Blanket mandate letter worrying sign for Carney era, observers say - "The prime minister’s decision to forego separate mandate letters for his cabinet is being met with raised eyebrows. Former MP Kevin Vuong told the Toronto Sun the decision to issue a single mandate letter — instead of the customary individual directives to each cabinet minister — is yet another concerning diversion from the norm that’s become typical of the Prime Minister’s Office under Carney. “No budget, no itineraries and now no mandate letters. Somebody should tell Prime Minister Carney that that’s not how a democracy works,” he said. “By refusing to share, we have no choice but to ask: What does he have to hide? Is there something in his ministers’ mandate letters that he doesn’t want Canadians to see?” On Wednesday, Carney issued a single mandate letter — free from Justin Trudeau-era platitudes like diversity, climate change and social justice and instead emphasizing trade, the economy and rebuilding Canada’s relations with the United States. “This seems to be a government that is running less on emotional intelligence and virtue signalling,” said Stephen Taylor, a partner at Shift Media who nonetheless added Carney’s decision to withhold mandate letters does little but consolidate the power of the PMO. “There’s some good words in the mandate letter, but a cabinet appointed full of Trudeau ministers just makes it suspect because that’s the government that will be implementing that agenda.” He said a cabinet boasting members such as Steven Guilbeault and Gregor Robertson should give Canadians pause. Alex Brown, a director with the National Citizens Coalition, said forgoing mandate letters is another worrying sign of this government’s tendency to err on the side of unaccountability. “Justin Trudeau produced 38 of these mandate letters in 2021,” he said. “And yes, all 38 of those ended up being historic dumpster fires, but to just cut the corner here already — by the end of the summer this group will have only sat in the House of Commons for 20 days in total.” While he said the mandate letter had some encouraging signs, Brown said what it lacked most of all was substance aside from almost peripheral mentions of key issues like immigration and housing. “It’s as if they ran the Conservative election platform through ChatGPT and asked them to distil it to 1,000 words and then take out the details,” he said. “It’s so high level it’s almost insulting — it doesn’t get into anything specific.”"
Joe Oliver: Team Carney is already in need of a reset - "What a Trudeauesque beginning to the Liberals’ fourth consecutive term — theatre, false starts, evasion and unaccountability, but absent the sunny ways! The technocrat’s prologue risks rivalling the drama teacher’s denouement. Prime Minister Mark Carney presents a reassuring figure because of his economic chops. Yet he initially directed his finance minister not to table a budget this year. When such blatant contempt for accountability produced a backlash, he backed off and now a budget will come in the fall. What it most needs to do is address Canada’s economic decline. Over the past decade, we have had the largest increases in government spending and debt in the G7 and the second slowest growth in real GDP per capita in the OECD, ahead of only Luxembourg. Carney plans to hide the ballooning deficit by distinguishing operating and capital budgets and reclassifying much expenditure as investment. Credit agencies and investors will not be fooled though the PM presumably hopes a credulous public will be. The overarching public concern that helped get Carney elected was Donald Trump’s tariffs, which, in spite of warm atmospherics at their White House meeting, the president has not yet reduced — as he has for China and the U.K., his most formidable foe and one of his best friends, respectively. And now we learn that Carney had earlier reduced most of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs to zero, which may explain why Trump was so complimentary at their meeting. During the campaign candidate Carney stoked the fear factor and promised to keep his “elbows up.” It turns out he has kept his head bowed and his hands up, and now he has to make up $20 billion in lost revenue from the cancelled retaliatory tariffs. Give him credit for chutzpah but not for candour — which seems to be a pattern. His ministers have also made missteps. Steven Guilbeault, Trudeau’s minister of climate change, now minister of culture and identity, could not let go his radical obsessions and last week undermined the prime minister’s apparent willingness to at least consider new pipelines. Just how sincere that willingness is can be questioned, however. Despite claiming to favour resource development, Carney will not commit to removing the regulatory and statutory impediments to development. Talk is cheap. The Liberals do not seem to realize that the world, not just the U.S., is moving away from exorbitant green policies. Former U.K. Labour prime minister Tony Blair recently said net-zero policies are increasingly viewed as “unaffordable, ineffective, or politically toxic” and efforts to phase out fossil fuels in the short term are “doomed to fail.” Canadians increasingly understand that for economic, strategic, health and social reasons we should develop, not shut in, our immense natural resources, and they have lost patience with gestures that hurt but cannot meaningfully reduce global emissions. For her part, new Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand startled many observers by reciting Hamas talking points while condemning Israel’s war in Gaza. Then her boss threatened sanctions against Israel if it continues military action aimed at securing the release of its hostages and disarming the genocidal terrorist organization that started the war with a massacre. No wonder Hamas just thanked Canada. Carney and Anand seemed either oblivious to or unconcerned by the fact that one-sided criticism risks exacerbating domestic antisemitism and increasing the vulnerability of a community experiencing unprecedented attacks against its institutions, as well as harassment, threats and violence directed at its people. In 2023, according to police reports, 70 per cent of religiously-motivated hate crimes targeted the Jewish community, which represents less than one per cent of Canada’s population. Federal, provincial and municipal governments have failed inexcusably to protect Jewish citizens from illegal aggression that would not be tolerated if directed at any other identifiable minority. As a result, antisemitism has been almost normalized. The prime minister has an ethical obligation to provide moral and practical leadership to counter this assault on Jewish Canadians’ human rights. Mr. Carney currently benefits from a clear political advantage beyond the goodwill of Canadians who want him to succeed. After a decade of performative vacuity and dysfunctional policies, Canadians will warmly welcome even a semblance of normality and common sense. If errors continue, however, buyer’s remorse will set in quickly. It is too early to be definitive, and we may simply be witnessing a beginner’s missteps, but the start has not been encouraging."
