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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government could face stronger pressure next year from both the Conservatives and the NDP.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
Mark Carney is nothing if not self-confident. But even he must have felt a little daunted the day in January that he declared his candidacy for the Liberal leadership. He had never been elected to anything before. The party he sought to lead, though no longer in quite such odium as it was under his unloved predecessor, Justin Trudeau – by the time he was finally persuaded to go they were 25 points behind the Conservatives – had barely begun to recover in the polls. Yet by the day he won the leadership, and the prime ministership in the bargain, they had drawn level, and by the day, two weeks later, he called the election they were a half-dozen points ahead – where they remained for most of the campaign.
Entering politics, winning the leadership, assuming power, winning the election: all these took a certain audacity – but nothing like the audacity that was required for what came next: stealing virtually all of the Conservatives’ policies. Most observers thought the Liberals had strayed too far to the left under Mr. Trudeau, for either their own good or the country’s. Many predicted that Mr. Carney would steer them toward the centre. But I don’t think anyone quite anticipated how shamelessly he would crib from the Conservative policy book.
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Consumer carbon pricing was the first to go – the tax was axed, you might say, the day he took office, with a vaguely Trumpian signing ceremony. There followed the cut in the lowest income tax rate; the clampdown on the border; the lifting of virtually all regulatory restrictions on projects of “national interest” under the Building Canada Act (passed with Conservative support!); the massive, multiyear increase in spending on defence to meet our NATO commitments; laws limiting access to bail for certain offences; and the pièce de résistance, the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, eliminating or easing several of the previous government’s most cherished/hated environmental policies and signalling federal approval for “one or more” heavy oil pipelines to the British Columbia coast.
The transformation has been so dramatic, the appropriation of Conservative policies, even Conservative slogans (“Canada’s new government,” “energy superpower”), so brazen, as to lead some to herald a fundamental realignment in Canadian politics.
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Crude oil tankers dock in Burnaby, B.C. Mr. Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed an energy accord that lays out conditions for a new oil pipeline to the West Coast.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The Carney government, many have said, is the reincarnation of the old Progressive Conservatives – so eerily lifelike that at one point it was rumoured that three or four Conservative MPs would cross the floor to join them, though in the end only two did. Certainly, the Conservatives themselves have been left reeling, grasping for ways to differentiate themselves from their impersonators. For a time, the party seemed to be working itself into hysterics over “runaway” immigration, until someone reminded them that the doors they were demanding be closed had already been slammed shut (this one actually began in the latter days of Mr. Trudeau).
There were further theatrics over a Supreme Court ruling that mandatory minimum sentences for possession of child pornography could, in certain exceptional cases, be unjust, complete with ritual demands for the notwithstanding clause to be imposed – until the government introduced a new law restoring the mandatory minimum but allowing for exceptions in those exceptional cases – without need of notwithstanding.
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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre faces a leadership review in January.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
But how real is this realignment? How long is it likely to last? Mr. Carney’s raid on the centre-right was the product of a set of circumstances that are unlikely to be sustained. There was, on the Conservative side, the enervating experience of defeat, in an election the party had long assumed it would win, a humiliation made worse by Pierre Poilievre’s loss of his own riding. Not only was he forced to run in a by-election to regain his seat in the House, spending precious weeks away from the political klieg lights, but the entire session has been fought in the shadow of a pending leadership review, mandatory after an election defeat, to be held in January.
At the same time, the NDP has been more or less flat on its back, having suffered an even more devastating election defeat, losing 17 of its 24 seats, and with them official party status. Divided, broke, leaderless, they are in no position to threaten anyone, as the budget vote made clear. Mr. Carney, then, has had a free hand to move his party sharply to the right, without fear of giving up ground to his left.
All that may change in the new year. However much the Conservative Leader may have been to blame for the election debacle – he was not only the face of the party, but responsible for its losing election strategy – and however far he may trail Mr. Carney in the approval ratings, Mr. Poilievre is likely to survive the leadership review. No longer obliged to lock down the support of the Conservative base with populist slogans and culture-war poses, the argument runs, he will be free to focus on the centrist voters – disaffected Tories and gettable Liberals – he will need to topple Mr. Carney.
