limited in time for sure. Let's talk about this incoming election. Abba Kastata just published some polling from March 10th, so very recent,

that found that the conservative lead has shrunk to just four points over the liberals overall. Abacus also tracked the percentage of people who viewed the candidate positively versus negatively, and they found Carnes was at plus seven, whereas conservative leader Piro Poliev was at minus seven. So the trend lines are going in opposite direction. Abacus Data CEO David Coletto wrote that for Poliev, this was the lowest that they had measured for him. What are you thinking about when you see that kind of data? Well, I mean, it confirms a trend. That's for sure, right? If you look at our poll tracker, that's the place where we aggregate all of them and it shows you kind of broadly what's

happening. And this is what's happening, is that conservatives are losing support very quickly and liberals are gaining support. And liberals are gaining support from the NDP, who are crashing through the bottom and from the conservative party, because there are some voters that are interested in someone who seems, as you pointed out, a little more centrist. That should be very troubling for conservatives. And I can tell you that it is. People are very worried inside the party right now that they could blow a 20-point lead in the upcoming election. This is a conservative party

that believed it kind of had it locked up, frankly, and were very, very confident. frankly, and we're very, very confident. They have not adapted very easily to the fact that this election campaign is not about Justin Trudeau, it is about Donald Trump. And no matter how many times Pierre Poiliev says, it's not about the carbon tax either. Carbon tax Carney, we'll try later today to pull another fast one. This one's going to be very sneaky, very sneaky. I call it the carbon tax con job. I told you this was going to happen by the way. Don't say I didn't warn you. He's going to hide the consumer carbon tax for 60 days and if he's re-elected he'll bring it back bigger than ever with no rebate. You know I think that it has been kind of a rude awakening.

Now, the Conservatives could still win very easily, right? This is not out of the realm of possibility, but they are going to have to get a better sense of what they can do to attack Mark Carney and what will make it stick. And if the ballot question for most Canadians is who is best placed to stand up against Donald Trump, I am not sure that Pierre Poilieff has made that case yet. However, yeah, he is a formidable politician.

He is an excellent campaigner. We don't know what it's going to look like on the campaign trail, but I can 100% guarantee you that this campaign will matter. It will matter big time because of what's happening with the polls. Do you have any sense of like what they are trying to do strategy wise right now? Like what directions that they're trying to pursue? Yeah, I mean, they're throwing spaghetti at the wall to be quite honest. They're trying to not lose the attack lines and the stuff that they had built over the

past 18 months around building homes, fighting crime, stopping the carbon tax, that kind of language, right? They're trying to not lose that and add in a piece about putting Canada first. Canada first conservatives who will axe taxes, build homes, fix the budget and most importantly of all unleash our economic independence by building pipelines, mines, LNG plants and other economic infrastructure that will allow us to sell to ourselves and the rest of the world.

And then have Canadians start to question Mark Carney's motives. You know, they use that line that he's sneaky. Unfortunately, what they're using to try and shore up that idea isn't super solid or super convincing or super compelling. And I also really strongly think, Jamie, that Canadians' appetite for that right now, I don't think it's so high, right? There is a real existential threat against the country. People are really concerned.

I know you hear about it. I hear, get so many emails from people wondering what they should do. So I do think that you have to be careful as a politician right now to make sure that your tone matches and reflects what the country is feeling and doing. And I think that's also a challenge for for pure polyethylene. From the polling that I am seeing, it looks like if an election were held tomorrow, we would have a liberal minority government, according to the polls. Does that track with what you're seeing? It could go either way, is what I think we would say right now. A majority for the Conservatives is increasingly out of

reach and it is, it's not quite a toss-up yet, but it is very possible that the Liberals form a minority government, which if you think about it, like how mind mind blowing is that, right? That just a couple of months ago, this party was going to be down to 60, 70 seats. And now the idea that they could even form government a fourth time in a row, I think is pretty incredible and shows you just how much the landscape has changed over time. The only caveat that I will give though to that is that sometimes this kind of thing happens after a leadership race, right? Sometimes you get this big bump and you have momentum and it doesn't hold,

right? We saw that with John Turner many, many moons ago. The difference though this time is the Donald Trump piece and I think the seriousness of the moment we are in. So given what the polling says right now that it's a toss-up, talk to me a little bit more about why I hear everybody talking about an election call this week. Yeah, a couple of reasons. First of all, because Parliament does have to come back if it doesn't happen, right? The date to return is March 24th. Am I right? Yes. So that's the first thing. If it's not an election call, the House has to return. The second thing is, Mark Carney,

as you know, doesn't have a seat. So what is the need or what would it look like for him if we go back into the House of Commons and Pierre Poiliev stands up every day as he does so effectively and criticizes and comments on Mark Carney every day and he can't even defend himself. And thirdly was that other piece I just talked about, momentum. When you see that you have a window for an election that could bring you to power, you take it. That's what you do. And Mark Carney has also talked very openly about how he needs a mandate from Canadians. He certainly personally needs

a mandate. He needs to get elected somewhere, but his government needs a mandate so that this can be sort of a clarifying moment for the electorate about who should take on Donald Trump. You saw Doug Ford do that really effectively in the Ontario election. He decided that that was what his goal was. Different kind of race here, given who the candidates are, but that is the argument I think that liberals can fairly make. And listen, opposition parties have been asking for an election, so it would be strange if they back down now.

All right. Rosie, that was now. All right. Rosie, that was great. Super helpful. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jamie. All right. That is all for today.

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