In my last post, I suggested that Canada’s Liberals have a mixture of strengths and weaknesses unique within the Western world. That mixture allows them to adapt and reinvent themselves when given the opportunity.
Or to put it another way, while Donald Trump provided the wave, the Liberals provided a surprisingly good surfer and a solid, rebuilt surfboard.
After a spring federal election proved to be inevitable, the Liberals proceeded to do the following:
- Portray Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his party – absurdly, but impactfully – as a threat to Canada’s democracy and independence.
- Wildly exaggerate the possibility of a literal US annexation, whipping Canadians into a mentality resembling wartime mobilization. Left-wing dominance in journalistic and intellectual circles was key to this effort.
- Pick the most credible new leader available, Mark Carney, to shift attention away from longstanding Liberal government failures.
- Ditch some of Justin Trudeau’s most unpopular measures, such as a nationwide carbon tax.
- Focus on big-spending infrastructure, public investment, and industrial policy initiatives, rather than woke culture wars.
- Ignore valid American complaints on key issues such as defense spending.
- Pretend that Canada’s undeniable challenges negotiating a new relationship with the United States can be solved by radically diversifying Ottawa’s security and economic relationships in a multipolar direction.
Much of this was hyperbolic nonsense. But that’s politics, and it must be said, Canada’s Liberals are pretty good at this sort of thing. As it turned out, they correctly judged that Mark Carney was exactly the right candidate for the moment. Under any other circumstance, after ten years of Liberal failures, his demeanor of big-government technocratic paternalism would have flopped. This year, however, it’s exactly what many Canadians welcomed—a financially literate expert to stand up to the US and steer Canada through a protracted trade war without tanking the nation’s economy. Any Conservatives who dismissed Carney as a political neophyte were soon disabused of that notion. Compared to only a few months before, he helped expand Liberal Party support in all directions:
- In the middle of the Canadian political spectrum, among voters otherwise ready to vote Conservative.
- On the Left, among voters normally inclined to vote NDP.
- Among Canada’s influential environmentalist movement, among those who might otherwise vote Green.
- In Quebec, among ‘soft’ French-Canadian nationalists used to voting for the Bloc.
As can be seen in the lower right corner of the polling chart below, these efforts reaped all kinds of dividends. In fact, the Liberals’ biggest gains (colored red) in terms of the popular vote were at the expense of the NDP (colored orange):
Most NDP socialist voters were persuaded that under the circumstances Carney represented their best hope. And many left-wing French separatists who typically vote for the Bloc (colored dark green) were convinced that Quebec would never become independent if first annexed by the United States. The Liberals therefore rallied Canada’s normally divided progressives into a single, massive bloc across ethnolinguistic lines led by Mark Carney. This will no doubt have an impact on the policy agenda of his government. It is not a ‘centrist’ coalition, whatever liberal journalists may say. Rather, it’s a coalition based firmly on the premise of preserving left-wing policies, interest groups, and institutions from all threats, whether American or domestic.
When asked what he thought of all this back in March, President Trump declared: “I don’t care… I think it’s easier to deal, actually, with a liberal.” I believe him. For one thing, Poilievre never made any effort—unlike so many populist conservative party leaders in other countries—to signal solidarity with the MAGA movement. Nor could he, given Canadian domestic political realities. Trump also likes a winner, and he could see the Liberals were surging. The president has been careful to treat Mark Carney with considerable respect all along. This was just the right way to handle Canada’s new Prime Minister, who is a more serious and substantial figure than Justin Trudeau.
Trump is a canny negotiator who thinks tactically rather than ideologically. From the president’s point of view, a Liberal Canadian leader (other than the despised Trudeau) might really be a preferable bargaining partner. Had Poilievre won the election and then proceeded to settle trade differences with the Trump administration, any resulting agreement would have been savaged by Canadian progressives regardless of its content. Carney is in a better position politically, and while the challenges are immense, if he does cut a deal with Trump, it will have fewer left-wing critics than the Tories would have faced.
It’s said that only Richard Nixon could have gone to China. Perhaps only the left-liberal establishment champion Mark Carney can go to Mar-a-Lago. For the sake of US-Canada relations, here’s hoping he does.
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