6d ago

Snap out of denial—Mark Carney’s rightward-rushing agenda is just getting started

Just a moment...

Mark Carney can apparently do no wrong. Scroll through comments on news articles, and you’ll encounter an energetic online army defending the prime minister’s every action.

Cancelling a tax on the world’s most profitable tech giants? A genius chess move in his trade war against Trump.

Advocating for new pipelines while the country burns from climate change-fuelled wildfires? A tough decision to shore up Canadian sovereignty.

Boosting spending on the military to record and wasteful levels? A responsible counter to supposed perils like Russia or North Korea.

Expanding surveillance powers to crackdown on refugee rights? Well, at least he’s not Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

The U.S. President’s tariffs and threats have left Canadians anxious and disoriented, giving Carney an opportunity to move fast and with far too little scrutiny. He’s pushing through pro-corporate policies that go beyond anything he outlined on the campaign trail. The agenda is so right-wing, in fact, The Globe and Mail last week gleefully noted that “Brian Mulroney could have endorsed it.”

It’s no wonder that Carney is trying to push through his agenda as fast as possible, while Canadians remain disoriented. The prime minister’s newly-appointed top senior civil servant, Michael Sabia, is clear about this Canadian-style shock doctrine: “windows of opportunity open and close,” he wrote in a letter to civil servants on Monday. Sabia would be one to know: once upon a time he helped none other than Brian Mulroney privatize a rash of Crown corporations. Carney has even openly signalled he’s preparing to purge any civil servants who don’t get in line (with “high-level talk of recruiting other business achievers” to replace them).

We need to drop the Carney denialism in a hurry, and get angry instead. The prime minister, a consummate technocrat who knows how to cater to elite interests, is taking Canadians for a ride, while servicing his natural constituency: bankers, tech broligarchs, oil barons, and arms manufacturers. It’s time we open our eyes, clue in to what’s happening, follow the money—and put up a fight.

36 comments

Get angry, but not irrationally.
Give the Carney government and MPs grace by telling them about what change you want to see.
I still have some faith that Carney is smarter than most politicians, that if there is a popular push for more progressive reforms, he would go along with it.
If opposition is limited to "I'm angry that you canceled the DST! I'm angry that you passed Bill 5!" that can be passed off as too vague of a criticism and doesn't really suggest a suitable alternative direction. Carney did a bunch of right wing stuff because they were confident they would get overwhelming house support, he would have something concrete to show for his first two months in this term. The NDP are kind of disarray and the party apparatus lost touch with local, grassroots campaigns that got people to support them. Even former NDP MP Charlie Angus would say as much.
- I have been spending the last few decades bottling up my anger into a very, very large tank. Let me know when you need me, I'm hoping I'll be able to supply enough for everyone.
  I always knew Carney could potentially turn this way. I was expecting it. I still would have voted for him (if PM was a position we voted for and I was not voting strategically, which my riding lost anyway) but my vote for him was mostly a vote for a pro-Europe alignment, which I still think he'll deliver, albeit probably not in the size or shape I was hoping for. But with really only two choices, it's really hard to pretend we're still able to call this actual democracy. We need electoral reform, and badly, and I'm not sure if we'll really get another chance. We're on a bad path and I don't see any escape routes.
  
  “I don’t see any escape routes” “really only two choices”
  The NDP are right there. You can prattle on as long as you want but if you want to see change then you have to ask for it. He NDP has popular ideas and they were behind so much of the good stuff the Liberals put their name on but people act like voting for them just isn’t possible for some reason and then moan when people they did vote for don’t care after about them after the election.
  The only thing that truly matters is your vote and if you don’t use it properly, while complaining that you’re getting what you ordered, there’s just no helping you.
- It's kind of hard for any public opinion to sway a PM whose whole career has been the role of a central banker, ie., someone whose job is to know better than the whims of the moment. I think this will be exactly Carney's blind spot, that he will be too hard to allow himself to not know better than the hoi polloi.
Yup. Hes right wing it was a gamble going for him to avoid to far worse Poilievre. That at least I still stand by.
The rage worthy thing is that prior to the election he was openly resisting Trump.
That is he revealing himself to be Carney the Coward instead of Carney the Courageous is really bad. Good thing the Bloc will never allow Carney to sell out our Dairy, so we have at least some degree of food security. Also good my partner and I know enough French to move to Quebec if things get bad.
- Good thing the Bloc will never allow Carney to sell out our Dairy
  How're they gonna stop him if he decides to to that? The cons would back him. Sure he would probably lose the next election if he does that, but is there an actual mechanism for BQ to block such a move if he doesn't care to win again?
  
  They passed a law blocking it and the cons are desperate enough to go against him on it, as they already did it once.
  
  The CPC wants government. They need Quebec seats to get it.
  The last Conservative I can remember who openly talked about supply management in Quebec is Maxime Bernier. He is no longer in the party and no longer holds his Quebec seat.
- Slogans and cancelling Prime for a few years isn't going to stop the US from rolling over us, militarily or economically if they really want. It's great everyone is willing to fight a 30 year insurgency but who wants that. I'll be dead before seeing any kind of Canada again. Yes I selfishly want the chance at retirement I was promised my whole life. I don't want a war if it can be avoided.
  Anytime I bring up that this time is the last time Canada can build nukes with at least some plausible deniability that they aren't aimed at the US, I'm told they'll never allow it and it's immoral and it's not the Canadian way. It's the only chance to hold off an American threat for long enough to get through this but apparently hardly any Canadians want them. So negotiation is the only way. And we're not strong enough or unified enough to force our hand. Time is needed to forge new alliances and firm trade partners.
  Carney was always a compromise to stave off a horrible outcome. No one is going to be happy. The right didn't win, the left can't get what they want and the middle has to scrape and fight to just maintain some of what we have. Nowhere near enough people want what the NDP is selling. Too many in the centre were dismissed, or called racist, or misogynistic, or homophobic, or fascist or whatever for veering from the party line. So too many gave up or just turned right just to feel like they'd get something.
  The way this country over reacts to any kind news, real, exaggerated, contrived or just out and planted by agitators is so fucking disheartening.
  
