Carney’s trick is not talking about his climate policies. Ivison

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Pierre Poilievre put forward a solid pitch to voters during his visit to St. John’s on Tuesday, focusing on the “lost Liberal decade” and the policies that contributed to the “poorest growth in the G7.”

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He used a letter sent to political leaders by the CEOs of Canada’s 14 largest energy companies as a frame for his case, contrasting Conservative positions with those of Mark Carney’s Liberals on five key demands: the need to simplify regulations by overhauling C-69, the Impact Assessment Act; the need to ensure major projects are approved within six months; the removal of the cap on oil sands emissions the CEOs argue will shrink production; the requirement to kill the carbon tax on large emitters; and the desirability of creating ownership opportunities for Indigenous Canadians by extending federal loan guarantees.

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Poilievre went back to basics, taking his Sharpie marker pen to a poster board and ticking off his support for all five measures, while marking an “X” for the Liberals against each one.

The Conservative leader made the case that President Donald Trump wants Carney to win because the Liberal leader will keep the Canadian economy weak. The industrial carbon levy is a tax on the industrial backbone of this country, he said. “It’s another area where Trump and Carney agree — they both want to tax Canadian industry, Trump with tariffs and Carney with a carbon tax. I want neither,” he said.

It was all designed to put the Liberals on the back foot, and it succeeded to a limited extent.

Carney was even asked at his event in Winnipeg whether he plans to repeal the Impact Assessment Act and was forced to concede he will not (even though he could have pointed out that the Supreme Court of Canada has judged it unconstitutional and requires a radical overhaul by the federal government).

So far, so good for the Conservatives.

If the election becomes about which leader is most likely to kickstart the resource industries in this country, then Poilievre is well placed.

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But for now, the 2025 general election is about who is best suited to navigate Canada as it sails into a perfect storm; it’s about who has the judgment and experience to know when to sail, when to tack, when to catch the tide and when to ride it out.

Poilievre repeatedly talked about Carney being “weak and out of touch” but the Liberal leader’s tone is in tune with the mood of the country.

“We face the biggest crisis of our lifetime. President Trump is fundamentally restructuring the U.S. economy and that means our economy needs to change dramatically as well,” Carney said. “As I made clear to President Trump in our phone call last week, I will reject all attempts to weaken Canada, to wear us down, to break us down so America can own us. That will never ever happen.”

Carney has made progress in neutralizing accusations that he is against growth in the resource sector

Poilievre portrayed Carney as a radical environmentalist who advised Justin Trudeau to oppose the Energy East pipeline (unlikely, given Carney was fully engaged with the fallout from Brexit as the governor of the Bank of England in 2017); and, of advocating that 50 per cent of global oil reserves should be left in the ground, if the world is to live within its carbon budget (which Carney did in his book Value(s)).

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But like a good conjuror who manages to get his audience to take the card he wants them to pick, Carney has thus far managed to avoid talking too much about climate policies.

In fact, his event in Winnipeg at the New Flyer bus manufacturing plant was designed to celebrate the death of the consumer carbon tax, since it coincided with the first day the tax was no longer in effect at the gas pumps and prices were falling.

It takes some gall for an assailant to look for gratitude because he stops punching you in the face, but anything goes in a general election.

Carney pivoted from Trump to talking about how Liberal policies like the repeal of the consumer carbon tax, child care and the tax cut he has promised will make life more affordable for Canadians.

But he also attempted to blunt Poilievre’s attacks on his economic plan.

In his reply to the question on whether he would repeal C-69, Carney said he would speed up approvals by making sure federal and provincial processes dovetail, so that there is only one assessment per project.

He further pointed out that he is proposing to double the Indigenous Loans Guarantee program to $10 billion and broaden it to include other industries, such as critical minerals.

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Carney remains a strong proponent of the industrial carbon tax and he is not likely to win the energy CEO vote. But he has made progress in neutralizing accusations that he is against growth in the resource sector — a charge that could fairly have been levelled against many members of the Trudeau government.

It is classic triangulation, the strategy pushed by former president Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, Dick Morris, that advocates use of traditional liberal and conservative policies and rhetoric to achieve maximum political popularity.

In Morris’s words, you try to solve the other side’s problem, using solutions from both parties to do so, while still continuing to focus on your own issue agenda. “Triangulation as a methodology involves a move to the centre. As an ideology it calls for turning down the volume of one’s own ideas and listening instead to the voices of the ‘inner mind’ of one’s own nation,” he wrote in his 2003 book Power Plays.

Leaders like Clinton and Tony Blair in the U.K. who tried to tread their own Third Way faced partisan gravitational pull from the left. But the Canadian Liberals were so ravaged by the time Carney won the leadership that he has managed to reposition his party with minimum fuss.

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The “inner mind” of the nation is as apt to change as that of the American president and, if Trump goes lightly with tariffs on Wednesday, we could see shifts in public opinion as dramatic as the 30-point swing of the past two months. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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