Not Chandra Arya from under the bus. On Sunday, freshly-minted Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Governor General Mary Simon at Rideau Hall triggering a federal election which will send Canadians to the ballot boxes on April 28.
Parliament that Justin Trudeau prorogue’d in early January is now dissolvedMonday’s previously scheduled return to the House of Commons for actual MPs is now cancelled. Carney, who appeared shaky at his pulpit on the steps of Rideau Hall, has a temporary respite from a skills test in the House against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Instead, Carney’s been catapulted into the ultimate test, a federal election shadowed by unresolved questions about his financial assets, possible conflicts of interest, copy-pasting of Conservative policy promises, and the fact he’s yet to attempt negotiations with Trump.
If the polls are to be believed, the Liberals have performed a magic trick. They’ve managed to maintain virtually the same party, taking it from the very dismal 16 per cent popularity to overtaking the Conservatives in the latest Ipsos
poll by 42-36, all by replacing their leader with another handpicked by the first.
Nanos Research pollster Nik Nanos has
suggested this fight between the Liberals and Conservatives will be akin to “a knife fight in a telephone booth.” There was some speculation that this telephone booth might be located in Edmonton Centre, a riding that if Carney chose to run in, could have signalled affinity for Alberta, but he didn’t.
(Much ado was made of Carney, who is from Edmonton, making a hometown comeback. He participated in an on-ice activity with the Oilers before a game on Thursday. On the social media platform X, Carney shared a polished campaign
video of himself in an Oilers jersey with the number 24, nodding to the fact that he’s the 24th prime minister, skating on the ice and hanging out in the team’s dressing room)
Internal polling must have suggested this wasn’t Carney’s best shot, because we now know he’ll be running in Nepean, ON., where (where, until two days ago, an actual Liberal MP was campaigning in his home riding) there he will face off with Conservative MP candidate
Barbara Bal, a staff sergeant who’s been in
law enforcement for over 27 years and has received a police exemplary service medal.
Of course, the bigger fight is with Poilievre, whose policies Carney has, for the most part, copy and pasted. And Sunday’s announcement of the election was no exception. Poilievre has promised to cut income taxes, and on Sunday, Carney pledged to reduce income tax in the lowest bracket by
one per cent up to $57,375, leading to a savings of about $825 per year for a two income family.
Poilievre promised to axe the consumer carbon tax. Up until recently, the Liberals attacked him endlessly for this. Carney has since reduced it to zero. It is not actually cancelled, despite
claims by the Liberal party. That would require legislation, so the tax is still officially on the books.
Poilievre
promised to scrap both the consumer and the industrial carbon tax, preferring to use tax credits to reward companies that lower emissions. In other words, unlike Carney, he’s chosen to use positive rather than negative incentives.
Poilievre promised to speed up approvals for energy projects. Mark Carney recently
promised the same, saying he’d
create a “one-window” approval process, but failed to explain what he’d do about the Liberals existing regulatory regime that has spooked investors up until now, leading to
projects being cancelled.
Carney’s been
caught speaking out of both sides of his mouth, depending on the language being used and where he’s located, making him an ideal replacement for Justin Trudeau.
Carney wrote in his 2021 book Value(s) that 80 per cent of fossil fuels need to remain in the ground to meet 2050 net-zero targets, saying even Greta Thunberg could do the math. Does this seem like someone who will be interested in pipelines?
Poilievre said he’d reverse the Liberal’s proposed capital gains tax hike from 50 to 66.7 per cent. Mark Carney has cancelled the capital gains tax
increase. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.
It goes on & on like this, giving us a choice between Poilievre with Conservative policies, or Trudeau’s copy&paste of Carney claiming he’ll invoke most of Poilievre’s actual Conservative policies.
Poilievre promised to actually cap immigration and tie it to housing construction rates. Carney promised a temporary cap immigration until numbers return to
pre-pandemic levels. The only problem with that is there was already a housing crisis at that time.
(Carney commented Sunday that the crisis was a post-pandemic issue. This kind of knowledge requires being steeped in Canada, not simply recalling the names of Mr. Dressup’s puppets)
Liberal leader can't stop copying and pasting Conservative policies
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