Why would anybody want to be leader of this Liberal Party?
Most don’t. One by one those supposedly on the inside track withdraw from the race… Dominic LeBlanc, François-Philippe Champagne, Melanie Jolie...
And no wonder. Given what the polls say about Liberal chances in an election that must come in October, and may indeed come in a matter of weeks, the party leadership is a poisoned chalice, deep and wide.
No doubt the high ($350,000) entry bond and the short (January 23rd) period allowed to qualify, helped narrow the field, as they were intended to do.
But the real killer of ambition is that at the end of the race, the ‘winner’ will win what Progressive Conservative Leader Kim Campbell won in 1993, the dubious distinction of being prime minister for a nanosecond, then leading the remaining horses to the knacker’s yard.
Those of us who remember Kim Campbell and enjoy history's repeating narratives will get over it, but presently we are sad to see another woman from BC, Christy Clark, has also pulled out of the contest. But no one can fault her judgment.
That apparently leaves a handful of people nobody has heard of, and Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney.
What drives them?
After the way she was cast off like a disposable glove by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ms. Freeland might see claiming the party leadership as some kind of personal vindication: Even if she was Prime Minister for long enough only to lose a confidence vote, her official portrait would one day hang beside Trudeau's in the main corridor of the newly renovated House of Commons.
Would that tie the knot nicely on an unrewarding friendship? Perhaps. And from writer to prime minister in 12 years? Not bad for a journaliste engageé.
Explaining Mark Carney's interest is a different matter.
What on earth could he want with it?
It won’t be for the $400,000 prime ministerial salary. That’s chump change if you’re already Vice Chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global investment firm with more than $1 trillion of assets under management.
And unlike Ms. Freeland, it wouldn’t be for the sake of reputation. He’s been Governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. Either would be enough to coast on for the rest of his life.
Influence? He’s the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, a position for which he receives no remuneration but which opens the doors to government around the world.
For any of the reasons that people normally seek greatness, there’s nothing in it him to be Prime Minister of Canada.
He’s a made man — and, a consummate ‘insider.’
That might surprise watchers of Jon Stewart's Daily Show. In a recent episode, Carney told the unwitting Stewart that as a contender for the Liberal leadership, he was an 'outsider.'
Well, not really.
As Calgary MP Michelle Rempel-Garner says in her Substack, Carney is “a close advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a key architect of the Liberal government’s much-criticized agenda, and a high-ranking member of the world’s most elite organizations.”
Think World Economic Forum then, and also the Bilderbergers, The Group of 30 — Carney is the G30 chairman — Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. They're Carney's crowd.
As Rempel-Garner said, 'He's not in the club, he runs the club.'
Reasonable people could disagree on the merits of what these organizations seek to accomplish: It is not prima facie proof of malicious conspiracy to care about the environment.
Nevertheless, it is unarguable that these organizations share a broadly similar point of view on what Mark Carney is all about — 'saving the planet' by taxing carbon and provoking disinvestment in those companies that produce it. And for Canadians, that has profound and disturbing implications.
So Carney is not an Outsider. Rather he is an urbane — charming, even — intelligent and supremely well-connected Insider. And unlike the man he seeks to replace — perhaps — he's smart.
He also appears to be a highly motivated, driven ideologue who aspires to the highest office in the land for a non-obvious reason.
Could it be for the sake of addressing not those things closest to the hearts of Canadians, but closest to his?
To work out some give-away deal with the NDP that allows him time to carry out an anti-industrial grand slam? To make a self-fulfilling prophecy of his ominous predictions over the years that assets invested in energy would eventually become stranded? To throw a switch that once thrown is for practical purposes irreversible?
And in so doing, achieve a personal objective in which he has coached the willing but talentless neophyte Trudeau?
The evidence of everything he's ever said or done about climate change and carbon reduction suggests he wants to do good to us, against our will.
The evidence suggests he is high-minded. Certainly, he does not aspire to be prime minister for the sake of having his portrait on a wall. From one perspective, that's commendable.
From the other, it's something to fear.
Stephen Harper was once accused of having a 'hidden agenda.' What's Mark Carney's?
