Mark Carney won with a landslide — supported by 86 percent of the over 150,000 Liberals who voted. After nearly a decade of Justin Trudeau, the Liberal party has found a new face for business as usual.
Freeland, who came a distant second with 8 percent of the votes, differed little from Carney on policy. Trump, international trade, the economy, and militarism dominated the discussion.
What really defined Carney as the frontrunner was his appearance of separation from Trudeau. Freeland, as Deputy PM and Finance Minister under Trudeau, despite a high profile exit from cabinet in January, was dogged by 9 years of association. She was also marred by “the Freeland doctrine,” including ramping up arms spending and military aid, exporting weapons parts, explosives, and surveillance equipment to Israel, which aided its genocidal slaughter in Gaza.
Carney is the preferred candidate of business. He represents stability for the economy and profitability, a much-desired trait in the face of Donald Trump’s attacks and threats.
His empty phrases will not bring meaningful improvements for workers and oppressed peoples; they are the same, if not worse, then the pro-business program of the Trudeau government.
Mark Carney the businessman
Carney is not shy about his ‘elitist’ status, being a former member of the academic financier “Group of Thirty” and the World Economic Forum. (Chrystia Freeland is also a member of the World Economic Forum.) His record in politics buttresses his “elitist” reputation.
He worked under Martin’s Liberal government in 2003 as deputy governor to the Bank of Canada, then moved on to work under finance ministers in the Martin and the Harper governments. In 2008 he became the Bank of Canada governor, overseeing “quantitative easing,” the slashing of loan interest rates, taxes and federal spending, and the bailout of the big five Canadian banks. In 2014 he became governor of the Bank of England, where he continued cheap money policies that cut interest rates further.
Since leaving the Bank of England in 2020 he has moved on to the private sector, briefly advising Trudeau in 2021, who offered Carney a role in his government.
He has advocated green capitalism. In his book, Values, Carney subscribes to the idea that free market capitalism and environmentalism can co-exist. Despite this, he has overseen corporate investments in oil and gas, including coal and crude oil.
Up until recently he was the board chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, one of the largest multinational financial investment corporations in Canada at nearly CAD $1 trillion in total assets. They recently changed headquarters from Toronto to New York, just before Carney resigned in January.
A greenwashing financier, a proud member of the “elite,” a multimillionaire and an unapologetic adherent of capitalism — there is no fitter person to lead the Liberals.
The Liberals’ right pivot
Reflecting the changed priorities for Canada’s bourgeoisie in the tumultuous world, the Liberal party has pivoted rightwards, meaning increased austerity, militarism, colonial violence and nationalism. The latter has become crucial in the face of Trump’s threats, rallying workers to support big business, without providing policies to improve living standards.
Simultaneously, they attempt to maintain the centre. Many Canadians fear Trumpian politics, which are (rightly) associated with Conservative leader Poilievre’s brand of right-populism, with all its brashness and vague “anti-elite” sloganeering to hide Poilievre’s pro-business policies.
Mark Carney’s Liberals embody the desires of Canadian capitalism, without the baggage and association with the national enemy — Trump, that is.
Further commitments to state intervention to support big business remain, which includes Carney’s slogan “spending less and investing more.” How will Carney put money in people’s pockets, boost military spending, cut taxes on corporations and provide government subsidies for business? One way or another the working class will pay for big business handouts, probably by cuts to public services. Trudeau’s proposed capital gains tax is also dead on arrival.
He has pledged to reach NATO’s defence spending target of 2 percent of GDP by 2030, and proposed capping immigration to pre-pandemic levels until it returns to “sustainable, pre-pandemic trendlines.”
The world has changed. Justin Trudeau’s veneer of politically correct rhetoric is leaving centre stage. The state interventionism Carney represents is a change from Trudeau, but not one that’s good for working people.
“Climate-Zealot” Carney
The dragon has finally been slain as the infamous carbon tax appears, at least on the consumer end, to be at the end of its life.
Carney’s alternatives include a tax on large emitters, “green incentives” and a “carbon border adjustment,” a tariff on imported goods that release lots of emissions in production — steel, aluminum and manufactured goods, for example.
The oil and gas lobby certainly dislikes Carney, with their mouthpieces at the Calgary Herald calling him a “climate-zealot” and the Edmonton Journal characterizing his agenda as promoting radical change in business. They quote Peter Foster of the Financial Post: “Carney’s plan is to control the global economy by seizing the commanding heights of finance, not by nationalization but by exerting non-democratic pressure to divest from, and stop funding, fossil fuels. The private sector is to become a partner in imposing its own bondage. This will be do-it-yourself totalitarianism.”
Despite this, his tenure at Brookfield oversaw continued investment in fossil fuels domestically and internationally, whilst personally he has supported LNG pipelines, pledging to use “Canada’s emergency powers” to build more.
Carney talks about Canada being an energy superpower of both renewable and traditional (fossil fuel) energy. He will not reduce the production of fossil fuels. The capitalist class still sees fossil fuels as profitable, particularly because the focus remains on exporting abroad to countries with less regulations.
What’s behind the Liberal rebound
Justin Trudeau’s resignation and the end of the carbon tax initially took the wind out of Conservative attacks (they will not get their “carbon tax election”). However, above any other reason, the election of Donald Trump and his subsequent threats of tariffs and Canadian annexation have been the driving force for the Liberal Party’s newly gained chances.
Poilievre’s initial weak stance on Trump’s attacks pushed more mainstream right voters away from the Conservatives, while a stronger stance against Trump, along the lines of Doug Ford, risked offending his far-right base. Poilievre’s recent “Canada First” has not repelled the Liberal resurgence and is seen as an echo of Trump’s MAGA. Liberals have all too happily twisted the knife on this point.
The NDP that many see as the tail of the Liberal dog has failed to take a proactive stance in presenting a left alternative to Trump and the Liberals. Instead of a workers’ program to respond to tariffs, the NDP has largely supported the strategy of big business, with a few minor additions such as an expanded unemployment insurance program. NDP support has dropped in favour of Carney in part because of this lack of a distinct alternative. Why stick with the clipped tail when you could go with the whole dog?
Can Carney win?
Early January, after several by-election defeats, worsening economic circumstances, carbon tax exemption for heating oil which mainly benefited Atlantic Canada, high profile cabinet defections, and dismal polling results, defeat seemed beyond a shadow of a doubt for the Liberals. Rapid change in the circumstances and outlooks epitomizes today’s chaotic era.
Carney represents a shift to the right for the Liberal party, one which masquerades as protecting Canadian workers and business, but realistically only aims to defend the interests of the latter. Some voters have returned to supporting the Liberals out of a sense of desperation against Trump and the threat of the United States, not because of any real policy changes.
Should things stay as they are, the federal election will be a real contest, dominated by competing versions of Canadian nationalism. Current polling points to an outcome ranging form a small Conservative victory to a minority Liberal government.
In any of these scenarios, increasing attacks on the working class and oppressed peoples lie ahead. Both parties promise more of the same or worse —declining living standards, attacking union rights and the environment, colonial encroachment against Indigenous peoples, and increasing nationalism and militarism.
Supporting nationalist trade wars will only pit workers against each other to the sole benefit of the capitalist class. A working-class alternative, including international solidarity against layoffs and workplace closures and for public ownership of key industries, is the best way to protect jobs and livelihoods.
