Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada (2025 - ?)

 I hardly ever write here anymore, but you already knew that (if you - readers, that is - still exist).

But, I wanted to scribble down a few thoughts about our new Canadian prime minister and the ongoing fentanyl/tariff/NATO spending/governor Trudeau/that woman/51st state dispute with the US.

First, it's the first full day of Mark Carney's time as Canadian prime minister and these are some immediate thoughts on the landscape:

1. I've seen otherwise-sympathetic media commentary talking about how "boring" or "politically unskilled" he seems. The latter is understandable, although I don't know how you have the career that he's had, working across the political divide in different political cultures, without being politically-skilled. Maybe they are talking about his abilities in retail politics. But it nags me that some people are looking for our prime minister to be entertaining. Donald Trump is entertaining. Boris Johnson is entertaining. Javier Milei is entertaining. Surely there is room for leaders that are not entertaining. Entertainment is cheap but good leaders are not; can't we just have leaders that are good leading and trust them to get on with it?
   
   
2. Why is he so euro-centric? I found it difficult to accept that, while running to be Liberal leader, he was off giving more substantive interviews to places like the BBC in the UK than he did to any of the Canadian media. And now, as leader, his first trip as Canadian prime minister is to the UK and France when most Canadians barely know him at all. How about touring Canada before going abroad (again)?
   
   
3. The only thing that I can really call out as being different about his plans to date are those about splitting the budget into operational and capital buckets. Without deep operational (government administration) cuts, that doesn't change anything unless you are going to use it to blow out the deficit even more, but justifying it by saying that it's for growth. Even then, we've had infrastructure banks in various forms for a long time that have not been highly-effective. But, if anyone has the ability to surprise in this area then I think it must be him (though this is tempered by point #5).
   
   
4. The expediency to which he came to this position is mysterious to me. The conspiratorial part of my brain wonders if there's a non-democratic national desire to have this man in power to restore a business-as-usual-in-Canada program. The Conservative party were starting to sound a bit too populist. The frequent presence of Jean Chretien around Mark Carney when he was not visible around Justin Trudeau is a symbol to me, like a raven in winter. As a result, maybe the Canada/US divisions were amped up to give him a cause? I don't know. It was very neat.
   
   
5. I've become more conscious recently that hardly anyone I listen to about anything is actually involved in primary production of anything. They are either from thinktanks, news organizations, academics, content creators, political organizations, or banks. The number of people making money just writing and talking about stuff must be unbelievable. Do most of these people understand the real world, I wonder... and when the real world diverges from their understanding, how long does it take for them to realize it?

Second, on Canada/US relations:

1. I think it's a mistake to try and forge closer relationships with the UK and EU than we have with the US. The US is on the same continent as us, the easiest to trade with, are critical to our mutual defence, and are not going anywhere. While true that the current leadership is looking difficult to deal with (and it's not just one man; it is a movement), we should recognize that the UK and EU have never seen Canada as a peer or critical nation and if they run into critical political and/or economic problems (as they seem to be doing), Canada will be an afterthought. We have to make the US relationship work and it has to be our most important relationship. But, it still is and will continue to be; a lot of what's going on is temporal political and media noise (it's also jingoistic).
    
   
2. It is hard to understand what will improve the soured trade relationships with the US. It is an erratic and volatile conversation. Via tariffs and the resultant economic cost, the US are essentially putting a price on various perceived transgressions such as imbalanced trade (which is not as imbalanced as they say, but has become less-balanced since the pandemic), insufficient commitment regarding NATO spending, drug control, and money laundering. Now that these things have a price, we are more incentivized to tackle them. That's a very business-centric approach to relations.
   
   
3. Based on the more serious commentary I've seen on this, the US are trying to tackle an out-of-control deficit that will get more out of control the more the government is forced to refinance cheap, short-term debt taken on during the pandemic at higher rates or longer terms. That is what the tariffs are ultimately about; they are a new revenue source. And it's not a mystery because Trump created the External Revenue Service early on his presidency to collect them. Although the US has made their own political decisions that what social programs they provide to their citizens, why would anyone expect another country that is faced with such a problem to subsidize the defence and trade of countries that have more generous social programs? It bothers me that there isn't much visible self-reflection in Canada or Europe about their own role in this rift.
   
   
4. The notion that deficits don't matter has bothered me since it came into the scene because I know that they don't matter until they do. When deficits do come to matter it requires a drastic response that too many people will not acknowledge was tied to their not caring about deficits for so long. Canada and Europe are able to afford social programs that the US doesn't have because they rely on the US to disproportionately foot certain bills, with defence being the main one. It reminds me of the Alberta-Quebec imbalance to some extent, where the latter has many social programs that the former doesn't have because they are able to wield national political influence that forces proceeds of Alberta energy to subsidize Quebec while also criticizing Alberta for the things that provide that subsidy.
   
   
5. I can send $800 US worth of goods to the US without incurring duties or tax. I can only bring $40 CAN worth of goods from the US into Canada without incurring tax. There's an imbalance there, just as there's an imbalance that lets Canada collect HST on digital services that Canada had no hand in producing. The US would be right to have concerns about that. But, regardless, I have never liked the idea of cross-border shopping, and never do it (unless it is online and for something I can't get in Canada). It was never good for Canada to shop cross-border so you don't get kudos for stopping it for the time being. Many people that do it exhibit the characteristics in the above point: criticizing the US and talking up Canada while shopping in the US because it's cheaper because of many of the underlying currents in the country that you don't like. Unreliable narrators.

So, ultimately, I wonder if the US having put a price on non-compliance, whether it's going to be cheaper to move toward compliance. If our GDP is going to suffer by 1-2% because of tariffs, as some economists predict, then would it be better for Canada to simply make their 2% NATO defence spending commitment sooner? And since much of any defence spending will go to the US military industrial complex and feed needed revenues into the US (not to mention supporting their industrial base and improving the perception of fairness, which are two other key interests of the Trump presidency), would something like that be enough to make the tariff situation mostly go away? I would not be surprised if it did. The fentanyl issue is just the basis for emergency moves that allow the president to act unilaterally.

I assume that's why Mark Carney is going to the UK and Europe first: to get the background (scuttlebutt) on their very active US negotiations over NATO and Ukraine. In that light, it makes sense and it's the right priority. I just wonder why he would not be transparent about that. There's no reason for secrecy. I hope that he has an interest in Canada for Canada's sake and not mostly as a chess piece in a global chess game. Given his background and the natural inclinations of someone involved in global finance, I don't have a lot of reason to hope, but he can still be good for Canada wherever his allegiances lie.

Whatever happens, I won't demand that he be entertaining.