VAN MAREN: Don't be fooled, there's no new direction coming under Carney

Jonathon Van Maren is a communications consultant with The Acacia Group, a legal consultancy providing services to churches, charities, non-profits and religious institutions

The federal Liberals are hopeful that with Mark Carney’s landslide Liberal leadership win on Sunday, they can finally turn the page on the Trudeau years and embark on the task of convincing Canadians that a brand-new chapter lies ahead.

However, Canadians weary of sky-high housing prices, unaffordable inflation and rising taxes will find that the Liberals have merely exchanged Justin Trudeau for Justin Trudeau’s top economic advisor.

Cash-strapped Canadians hopeful that the suicidal green policies of the Trudeau years were about to end, may now be certain that with the former United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance at the helm, they will continue.

Canadians appalled by our growing reputation as an international cautionary tale due to the horrors of our euthanasia regime — even politicians in the UK currently pushing for legalization recoil at the spectre of being compared to Canada — should know that Mark Carney has already tapped David Lametti, the former justice minister responsible for that regime, to assist with his transition into the PMO. It’s all about Laurentian elite membership: Carney once co-captained the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club with Lametti in the early 1990s.

Carney, the Liberals assure us, is the discerning, responsible leader we need right now. But Carney has already chosen former Trudeau cabinet minister Marco Mendicino as his Chief of Staff.

That is not the proof we were looking for. Mendicino was the minister responsible for sadistic “schoolgirl” serial killer Paul Bernardo being transferred out of a maximum-security prison. To assuage the understandable outrage, Mendicino lied about this. (Bernardo has still not been transferred back.)

The Trudeau government’s record on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms won’t improve with Carney, either.

A federal court ruled that the government had violated the rights of Canadians for issuing the Emergency Measures Act to deal with peaceful Freedom Convoy protestors. Carney’s new Chief of Staff was the minister who lied about the police asking for the Act to be implemented, which the RCMP commissioner denied. 

Oh, and Carney himself accused those protesting the vaccine mandates of “sedition” in the Globe and Mail.

In case Canadians are wondering what “sedition” is, here’s the Oxford Dictionary definition: “Language or behavior intended to persuade people to oppose their government and/or incite rebellion against it.” Will Carney continue the Trudeau government’s ongoing attempt to appeal the federal court’s ruling that the Emergency Measures Act was “unreasonable?”

Liberals exhausted from defending Justin Trudeau’s performative wokeness are no doubt gruntled that there is nothing performative about Mark Carney at all. However, they can be assured that Carney holds all of Trudeau’s views; he just does so while kind of looking like Stephen Harper.

“There’s a fever gripping America. And while it rages, Canadians will remain resolute and true to our values,” Carney told reporters last month. “While America engages in a war on woke, Canadians will continue to value inclusiveness.”

Wokeness is here to stay but from now on, it will have a more competent champion who never plays dress-up.

Carney didn’t even bother to distinguish himself from Justin Trudeau as the Liberals celebrated removing their electoral millstone from their necks on Sunday. In fact, he addressed the outgoing prime minister directly in his acceptance speech:

"Prime Minister Trudeau, my time doesn’t permit me to recognize all of your accomplishments, so I will speak at a higher level. You have combined strength and compassion every day as a fighter for Canada. You have led us through some of the hardest challenges that this nation has ever faced.

At the same time, you have transformed Canada. You have transformed it. You have lifted hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty by moving reconciliation forward and by defending freedom and democracy here and across the world.

Thank you, sir."

After affirming all of Trudeau’s accomplishments — and he really is being modest, since he had so much to do with all of them — Carney did try to herald the dawn of a new era.

“I feel like everything in my life has helped prepare me for this moment,” he said. “Two months ago, I put up my hand to run for leader because I felt we needed big changes.”

However, David Lametti, Marco Mendicino and the other federal Liberals clapped and clapped. They know — and they hope Canadians know — that they are just the people to bring about the big changes that Prime Minister Mark Carney will surely champion.

Forgive my sarcasm. But even Trudeau was smiling. Who knows? Perhaps he will land a job as Carney’s top economic advisor.

Jonathon Van Maren is a communications consultant with The Acacia Group, a legal consultancy providing services to churches, charities, non-profits and religious institutions.