Jesse Kline: Following 'most consequential election,' Carney takes extended summer vacation - "When Prime Minister Mark Carney adopted “elbows up” as a de facto campaign slogan, Canadians thought he was referring to the forceful way his government would tackle the economic crisis caused by the trade war with the United States. But judging by his post-election plans, it seems more likely that he was actually referring to the proper way to hold a beer on the summer barbecue circuit. Less than a month ago, Carney was hammering home the point that this was the “most consequential election of our lifetime.”... Given this government’s ambitious agenda, and the fact that Parliament has been out of session since Dec. 17, 2024, one would expect Carney and his new cabinet to buckle down and get to work fixing the myriad problems Canada faces and fortifying the economy to withstand the effects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s fast-moving tariff war. Instead, we learn that following the throne speech on May 27, our new MPs will put in less than a month’s work before breaking for the summer on June 20. The Liberals won’t even bother tabling a budget until the fall. Even teachers are wondering how a group of public servants could have it so good... In his first 100 days in office, Trump issued 142 executive orders, upended the global economic order, signed five bills into law, laid off tens of thousands of public servants and launched a major crackdown on illegal immigration. By the time our Parliament actually gets down to business in September, 140 days will have passed since the election and Carney will have been prime minister for 185 days. Aside from the three-week spring session, Parliament will not have convened for a full nine months — enough time to make a human baby! Yet Carney will have practically nothing to show for it — no legislation (unless his government miraculously gets a bill through the House and Senate during the spring session), no budget, not even a coherent counter-tariff policy ."
Most Canadians want feds to focus on gun crime, not confiscation: Poll - "55% of those polled say Canadian gun policy should focus on introducing tougher measures to stop illegal firearms from being smuggled into Canada from the United States. Just 26% want the government to instead ban the sale and ownership of certain models of firearms, and to compel owners to turn over their property via the Liberals’ “buyback” program. “The poll shows that Canadians know the real problem is illegal gun smuggling, not firearms owned by licenced Canadian gun owners,” said Gage Haubrich, the federation’s prairie director. “Planning to spend potentially billions of dollars on a program that Canadians don’t think is effective is a waste of money.” Introduced by the Trudeau Liberals, Canada’s gun policy has largely focused on disarming licenced Canadian gun owners over closing Canada’s porus borders to smugglers illegally importing weapons from the United States... Experts, observers and even Canada’s police chiefs have long stated that most crime guns seen on Canadian streets are prohibited firearms that were never legal for sale in this country. The Liberals have been trying to enact their firearm confiscation program since 2020 with little success. As of last September, $67 million has so far been spent on the program without confiscating a single gun. As well, a key plan in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s gun platform during the recent federal election — revoking gun licences for those convicted of domestic violence — is already Canadian law. A 1985 amendment to the Criminal Code — Section 109 — states those convicted of violent crimes against a person are subject to mandatory firearms bans. As well, specific regulations separating intimate partner violence as a separate aspect to the offence, was introduced by the Justin Trudeau Liberals in 2019 as part of Bill C-75. Licenced gun owners in Canada are already subject to automatic and daily criminal record checks."
