I would. Carney has shown he’s currently interested in diversifying trade connections and to some extent building sufficient global goodwill that we start calling in favours if needed.
I suppose you can argue that educational levels transfer easily enough but once you start getting into work certification, for Canada at least, a large amount of that sits down at the provincial level which massively complicates that kind of agreement. That’s one of the invisible trade barriers in confederation but fixing that would require a centralization or a more cooperative federalism than the one we have.
Yet another floor crossing: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-mp-marilyn-gladu-crosses-floor-to-liberals-9.7156167
There are 3 byelections next week where the Liberals are heavily favoured in 2 (the third is Terrebonne, which was the race won by a single vote in the general election with a judge ordering a new election due to an allegation of one ballot for the losing candidate being rejected without cause). If the results are as expected, the Liberals will be up to 173 or 174 seats (depending on Terrebonne) and in a clear majority position.
I cannot recall any time in the past where there have been this many floor crossings. One or maybe two in a government’s term, perhaps, but 5?
Poor Pierre Poilievre. I almost feel sorry for him. No, wait, this just in, I’m now hearing that I don’t feel sorry for him at all. He’s got a real problem at this point given that Carney is just barely to the left of any sort of reasonable Conservative position. There’s no daylight between the current government’s positions and Mulroney/Clark-era PC policies outside of the general societal shift on LGBTQ+ and other social issues. Basically, Carney is the reasonable conservative leader that actual liberals have been hoping the Conservatives would pick, he just ended up leading the Liberals instead.
The downside to this of course is that unless the NDP can rise phoenix-like from the ashes there’s precious little actual leftist representation in Canadian federal politics. Still, I’ll take a sane, boring small-c conservative Liberal government over a great many alternatives.
It’s a tired cliche but I am so done with living in the dumbest of timelines.
Still it will be interesting for the NDP. At least they have more daylight between themselves and the Liberals and an unknown leader people don’t have any opinions on.
The Conservatives have an unpopular leader, continue to mind bogglingly yoke themselves to Alberta’s UCP’s fuckwittery about separation, and are only tentatively distancing themselves from Trumpism.
Leave aside her positions on a variety of fronts don’t appear to align with Liberal ones. Waiting for the Liz Truss lettuce to roll cross the floor next.
In January 2020, she declared her intention to run in the 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election.[6] She was disqualified by the Conservative party on March 25, 2020
In February 2020, she suggested that the Canadian government should send in the military to end the pipeline protests along railways.[8]
In June 2021, Gladu publicly opposed and voted against Bill C-6, an act that would end the practice of conversion therapy in Canada.
Why, on what green earth, would she leave PP’s Conservatives for Carney’s Liberals? I just do not understand any ideological reason here. There must be a personal reason. Either PP has seriously breached her trust with his recent demand/email that shadow ministers must justify their positions in preparation for a shuffle (sent to the back bench), or that her constituents were ready to overthrow her and made their feeling overwhelmingly known.
Also lets be honest. Under what logic can the Conservatives still say PP controls his party? Surely you’ve given him the benefit of the doubt already.
The CPC needs a Chrystia Freeland to organize a coup. Yank him like a bandaid. Just get it over with and move on. PP has missed his moment. Another will take his place.
I’m late to the party, but journalist and former Presidential speechwriter James Fallows walked through Carney’s seminal Jan 2026 speech. Worth a look.
I’ll call this out with line-by-line annotations on the text, below. But the main accomplishments of the speech were these:
It made several important ideas “real,” by naming them . That is one of the most powerful things any piece of writing can do. Through the speech, Carney threaded the idea that world relations were at a rupture , not a “transition.” He never dignified Donald Trump by specifying him as the source of this rupture. But he didn’t need to. At each stage of the speech he gave other concepts memorable names, as I’ll note below.
The conceptual originality of the speech was the power of the less powerful . The “great powers” had given up any pretense of self-restraint. By that Carney meant, as the audience understood, Russia, China, and the United States, It was now up to everyone else, including “middle powers ” like Canada, to fend for themselves, and for their values. With many adjustments for scale, Carney was paralleling the message that democracy in the United States now depends less on its once-reliable institutions than on the millions of individuals who are standing up, wherever and however they can.
Fallows continues with 8 more accomplishments of the speech. The walkthrough of the body of the speech requires a subscription (or a 7 day free trial), but the fuller summary is available below.
As a US citizen I think we lucked out having such clear-eyed neighbors on our northern border.
I think, perhaps not immediately but eventually, he’ll take a shot at restricting the notwithstanding clause. Citing Alberta’s separatists, and others using it in perhaps unintended or never foreseen ways.
Canadians have high expectations of this PM, and rightly so. He’s navigated dangerous waters quite astutely, no blunders, no missteps. If/when he gets his majority, I sincerely believe his energy will reshape the behaviour of the house, in a positive way.
Where will PP fit in then? It will be interesting to see.
Personally, I’d like Carney to set up a sovereign wealth fund, like Norway’s. I definitely feel like if anyone can he’s probably the most prepared, education and world experience wise. It would have to be secured against raiding by politicians, of course. Like bulletproof.
I can’t see Carney touching the notwithstanding debacle with a ten foot pole. He purportedly switched his English phone message into a bilingual one, then lambasted the Air Canada CEO the next day about not speaking enough French. He will try to leave constitution hot potatoes to the courts - he has little to gain by unwrapping it.
Carney dies not need a majority to pass legislation. He has already passed a weaker version of what Ontario and BC propose: the ability to bypass some laws and discussion for major projects. One hopes he will do more to bring good ideas into fruition - he deserves his high marks, generally, but has not done that much, though the circumstances are difficult. He has established “Middle Power” cred, kept reasonable relations with the provinces (which he won’t upset with a big constitutional melee) and managed the US perhaps as well as one might (though we shall see).
Yeah, that would require a new constitution, and Carney is smart enough to know that’s a non starter. It’s pretty amazing Trudeau the Elder managed to make anything work on that. Everything since has been a failure. Carney has more than enough to work on just keeping Trump’s BS at bay, he’s not going to borrow trouble he doesn’t need to
In practice, the NDP and Conservatives were not likely to call out Carney at this time on a vote which might force an election. Does it make a difference? It gives the government slightly more confidence, and a little more leeway to pass things quicker. In the past, similar circumstances have sometimes led to Liberal hubris.
Conservatives lost all three by-elections, placing 2nd in Scarborough southwest with 18.4% of the vote, THIRD in University Rosedale with 12.4% of the vote and THIRD in Terrebonne with 3.3% of the vote.
It’s possible that there will be a number of other floor-crossers departing the Conservative caucus in the coming weeks.
I don’t dispute that. At certain times in the past, Liberals have sometimes had shitty leaders. This is not such a time. In the era of Trump and global instability, in Mark Carney we have the leadership we need. Meanwhile, at the other major national party, Poilievre is just painful to watch. What a waste of space!
The Tories need someone like Carney. Someone who can put aside party politics to the extent he or she can, and whose vision of Canada is as a respected sovereign country, a middle power whose word carries weight. Not someone who wants to … naw, we all know how to complete that sentence.