By Ray Rivers
February 21st, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
The clock is ticking for Liberals to vote in a ranked ballot online starting February 28th to select Canada’s next PM. Among the finalists will be the two current members of Parliament, Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould. Both of these candidates, as former Finance Minister and former Government House Leader respectively, can share some of the credit and/or accept blame for the governing Liberal record going back to 2015.
Freeland’s platform now disowns some of that record though she had served as Trudeau’s number two. She would axe the carbon tax and cancel the increase in capital gains taxation. Freeland also proposes imposing a 100% tariff on Tesla electric cars and bribing Canadian doctors and nurses to return here to work. Burlington’s Gould is promising to cut the GST to 4% for one year, enhance employment insurance and initiate a guaranteed income program.
Former MP Ruby Dhalla was disqualified as a candidate for the leadership of the party on a unanimous vote by the leadership and expense committees to drop her from the contest.
Dhalla served with Paul Martin and pivots to the ‘right’ of the party, proposing to deport ‘illegal immigrants’ and slamming drug users with life sentences. Baylis, a Montreal businessman, would limit senators and MP’s to 10 years in office. And among other ideas he’s also keen on recognizing a Palestinian state.
Mark Carney speaking to Liberals in Hamilton.
But the heavy betting is on former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney. Carney played a key role in navigating Canada through the 2008 global economic downturn and as Bank of England Governor helped that nation through its Brexit transition. He held a UN post as climate envoy and had previously served as special advisor to Mr. Trudeau. However, Carney sees himself as an outsider, never having held a parliamentary seat. But he has brought a breath of fresh air to the Party, which as the polls tell us was in critical need of a re-set.
Carney has racked up the greatest number of Liberal Cabinet endorsements to date. Recent polls indicate that as leader he could bring the Liberals back from a double digit lag to a dead heat with Mr. Poilievre’s opposition Tories. That is something that has brought fear and panic into the Conservative camp which had been ever so keen to capitalize on Trudeau’s plummeting popularity. And that means Carney needs to watch out for dirty tricks. In that vein social media trolls falsely posted that Carney’s recent meet and greet of Liberals in Vancouver was AI doctored to create the illusion that the crowd was bigger.
Carney is an economist but he knows the campaign of disinformation and lies about carbon pricing has poisoned that economic instrument, so it is destined for the history books. He plans to introduce a middle income tax cut to compensate for loss of the carbon tax rebate, however. Carney plans to run a balanced budget regarding government spending though he has not ruled out borrowing for infrastructure projects which would benefit future generations.
Mostly Mr. Carney needs to attribute the climate of economic uncertainty Canadians are now facing for much of his growing popularity. US president Trump’s economic war on Canada starting with tariffs on some of our most important exports has this country on the defence. And Canadians would prefer to see an experienced professional at the helm rather than someone like Mr. Poilievre, who has almost never held a real job outside of working for the Conservative Party.
Rivers, upper right (where the red dot is) covering Mark Carney during a speech he gave in Hamilton earlier this week.
I was invited to one of Mr. Carney’s meet and greet meetings in Hamilton recently. He addressed the crowd in a soft spoken, sincere tone, without bashing his opponents. I found that a refreshing change from the dynamics of what we’ve seen too often in Ottawa politics. Let’s hope it continues.
Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Background links:
Liberal Leadership – Carney – Karina Gould – Dhalla –
All I know is I won’t vote for anyone who won’t and hasn’t spoken out bluntly against Trump – won’t vote for anyone ever who is supported by him and Musk or supports them. I also despise the odious F@&# signs and the nasty attacks on Carney. That type of politics which led us to where we are thanks to Trump et al has no place in a decent society and I’ll vote against it.
My wife says that I should drop the oxy from oxymoron as this would be a better descriptor of yours truly.
Mark carney was Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Finance from Nov.2004 util Feb. 2008 when he became Governor of the Bank of Canada. He was definitely involved in guiding Canada’s finances through the financial crisis from 2007 to 2009.
