Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper released a statement Monday calling for further examination of Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney’s claims about his history.
“I have listened, with increasing disbelief, to Mark Carney’s attempts to take credit for things he had little or nothing to do with back then,” wrote Harper, referring to Carney’s claims he led the country through the 2008 financial crisis as the governor of the Bank of Canada.
Carney is the frontrunner and media sweetheart of the Liberal leadership contest. He is up against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland and former Liberal House leader, Karina Gould.
The winner of the March 9 vote will by default become the next prime minister of Canada — even if it’s the unelected Mark Carney, who has been facing fire for the last week after being caught red-handed lying about his involvement of moving Brookfield Asset Management, a company he chaired until he announced his candidacy January 16, from Toronto to the US.
Carney has been caught in a long list of other fibs, including his claim that he's previously "dealt with President Trump." Carney's office has not responded to the Western Standard's request for details on when such alleged "dealings" took place.
Over the weekend, Carney made yet another baseless claim, this time that Canada supplies more semiconductors to the United States than anywhere else in the world. Records show in fact, that would be Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.
Once a Liberal leader (read: the next prime minister) is selected by Liberal party members who are 14 years of age or older, it will be in their power to call an election. Otherwise the next scheduled election is in October.
Harper calls the looming federal election, which could be called as early as March 10, “the most consequential of our lifetime.”
“Canada should be the wealthiest and most self-reliant economy in the world,” wrote Harper.
“Yet under the Liberals, we have fallen behind, way behind.”
The former Conservative prime minister pointed out Liberal mismanagement of Canada’s oil reserves, natural gas and farming.
“Instead of tapping into our potential, the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, with the advice of Mark Carney, have doubled the debt, doubled housing costs, and doubled food bank lineups,” wrote Harper.
“They’ve blocked Canadian energy while making us reliant on foreign oil, raised taxes on hard-working Canadians, and driven half a trillion dollars in investment out of our country.”
“And now, Mark Carney wants us to believe that his ‘experience’ is the solution. But what is that ‘experience’?”
“Carney’s experience is NOT the day-to-day management of Canada’s economy during the global financial crisis. He has been doing this at the expense of the late Jim Flaherty, among the greatest Finance Ministers in Canada’s history, who sadly is not here to defend his record. But let me be very clear: the hard calls during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis were made by Jim.”
Harper says the real reason Carney is trying to distort history is because "he dare not speak of his actual 'experience' as the Liberals’ principal advisor."
"Carbon taxes. Blocking pipelines. Big deficits. Huge increases in the money supply. The ‘Century Initiative’ on immigration that aimed to rapidly increase Canada’s population to 100 million. Carney has advocated for every one of these bad ideas."
The former prime minister highlights a long list of these issues, zeroing in on the fact that Canada "imports 179 million barrels of foreign oil every year because the Liberals shut down our wealth-generating pipelines," and the Liberals' insistence there "is no business case" for LNG exports, despite Canada being the world's fifth largest supplier of natural gas.
In addition to the Liberals fumbling on energy exports and pipeline production, Harper calls out the decline in agriculture due to Trudeau's carbon tax, which Carney supported while advising the prime minister for the last five years.
“We have more farmland per capita than almost any country, yet food prices have risen 37% faster than in the U.S. because of the Liberals’ carbon tax on farmers and truckers," he wrote.