  Time is needed to forge new alliances and firm trade partners
  True. Alliances are key for Canadian sovereignty and security. The nation should be cementing existing relationships with maximum effort. As patriotic as myself and other Canadians feel these days, it must be acknowledged - no imaginable scenario exists in which Canada alone has enough military might to act as a deterrent against US aggression.
  Imagine that a fully functional nuclear arsenal wasn't a generation away, and Canada had one right now. Even then, if the US made the insane decision that Canada was lebensraum, our nation's military might alone could not prevent that.
  I'm not even against a Canadian nuclear weapons program per se. But it makes no sense for Canada to pursue a nuclear weapons program right now, if the objective is to hold off a US threat. It's comforting to imagine that there's some panacea to the threats that Canada is facing right now, but I don't see how nuclear fits that bill in any way.
  It's unfortunate that we even have to think these things. But anyway, that's my 2c.
- That's literally every politician's job.
- People were foolish enough to give the liberals and conservatives enough seats for a majority so we’re going to lose a lot.
I hear a lot of bitching and moaning, and no ideas, no proposed solutions.
- What "solutions" are there? We just had an election. And at the moment, there is no real opposition party. The Liberals and Conservatives are basically aligned on most of this, so between the two of them, they have a potential super majority to pass anything they want.
  Anyone having buyers remorse at this point, is shit out of luck.
  
  That's where protest and disruption come in. The LibCons are doing their best right now to piss off the entire public sector; I have no doubt that union leadership are already talking strikes, at least internally. The people always have power.
- Fair. But it is 'just' journalism. This isn't an opposition party press release
- Cory Doctorow has been proposing some very innovative left wing positions.
- A lot of people expected some kind of magic apparently. It's been about 4 months and there's a lot of big things to deal with. Anyone that thinks he should just stand up to Trump is ignorant of the power that the president unfortunately has.
- It is the one thing that unifies Canadians, whether right or left. haha
Carney is and always was a neo-liberal banker. :It seems inevitable, all things considered, that the fossil-fuel powered neo-liberal capitalism the West (maybe English speaking countries) has experienced since Reagan (and Thatcher) will only set the stage for fascism.
A choice between right or hard right is a choice between the length of fuse you want on the bomb. Unfortunately, the longer the fuse the bigger the bomb - because of the problem-multiplying impacts of things like climate change and poverty/reduction in education etc etc etc.
- This why we need proportional representation already so we can actually vote for leftists instead 1 of 2 horrible options.
  
  Yes please.
  
  If only a party in the past had campaigned on that very issue. I'm sure if they hadn't delivered, we would never elect them again!
If we are moving to the higher and higher levels of defence spending because that’s necessary, then we will have to make considerations about what less the federal government can do in certain cases, and how…we’re going to pay for it.” And while Trump appears unappeasable—yet again threatening elevated tariffs on Canada this week—the weapons and corporate lobbies in this country are cheering.
the ONLY military threat to Canada is from the US. Every other suggestion is a treasonous thief stealing our prosperity for US colonial warmongering force amplification. Unacceptable evil, but unanimous party unanimity on the issue.
The "necessity" is following Trump orders to buy US weapons, at a self destructive pace. Canada's only response to US demands to jump has always been "I can go higher than this if you give us time to gaslight our slaves". This servitude has only increased after Trump's war declaration on Canada. The reward for servitude has been increasing levels of extortion placed on Canada.
Military servitude is 100% part of any overall trade relationship with US. It is fact, Canada's only real bargaining chip. The US does not defend Canada in any way whatsoever, because it is Canada's only threat. NORAD defends the US, and only defends Canada in the sense that Canada adopts the same demonic propaganda evil as the US to make enemies with who the US tells us to.
By far the most inept betrayal of Canada in trade negotiations is our rulership continuing to support US military policy, including Ukraine aid, and now, actively destroying Canada, AS A NECESSITY, to pay for absurd bankrupting US weapons purchases. Canada's alliances must include Asia and Europe, and MUST EXCLUDE the US. Instead, both Canada and EU are increasing military subservience to US, and getting abused harder for the favour.
It was so obvious he is relatively right wing. He only looks centrist when compared the lunatic maple magats
- Part of the right wing strategy is to be so fucking crazy that it makes the non crazy right wing people not seem right wing.
  That doesn't even mean these new moderarte/centrist people even think of themselves as right wing, they might really believe they are centrist, but the whole window has shifted right.
  That also makes normal left wing stuff now seem radical in comparison to before.
No one's in denial. Quit with that narrative.
Might have been a good idea to support the smaller parties by volunteering and donating to them instead of the liberals and conservatives. He’s likely going to resist proportional representation alongside Andrew Sheer while laughing how you thought he would oppose Pierre Poilievre policies.
The 2 corporate parties already have enough support from the rich backers.
Didnt he cut the "generational fairness" capital gains tax hike as well?
Which mainly applied to boomers selling their second homes, which obviously hurt Brookfields bottom line.
it was either him or PP.
So far, I'm very happy with this man. A great replacement for our last trainwreck of a social justice PM we had.
Wouldn't trade Carney for anyone else.

36 comments