What has been forgotten is the role that Julie Dickson, the Superintendent of the Office of Superintendent of Financial Institutions, played in the lead up to the financial crisis and during the crisis It was Dickson who maintained sound banking policies in Canada that prevented many of the destructive US investment schemes from being implemented in Canada.
The Harper and Trudeau governments have given her very little credit in helping to save Canada’s bacon.
We, myself included, need to tone down the partisan spin. I am a conservative liberal: an oxymoron.
You raise a good point Peter, and interestingly there’s an article from Terry Newman in the National Post this morning on this very topic.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/terry-newman-carney-did-not-protect-canadians-from-the-2008-financial-crisis
As the article explains, in his interview with Jon Stewart, Carney has no problem taking full praise for guiding Canada through the financial crisis, with no acknowledgement of others prior to him that set up the banking regulatory regime in Canada, or others like Jim Flaherty, at the time who was one of the leaders in the “war room” during the financial crisis.
In military terms this would be referred to as “stolen valor”. This is the issue.
Yes, he was at the BOC, but not the lead architect as he promotes him self as.
Carney unbelievably makes Trudeau look humble. In his Edmonton coming out announcement he stated that he had personally “saved two economies” and “managed many crisis”
His arrogance has no bounds when he confirmed in another recent interview that he was both a globalist & elitist and that was precisely what “Canada needs”.
Last week it was reported that he told an audience in British Columbia that we would build an East West pipeline and went on to tell others in Quebec that he would not.
The debates will be a farce as is the leadership contest itself. The high point will be Carney’s inadequate command of French.
The Liberal Party have shut down parliament with a sham leadership contest is thereby fueling an economic crisis to mitigate their electoral collapse. They should be charged with treason.
On a side note Trudeau will be accepting a position with Atkins Realis. You heard it here first.
Carol and we all know how well things are going in France. If John wants to help the average citizen he should consider voting Conservative and not for a coronated self described globalist & elitist. This is a sham of a leadership. Canada deserves better than an acclaimed non elected ideologue. The current situation underlines the weaknesses of our outdated political system. The Americans will rightly roll with laughter at how unserious Canada has come.
Thank you for your comments. Just to be clear. The primary reason Alberta oil is discounted has to do with the quality of the oil and the distance of production to refineries. Oil sand bitumen is heavy oil, the dirtiest oil from both a production and refining perspective. No matter how many pipelines we have it will always be discounted because it is of inferior quality to Brent oils.
Second, there are also additional costs with moving Alberta bitumen by pipeline since it has to be diluted in a costly process in order to avoid clogging up in the long pipelines it has to travel. While market competition may play a small role in pricing, it is not the major reason for the discount.
Don’t believe me? Here read what the Alberta government says…. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/5e6f425a-e1c7-441a-9aa0-64890e4ecade/resource/b7080f88-f748-45f0-8294-81d32a7a834c/download/13-Explaining-oil-price-differentials-formatted.pdf
While oil and gas are Canada’s largest exports by value, the impact of that industry is not cost free on our economy. Our governments give billions of dollars in subsidies every year to big oil, and the environmental costs of mining the tar sands are incalculable – a clean up legacy left for future generations. The price we pay at the pump is only a fraction of the true cost of using that fossil fuel even with a carbon tax, when health, the environment and climate change are also considered.
Yes, I am very much aware of those details.
The last line in the report reads, “But it’s also important to note that price discounts are impacted by Alberta’s access to markets. The easier it is to move our oil to refineries around the world, the less the price discount will be”.
This is my point regarding the benefit of getting our product to world markets and not relying on one customer – the US.
The US refineries like our heavy oil because it produces many more products than lighter oils, its more valuable to them.
So what’s the option? Buy oil from dictators and Russian oligarchs that finance missiles and war machines, or mine and refine it ourselves creating valuable jobs in the most socially and environmentally sensitive way.