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NDP leadership candidates Rob Ashton, left, Tanille Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson and Tony McQuail afer the French-language debate in Montreal on Nov. 27.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
For their part, the NDP will be electing a new leader in March. At the very least, in its final weeks the race will presumably get them some much-needed media attention. Depending on who they elect, it may also give them a fresh start, a chance to get the voters who deserted them under Jagmeet Singh to give them another look.
So Mr. Carney, who had for months faced little pressure on either flank, may soon find himself fighting on two fronts. A post-review Conservative leader – less grating, more moderate, in tone if not in substance – will be in a better position to appeal to Liberal-Tory switchers, while a revived NDP will tug him to his left, leaving him less room to pitch to conservatives.
That’s the theory. In practice, it may not work out that way.
It’s not clear Mr. Poilievre can exercise the sort of pivot that is envisaged for him. It’s not clear he wants to. And if he did, it’s not clear the party would let him. Every Conservative leader of recent times has faced the same challenge: how to keep the wilder elements of the Conservative base motivated (and, since the advent of the People’s Party, inside the tent), without alienating mainstream voters. Mr. Poilievre proved singularly adept at this, for as long as Mr. Trudeau remained Liberal leader: centrist voters were so fed up with Mr. Trudeau they would look past Mr. Poilievre’s less attractive qualities. That straddle is harder under Mr. Carney. And after four straight election defeats, the party is restless. Some blame Mr. Poilievre. Some blame the party moderates for being too accommodating of Liberal orthodoxies. A faction of young postliberals is urging the party to take the culture wars to the next level: no longer would Conservatives advocate for keeping the state out of these questions, but for using the state to impose culturally conservative norms on society, with every bit as much vigour as the right complains it has done on behalf of progressive causes. This does not seem likely to win votes.
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As for the NDP, it’s entirely possible they’ll botch the leadership vote. The straddle an NDP leader must manage is between downtown progressives, hugely exercised by environmental and identity-politics issues, and blue-collar workers, less exercised by either. The task has been made harder by the emergence of the Conservatives as contenders for the blue-collar vote, in addition to the usual dogfight with the Liberals for the support of progressives. The candidate best placed to keep the peace between the two factions, while appealing to voters outside the base, is Alberta MP Heather McPherson. But the party may choose instead to go with Avi Lewis, whose extreme views on the environment, capitalism and the Middle East seem likely to alienate both blue-collar and soft-left voters. Or it could choose Rob Ashton, a plain-spoken union leader who might firm up support among traditional NDP voters, but at the cost, perhaps, of growing the base.
But suppose a seductive new Pierre Poilievre emerges from the leadership review, with renewed ability to appeal to the centre-right. And suppose the NDP chooses a leader who can challenge the Liberals on the centre-left. What does Mr. Carney do? He’s probably stolen all the Conservative policies he can steal. He probably wouldn’t have a lot of credibility if he tilted back to the left. And the longer time goes on, the more that Mr. Poilievre is able to rebuild his image, and the NDP to rebuild their party, the more acute his position may become.
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Canada’s neighbour to the south looms large over the Liberal government as it deals with the fallout from President Trump’s tariffs and other protectionist policies.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Worse, there are storm clouds gathering: over the economy, with a stock market bubble possibly about to burst, the U.S. likely already in recession and Canada’s major industries under attack by U.S. tariffs; over national unity, with the prospect of a separatist government in Quebec after next year’s provincial election, possibly followed by a referendum on secession in Alberta; and over national security, with a wider war threatening in Europe, NATO threatening to unravel and the American president threatening to annex Canada.
The most frightening prospect is some combination of these: hostile foreign powers – of which the U.S., alas, may now be one – exploiting economic stresses and regional grievances to divide and destroy the country. Suppose we do find ourselves with not one, but two provinces claiming the right to secede. Does anyone doubt that Donald Trump would lend his support to at least one of them? What, then, does Mr. Carney do? Does he wait, and let himself be whipsawed between the opposition parties and overwhelmed by events? Or does he force the issue, call a snap election – or cause one to be held, by contriving to lose a confidence vote – and get out in front of the story: before the opposition parties grow stronger, before the economy grows weaker, before the country falls to pieces?
He is nothing if not self-confident. My money says he goes in the spring.