Time to let even more suspects out on bail and crack down even harder on legal gun owners, as part of anarcho-tyranny
Melissa Lantsman on X - "Not even 48 hours in. Mark Carney announces he won’t introduce a budget this year. Because he is a very smart economist and you are not a very smart economist. A Liberal Minister is already fighting pipelines — saying no new ones should get built. Parliament has been shut down since December — and the former failed Immigration and Housing — now Justice Minister is talking about working from home. The new Housing Minister who nearly tripled housing costs as Vancouver’s Mayor — is telling everyone the cost of housing is fine. These people are here to do exactly the same thing they did over the last 10 years."
William Watson: Get the Ozempic! Cabinet has grown by almost two-thirds in two months - "On March 14, new Liberal Leader Mark Carney earned widespread praise for naming a cabinet with just 24 members, including himself. It was symbolic of a new, slimmed-down, more disciplined post-Trudeau approach that would get government spending and employment under control. I don’t know how many Canadians voted Liberal because of the smaller, leaner cabinet but the favourable reviews certainly helped build Carney’s momentum heading into the election. But now the election is over. And just two months less a day later the cabinet is up to 29 people, including Carney — an increase of 21 per cent. Plus 10 helpers, also known as secretaries of state, which, if you count them (and why shouldn’t you?) takes the growth to 62.5 per cent. In less than two months! If Mark Carney had let prices get that out of control when he was governor of the Bank of Canada or England, he would have been turfed and fast. True, the helpers won’t always come to cabinet meetings, which is something. But even without them, cabinet is still 29. If you’ve ever tried to run a meeting with 29 people, you’ll know useful exchange is hard."
What Liberals are planning for federal budget, ‘middle-class tax cut’ - "Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and interim NDP leader Don Davies both said it's unacceptable that Carney will not produce a fiscal plan anytime soon. "There is no road map forward, no economic vision and no willingness to lead," Poilievre said in a statement. "Canadians were told that Mark Carney, the supposed serious economist, would bring competence and clarity. Instead, we're getting delays and disfunction." Davies said Parliament needs to be able to scrutinize the Liberal government's spending plans and Ottawa should not delay federal spending in light of the economic crisis brought about by U.S. tariffs. "It's Parliament's most basic function to authorize and scrutinize spending. We need an economic plan tabled in the House of Commons in June," he said in a statement."
Michael Higgins: Liberal caucus submits to Carney as it did to Trudeau - "Contrary to what many in the West believe, some countries dislike democracy, preferring the strongman, the firm ruler, the dictator. So it is with the Liberals who have shunned accountability and democracy in favour of the autocratic leader. Considering the problems the Liberals had with the last guy, it must be the case that some turkeys really do vote for Christmas. On Sunday, a majority of the Liberal caucus voted down a motion to adopt the rules set out in the Reform Act, a decade old law to give MPs more power. One of the central planks of the Reform Act would give caucus members the right to trigger a review of the party leader... The Liberals, despite overwhelmingly voting in favour of the act, have always chosen not to adopt it. But the failure not to vote for it this time is baffling. Former Liberal leader Justin Trudeau refused to relinquish power and attempts to get him to go bordered on the farcical. During a caucus meeting last October, a letter from MPs was read to Trudeau urging him to step aside. The letter was signed by two dozen Liberal MPs, but such is the fear ingrained in MPs that the letter presented to Trudeau at the caucus meeting did not contain any names. Trudeau responded defiantly within 24 hours saying that he would be leading the Liberals into the next election. Many Liberal MPs critical of Trudeau preferred to remain anonymous with New Brunswick MP Wayne Long being one of the few who was open and vocal. The calls within the party for Trudeau to go kept getting louder and yet the prime minister held on to power tenaciously, gripping it with his fingernails as events tried to prise him from it. By December, a majority of his caucus was demanding he resign; then Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland quit cabinet and with a twist of the knife accused Trudeau of “political gimmicks,” and perhaps most damning was the lack of public support, the approval rating for Trudeau was at an all-time low and support for the Liberals stood at a mere 16 per cent. In the face of all this, Trudeau went skiing and it wasn’t until January that he bowed to the inevitable. And yet on Sunday the Liberals had the power to vote for Reform Act rules, which would make such a shambolic state of affairs history, and they refused to do so... MPs were reluctant to vote for the new rules “out of the fear that such support will be seen as challenging the authority of their party leader.” Fear of retribution and a culture resistant to change has resulted in the “subservience of caucus to the leadership.” In 2015, with Trudeau being voted one of the most stylish politicians on the planet, no Liberal would have foreseen that the leader would have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of office. Now the Liberals have Mark Carney, the world’s rock-star banker and “a quiet genius” according to some reports. Still, some MPs, chastened by the Trudeau experience and afraid that history might repeat itself, were looking to implement the Reform Act rules."