I have personally walked restored oil sands mines at Suncor, to say its not restored is a lie, fear mongering and insult to Canadians working on these projects.
As an aside I have a Master Degree in Chemical Engineering, worked on oil sands projects from 2007 to 2015, everything from demineralize water supply for power generation, advanced mobile water systems, treatment of tailing pond water, and various water systems for the Red Water refinery in Fort Saskatchewan all using great Canadian made technology!
Let’s get some facts straight about Carbon Tax Carney. One, he was the governor of the BOC starting in 2008 after the 2007 financial crisis began. Canadian monetary policy at that time was set by our finance minister Jim Flaherty and PM Stephen Harper. That fact that Carney does not correct the record on this and steals credit from someone who has pasted (Flarerty died in 2014) is despicable.
Second his record with the Bank of England is poor. He pushed politics taking a stand against Brexit which was not his role as a bureaucrat. Drove up inflation and drove up the cost of energy in Britain, which now has one of the highest energy costs of developed nations. In the UK he is known as Carnage Carney.
His Net Zero alliance for banks that he started is now crumbling, Canadian, US and other foreign banks have seen the light of this fallacy and have pulled out of the alliance.
He has been advising the Trudeau government since 2020, he is not an outsider as he claims and we have been through one of the worst economic conditions, high inflation, high housing cost, low per capita gdp growth and so on.
He wants to remove the consumer carbon tax and replace it with a larger corporate carbon tax, or “shadow carbon” tax has he calls it. He blatantly lies when he claims these costs will not be passed on to consumers and you will get no rebate checks! He wants the carbon tax hidden, the biggest problem with the current carbon tax is that its visible and too low!!
He is on record stating that he supported the decision to abandon the Northern Gateway Pipeline and Energy East Pipeline. What a colossal mistake that was, and we can only image how much richer Canada would be with these pipelines. Millions of dollars a day are lost as a result.
Here is a quick calculation, we sell oil to the US at a discount to WTI, its called Western Canada Select and its price to day is about $60 USD per barrel. Once oil is at an ocean port its price now becomes “Brent Crude” which today is about $75 per barrel. For every million barrel per day we ship to the US we are losing $15,000,000 USD per day! Or, $21,000,000 Canadian per day! We send 4.5 million barrels per day of oil to the US, you do the math.
I could go on, but day by day, it is clear that Carbon Tax Carney, who changes policy depending on which side of the county he is on and who he is speaking to, is no different than a snake oil sales man or a carpet bagger peddling failed policies.
Change your vote , the NDP will get nothing out of Poilievre …and they have zero chance of winning the election..we need to do what France did…the left leaning parties joined forces to keep the far right out. If Poilievre gets in, he will be a Trump clone and we know how that is going .
I’m here to report Carol, that it is going very well in the US for Trump, in spite of what the CBC is telling you. I spend 4 months every winter in southern California, the most left leaning state and meet many different people every day. I can report that many are very pleased with the approach taken to illegal migrants, fentanyl, government waste and elimination of DEI policy especially in the military which is now seeing record levels of recruitment. We as Canadians should also thank Trump for identifying the major fentanyl, money laundering and Mexican cartel and Chinese Triads that are now operating in Canada. Neither Trudeau or Carney believe this to be a crisis. Only Poilievre does.
Although I am a card-carrying NDP’er and always vote for them, I find Mark Carney refreshing and clearly very smart. The Livberals could do worse.
Just for your guide Carney never helped the UK through Brexit. He was a hinderance and a member of ‘project fear’ putting up roadblocks every chance he got. He even suggested Brexit would lead to a ‘technical recession’ which was factually incorrect. He was eventually forced to admit through gritted teeth he was too gloomy about the UK outlook, growth was in fact five times faster than he calculated. All this however, did not stop him from continuing to use QE on steroids despite the economy not needing it, the effects the UK are still feeling today. But the reality of his tenure was that he simply did not respect the democratic process. Canadian voters should be wary.