McTEAGUE: Carney... how he got the top job is a national scandal

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable EnergyWell, the coronation is over, and it was exactly as anti-climactic as I expected it would be. The Liberals pulled out all the stops to get Mark Carney over the finish line, preventing real challengers from running, and carefully stage-managing the whole farce so that (with the notable exception of Frank Baylis) no one even attempted to discuss anything of substance. And, after all of the water-carrying and kool-aid slinging, 150,000 people — in a nation of 40 million — got to choose our newest prime minister, a man who has never submitted himself to the voters, who doesn’t even have a seat in parliament. It is a national scandal.To me this is all a perfect encapsulation of what the Liberal Party of Canada has become since Justin Trudeau took the reins in 2013. As a decades-long member of that party, and having had the honour of serving as a Liberal Member of Parliament for 18 years, I can attest to the fact that it was once a party of practicality and diverse viewpoints — the most important kind of diversity there is — all ordered toward the good of our beloved nation.But once Justin took over, on the strength of the Trudeau name, it quickly devolved into a cult of personality, built on hair and socks, and animated by fluffy, far-left magical thinking from which good Liberals were forbidden from dissenting. Out went practicality and any concern for good governance. In came the world’s “first post-national state,” and Net-Zero carbon emissions. Why? Because it is the current year.Well, predictably, it all fell apart, though it took some time for Team Trudeau to spend down the capital we built up over the years, when better men and women were in power. And now that we Canadians find ourselves in a tough spot of his creation, Justin has handed the keys over to his hand-picked successor and co-conspirator, Mark Carney.But aside from the man at the helm, what is actually going to change? Nothing of substance. Sure, Carney has offered some criticism of Trudeau’s Carbon Tax, but only once the public had soured on it. Even then, he began walking back his support by saying the Carbon Tax had “served a purpose up until now,” and he’s now pledging that his government will “immediately eliminate the consumer Carbon Tax,” which is to say, the portion of the tax which is most visible to voters. That really is his problem with it — not that it makes it harder for working Canadians to gas up their cars, heat their homes, or afford groceries. No, it’s because the tax is paid by consumers directly, and so it’s too easy to see how it’s making our lives more expensive. Meanwhile, the industrial Carbon Tax, which is paid by businesses, will remain untouched, or perhaps raised, despite the fact that those costs will ultimately be passed on to the consumers.This “sneaky” move is characteristic of Carney’s career thus far. Remember that he is the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) and its subgroup, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which seek to harness the might of global finance to force Net-Zero on people who would never vote for it, and stop banks from investing in oil and gas projects, to the detriment of both their shareholders and the wider Canadian economy.This scheme came apart pretty quickly earlier this year, as banks in both the U.S. and Canada withdrew from Carney’s pet projects in response to accusations that they were engaged in collusion. But even so, this story tells us quite a lot about Carney’s “Green” elitist instincts. These could be summed up as follows: Never trust regular people to make decisions about their own lives. Make those decisions for them, and at such a high altitude that they’ll have no one to complain to once they realize that something has gone wrong.This is not the way to prosperity, especially with the perilous economic threats we’re currently facing. Trump’s tariffs have bite because Trudeau and Carney have left our economy in such a precarious state. And now Carney is proposing that we go toe-to-toe with the world’s largest economy while continuing to smother our own economic vibrancy with essentially the entire Net-Zero superstructure intact — excluding, apparently, the Consumer Carbon Tax, but including the Industrial Carbon Tax, ”Clean Fuel” regulations; Electric Vehicle mandates; and the heaps of legislation and regulations which impede our building new pipelines and selling our oil and gas overseas. It’s madness!Unfortunately, Donald Trump is doing his darndest to help them attempt it. I’m skeptical of the current polling numbers which show the Liberal Party soaring. I know enough of these pollsters to know where their sympathies lie, and whom they owe favours to. But the Rally ‘Round the Flag sentiment is real. And the people who put Carney in power are hoping it will last long enough to keep them competitive in an election. Maybe it will.Hopefully Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives can stop that from happening. And their best bet would be to acknowledge what I’ve been saying for quite some time — that ”Axe the Tax” is not enough. That the more they rely on piecemeal policies, bandaids for the gaping wounds in our economy, the easier it is for Carney and the Trudeaupians to just adopt their own twisted versions of them while ultimately changing nothing at all.So Mr. Poilievre should pledge to not just Axe the Tax, but to Nix Net-Zero. The good of all Canadians, no matter their party, depends on it.Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.