Canada's populist movement will have its day - " Having deluded themselves into believing that the status quo is tenable, many on the left celebrated the result of the recent federal election as proof that Canada could withstand the wave of anti-establishment politics that has swept the West in recent years. The Trump trade war overtook the many other crises affecting Canada as one of the top election issues, but it did not extinguish them. If anything, Trump’s attempt to reshape the global economic order will only exacerbate the problems this country is facing. Canadian cities remain mostly unaffordable and riddled with drugs and petty crime, and the broken immigration system will not repair itself. Prime Minister Mark Carney has portrayed himself as an agent of change. While he still deserves the benefit of the doubt, his new cabinet does not. The most glaring of these is Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver and the new minister of housing. In one of his first media appearances as minister, Robertson asserted that it is not his intention to bring down house prices. Robertson’s words were in keeping with the Liberal government’s track record. Ahmed Hussen, who served as housing minister from 2021 to 2023, infamously tried to explain the federal government’s at-best lackadaisical effort to address the cost of housing by asserting that “mom and pop” landlords would be at risk if home prices fell too drastically. Following the Conservative party’s seizure of affordability as their key issue, the Liberals made a show of shuffling Hussen out of the housing portfolio and replacing him with Sean Fraser. Formerly the most incompetent and damaging immigration minister in living memory, the choice of Fraser spoke volumes about Hussen’s ability to run the file. With Fraser in charge, the government made a series of announcements related to the housing supply, but to little avail. He, too, explicitly said that the government’s “goal is not to decrease the value” of homes. This all occurred in 2023 when the Liberals began tanking in the polls. When Trump started rambling about annexing Canada and launching a trade war, the Liberals seized the opportunity. The American president was all they needed to activate their base and garner the support necessary to remain in office. For millions of older voters, the Canadian election became an opportunity for them to stick it to Trump by voting for Carney, the guy they thought would put his elbows up and hopefully catch Trump on the nose. The Liberal party has evidently taken its victory as a validation of its decade in office, in which the country went into perceptible decline. The Liberal vision of Canada’s social contract involves redistributing wealth to the top of the age pyramid. Whether it’s enlarged pension payments, maintaining the exorbitant rent charged by “mom and pop” landlords or providing cheap labour to big businesses through mass immigration, the Liberal economic platform can only be described as “gerontocratic.” As housing minister, Robertson has clearly embraced the Fraser-Hussen school of thought when it comes to prices and affordability. This is a serious mistake for any government. Generational inequality is at the heart of the populist movement in Canada — not convoys, bigotry or misinformation. It’s why young people and blue-collar workers flocked to the Conservatives in large numbers. As long as young Canadians continue to feel their quality of life decline through rising debt, tightening employment, restrictive housing supplies and worsening mental health, they will become increasingly disillusioned. Youth unemployment is the highest it has been since 2012. In 2022, the number of Canadian-born people who left for the United States increased by 50 per cent over pre-COVID levels. This is fuel for anger and populism, and it is justified. Mark Carney still has a long way to go before the next federal election, which gives him a lot of time to set himself apart from the Trudeau government. Yet he will never accomplish this so long as his party continues to pander to the comfortable and the selfish. Considering that the Liberals plan to allow in 400,000 people a year by 2027, we should not expect demand for housing to slacken or for prices to meaningfully decrease. Crime, drug addiction and homelessness are still rampant, and the Liberals are unlikely to seriously address any of these issues. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government oversaw the great decline of Canada into a more barbarous, low-trust and hopeless society. Unless Carney has a plan to truly turn the page, his political ascension will only have deferred the Liberals’ day of reckoning. The longer that Canada’s present condition persists, the more vicious and hard-line the blow-back will become. Establishment parties across Europe have learned this the hard way, with many right-wing populist parties having decimated their more moderate rivals."
