HALIFAX—Something odd is happening in Canada’s national politics.
Governing is usually a recipe for a short honeymoon followed eventually by a bitter divorce. Today’s man on the top of the wedding cake has a way of becoming tomorrow’s villain.
A case in point: when Pierre Trudeau burst on the scene in the late 1960s, it triggered a remarkable burst of Trudeaumania. The steady but unspectacular Lester B. Pearson was replaced by a political rock star for the first time in Canadian history.
But it wasn’t long before Trudeaumania morphed into Trudeauphobia. Charisma has a way of ultimately inspiring rejection rather than support on the streets of politics.
Part of that could be explained by Trudeau’s unusual personal style, a combination of magnetism and intellectual daring that came to be seen as a towering arrogance. But Trudeau’s changing public reputation was mostly tied to the thankless task of governing. The longer any leader runs a country, the less popular they become. Making decisions means making detractors, if not enemies.
This brings me to PM Mark Carney. After a year as prime minister, Carney is more popular than ever with Canadians, according to the polls. That is a little odd. For starters, there is the great, grey cloud of the affordability crisis hanging over every Western country, including ours.
Since Carney ran on the promise to reduce costs for Canadians—which have not come down—it would not be unreasonable to think that would cause him political problems. But not even rising gasoline prices seem to have done that. Canadians appear to be unusually patient with this prime minister, which is all the stranger because the Liberals have ruled the roost for more than 10 years.
It may seem bizarre to say it, but it’s just possible that Carney has pulled off a political miracle of sorts. He appears to have persuaded voters that he operates on a plane beyond the partisan and merely political.
Instead, he comes off as a Canadian doing his best to advance the interests of the country in hard times. That could be why Canadians don’t blame him for the hardships everyone is facing. And that could be why he remains popular despite American tariffs, food and energy prices, and the rising national debt.
PM Carney has not only apparently won the trust and admiration of Canadians, buy he has also been a hit on the world stage. There are many examples of that, but the best one is his recent invitation to attend the European Political Summit. It marked the first time a non-European leader attended the meeting.
The PM put that unprecedented invitation to good use. He held bilateral meetings with the leaders of several countries, including France, Italy, and Spain. He also met with the European Council and the European Commission. At all of those meetings, he pushed Canada as an excellent destination for global capital investment. Carney also took part in talks on collective security, an important subject as the United States continues to back away from its traditional role as leader and protector of the free world.
Carney’s enduring popularity in tough times for government is also helped by the unusual state of his political opposition. Although the NDP has a new leader in Avi Lewis, an accomplished person with an impeccable political lineage, the party has such great problems that Lewis must look to them before entering Parliament to critique the government.
Lewis has rightly concluded that the NDP is in an existential crisis, having lost party status under former leader Jagmeet Singh in last year’s election. Lewis knows that the NDP’s future is bleak unless it wins that status back. If it doesn’t, Canada will be on track to become a two-party democracy. In the meantime, the Liberals won’t have much to worry about with the NDP in Parliament.
For very different reasons, the Conservative Party of Canada is almost as irrelevant as the NDP, at least in the short term. Despite deep dissatisfaction with the Liberals before the last federal election, voters had even greater antipathy toward the CPC. Canadians simply didn’t like them, and don’t now see leader Pierre Poilievre as prime-ministerial material.
Despite being excellent on his feet in the House of Commons, besides his indefatigable efforts to lay out the shortcomings of the governing Liberals, Poilievre is simply not making the sale. Canadians are not buying Poilievre’s absurd claim that Carney doesn’t have the economic credentials to run the country. And one more thing: when they look at Poilievre, a lot of Canadians continue to see Stephen Harper.
With a reputation for being a pragmatist rather than a partisan player, and with his opponents weakened with probes of their own, it looks like Carney could be PM for as long as he wants. But there are no blank cheques in politics. Canada is poised to enter talks on the most consequential issue facing the country—a renewed trade agreement with the U.S.
And not just any U.S., but one run by a malignant narcissist who thinks that the only good deal is one that mirrors his demands. Every Canadian knows that the country needs a deal with our most important trading partner. But when does negotiating with Trump equal surrendering to him?
Saying ‘yes’ is good. But ultimately, the acid test for Carney is whether faced with a bad deal, he is prepared to say ‘no.’
Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist.