Carney claims to be a Trudeau outsider, he’s anything but

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“I’m an outsider,” Mark Carney told the media when taking questions for the first time in his new capacity as a Liberal Party adviser. Given Carney’s resume, including his recent activities, it’s amazing the journalists standing in front of him didn’t burst out into laughter.

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In case you haven’t heard, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada has been named Chair of a Leader’s Task Force on Economic Growth. In this position, Carney will provide economic advice but not to the government or the prime minister. Instead, he will provide it to the Liberal Party and its leader, Justin Trudeau.

“If the Prime Minister of Canada asks me to do something, I will do it. I will serve to the best of my ability,” Carney said when asked why he’s taking on this role with a party that is sinking in the polls.

Carney spoke about how he is bringing in outside ideas and perspectives so that Canada can have “the best possible growth strategy that puts people first.”

“We need real policies, we need solutions not slogans, action not indifference,” Carney said in what sounded like a slogan.

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What can he tell this government that he hasn’t already?

Carney may claim to be an outsider but he’s someone steeped in official Ottawa. He was appointed Senior Deputy Associate Minister of Finance in 2004 by then Prime Minister Paul Martin and then Bank of Canada Governor by Stephen Harper in 2007.

After spending 2013 to 2020 as Governor of the Bank of England, Carney returned to Ottawa and became immersed in Canadian, and Liberal politics again. He was an adviser to Trudeau on how to manage economic recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, Carney spoke to the Liberal Party annual general meeting, not a spot normally given to outsiders.

In 2022, Carney was named chair of the advisory board for Canada 2020, a self-styled “progressive think-tank” started by one of Trudeau’s closest friends, Tom Pitfield, and which acts as a sounding board for left-wing policies for the government to implement. Earlier this year, Carney gave a pair of keynote addresses for Canada 2020, one in Ottawa and one in Toronto.

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On top of all of that, Carney has been speaking regularly to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. He’s even the godfather to one of her children.

“Mark is a personal friend of mine, of very long standing,” Freeland said Tuesday. “He is a highly respected Canadian economic leader.”

That last statement is fair, but to claim that Carney is an outsider to the Liberal Party and this government is simply not true.

So, what will Carney bring to the table that is different? Not much by the looks of it.

“The Liberal Party has created the foundation of our economy,” Carney told reporters.

Yes, yes they have and that is an economy that has seen unemployment rise from 5% in April 2023 to 6.6% last month. We have seen GDP per capita decline for five of the last six quarters.

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In the Liberal economy, more people are unemployed and we as a country, and as individuals, are poorer.

We can add to that a doubling of rent, housing costs that have skyrocketed and while inflation has cooled, food costs about 25% more than it did before the last election. This is not a record Carney should be crowing about.

He won’t tell the government to stop increasing the carbon tax, which is making life more expensive. He won’t tell the government to abandon plans to outlaw gas powered cars by 2035, an unachievable goal unless we all buy cheap Chinese EVs and close down our auto sector.

“Every major economy is accelerating their energy transition, and being low carbon is becoming a key driver of competitiveness,” Carney said.

Carney isn’t bringing new ideas to the table, he’s an attempt to repackage the old Liberal ideas in the hope that voters start buying them again.

It’s not going to happen.

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