Terry Newman: Where's the 'crisis,' Carney? - "In late March, pollster Nik Nanos found that Canadians’ top concern was “the potential negative fallout of Donald Trump and the threatened tariffs.” That concern quickly shifted. By mid-April, 34.3 per cent of those polled ranked Trump and U.S. relations as the biggest issue. A month later, by mid-May, that number plummeted to 19.3 per cent, with jobs and the economy taking precedence. So, what happened? Did Carney give Trump the old “elbow’s up” so hard he submitted?... Hardly. Closer to the opposite, actually. Six days into the campaign, on March 28, Carney gave Trump a heads up in a phone call that he’d be talking about him during the campaign. In that same call, Carney flattered Trump, calling him “transformative president.” The PMO’s press statement, of course, did not mention these details. There were four more weeks until election day, after all. Sounds like any “crisis” ended there. Why else would Carney feel comfortable enough to share his campaign strategy with Trump? That’s not the kind of card one shows their professed political enemy. It’s something a politician would reveal only to someone they trust, as it could easily backfire. Carney made Canadians the butt of an inside joke between himself and an American president. Imagine how powerful that would have made Trump feel. After this cordial chat, Carney kept piling on the crisis rhetoric. At a mid-April Hamilton campaign event, Carney warned that Trump’s “strategy is to break us so America can own us.” This was reportedly met with boos, assumedly directed at the U.S. president. Carney also suggested there was going to be a historic change in Canada’s relationship with the U.S., often repeating the claim that the “old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military co-operations is over.” Much of Carney’s “our old relationship is over” rhetoric appeared to be based upon the idea that Trump was serious about making Canada the 51st state. “As I’ve been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never … ever happen,” he said at his election victory speech. But signs of exaggeration were clear as early as February, during the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit, signs that Canadians should not have bought into any of this. According to the CEO of the Canadian American Business Council, Beth Burke, Trump’s comments were something that “most Americans don’t take seriously.”... This threat — which helped galvanize Liberal support — evaporated post-election. And when asked about Canada becoming the 51st state by a reporter during Carney’s visit to the White House on May 6, Trump responded, “I do feel it’s much better for Canada. But we’re not going to be discussing that. Unless somebody wants to discuss it.” This suggests the annexation threat may have never been more serious than the “Oh, Canada,” meme which helped spread it in early December... Either way, the post-election meeting between Carney and Trump did not go as the Liberals’ “elbow’s up” campaign rhetoric suggested. The warm feelings between the two were palpable. Trump opened by congratulating Carney, complimenting him on how he ran his race, which we know they discussed prior in that phone call. When asked by a reporter whether he’d like to see his first trade deal be with Canada, Trump replied, “I would. I would love that. I have a lot of respect for this man… He ran a really great election, I thought.” Trump doesn’t usually gush over people who attack him. He tends to take negative comments quite personally. Carney thanked Trump for his hospitality and his leadership, calling him a “transformational president,” saying he wanted to transform Canada much the same. I guess that’s why he’s been photographed signing all those fake American-style executive orders. By the end of the meeting, Trump tried to reassure confused reporters that, “Regardless of anything, we’re going to be friends with Canada.” Weighing in on the Oval Office meeting, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, too, confirmed that Canada-U.S. relations were firm, telling National Post’s Stephanie Taylor that the last 90 days were “behind us.” When asked whether Carney and Trump’s meeting was a restart for Canada-U.S. relations, Hoekstra’s face suggested that even the premise of the question was absurd. “A restart or a reset? No way! … We are great friends. We have been great friends for such a long period of time. You’re not going to change those personal relationships. You’re not going to change those economic relationships, national security… The relationship, from my perspective, and, I think, the president’s perspective, was never in jeopardy.” Well, then. There were other signs things had improved well before election day. Retaliatory tariffs Carney threatened to wage against Trump went elbows down as early as April 16, when his government — mid-election campaign — had decided, according to Bloomberg News, citing an Oxford Economics report, “suspend almost all of its retaliatory tariffs” dropping them to “nearly zero.” As for Canada’s military and security relationship with the U.S., it appears the period of deepening integration is not, in fact, over. It’s been reported that Trump said Canada wants in on Trump’s Golden Dome — a missile defence shield that can identify and intercept incoming projectile threats and destroy them mid-flight — with Carney’s office confirming that discussions are ongoing. Asked Wednesday by Global reporter MacKenzie Gray about this apparent about-face on deepening security relations with the U.S., Carney responded with gibberish,”We are in a position now where we cooperate when necessary, but not necessarily cooperate.” Now, we could chalk all of these crisis flip-flops up to Carney’s superior negotiating skills in going to bat for Canadians, except for that little problem of that early campaign friendly phone call between himself and Trump. In late March, Carney told reporters “I’ve managed crises before. This is the time for experience, not experiments.” He’s managed something, alright — a masterclass in political theatre."