What I'm Reading: 🍁 The Canada Edition
March 14: Five reads that piqued my interest this week
A special edition examining the political and societal transformation in Canada as a result of US President Donald Trump’s threat to annexe the country and make it the 51st state of the United States.
Mark Carney is PM
Arise Sir Elite. You don’t get much more globalist than a former central banker of England winning a landslide party vote to take over as Prime Minister of Canada without even holding a seat in the House of Commons.
Viva la unelected elite!
Mark Carney is now Canada’s 24th Prime Minister, replacing Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberals.
He will be arriving in London and Paris in coming days for his first overseas trip as leader, having heavily leant into Canada’s ‘proud British heritage’ in his first speech as PM. Watch closely the symbols and body language for when Prime Minister Carney meets Canada’s Head of State — King Charles III.
Carney appointed a much smaller Cabinet as he prepares to go to an election, possibly before Australia.
Less than a week ago, Carney beat the former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, the former government house leader Karina Gould and the former member of parliament Frank Baylis with a dominant 85.9 per cent of the vote, in a closely watched leadership race. He has no prior elected experience and does not have a seat in the House of Commons, making him a rarity in Canadian history.
Carney is expected to announce an election in the coming days, reflecting both the urgency of Canada’s trade war with the US, and the awkward reality that as prime minister without a seat in parliament, he is unable to attend sessions of the House of Commons.
The effects of Donald Trump’s economic attack on Canada are so wide-ranging and so damaging that they are likely to overshadow all other issues in the coming months. US trade tariffs, if held in place for an extended period of time, could push Canada’s fragile economy into a recession and unleash a cascading chain of knock-on upheavals.
Carney scraps carbon tax
Carney, like Trump, is not wasting time. At his first press conference he was asked how he would scrap the carbon tax by the end of the year, he immediately rephrased the question in his answer to say 'by the end of the day.’
His next move was to allow the cameras filming him signing documents to abolish the carbon tax for individuals (it remains for industry) which was introduced by Trudeau. Carney said it was divisive and not working. The carbon tax has become a huge political issue that the Conservtives were successfully prosecuting and promising to ‘axe the tax’ if elected. (This will be very familiar to Australians).
Ahead of what could be an election campaign within days, Carney moved first.
Let that sink in, a left-wing government scrapped it’s own carbon price.
This is a trend to watch. Will the threat of regional or global conflict, a trade war or both, on top of inflation, trigger more jettisoning of carbon measures around the world by sympathetic governments?
Inside Canada, there is already a knock-on effect with British Columbia’s Premier David Eby announcing his province would also be abolishing the cap and trade scheme.
‘This is the first time we've shared this, is that British Columbia will be introducing a law before April 1 that ensures that British Columbians don't have to pay that increase on April 1,’ he said, referring to the scheduled increase of $15/tonne that is required by federal legislation.
Following that, he said, his party would be moving to scrap the tax ‘altogether.’
….
British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce carbon pricing through a consumer tax, under then-premier Gordon Campbell of the B.C. Liberals, which was at the time the province's centre-right leaning party.
The tax, introduced in 2008, was initially set at $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions and was meant to be revenue-neutral, with the government refunding costs to lower-income residents.
Tiniest red carpet rolled out for ‘Little Rubio’
The change of leadership comes in the year Canada has the presidency of the G7 and Carney’s swearing-in occurred on the same day as Foreign Minister Melanie Joly hosted her G7 counterparts.
That included US Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who Trump used to deride as ‘Little Marco’ — who touched down in Canada to what might be the tiniest red carpet to ever grace a tarmac that ended slap bang in a puddle.
Rubio backed in Trump’s threats of annexing Canada and making it the 51st state, while on Canadian soil.
‘The Canadian government has made their position, how they feel about it [annexation] clear, and the president has made his argument about why he thinks Canada would be better off joining the United States for economic purposes,’ Rubio said.
‘There’s a disagreement between the president’s position and the position of the Canadian government. I don’t think that’s a mystery coming in, and it wasn’t a topic of conversation because that’s not what this summit was about.’
Rubio later reiterated that the issue wasn’t discussed at the summit, but when pressed again said the issue began in December 2024, when then-prime minister Justin Trudeau met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to discuss the threat of tariffs on Canada.
‘I’ll tell you how it came about: [Trump] was in a meeting with Trudeau and Trudeau basically says that if the U.S. imposes tariffs on Canada, then Canada couldn’t survive as a nation state, at which point the president said, “Well, you should become a state,”’ Rubio said.
‘He says he loves Canada. He made an argument for why Canada would be better off joining the United States from an economic standpoint and the like. He’s made that argument repeatedly, and I think it stands for itself.’
Boycott American
While the whole breakdown in relations between Canadian and Americans is extremely sad and unncessary, the patriotism it has inspired in Canada, a country usually known for not doing very much at all on the world stage, has made international headlines and revived interest in the country and what it means to be Canadian.
I absolutely loved this very smart and insightful Q+A Vox did with it’s reporter in Canada Zack Beauchamp on how the threat has overturned Canadian politics and the relationship at the people-to-people and consumer level, with many American goods, including liquor removed from shelves.
Everything Trump has said and done has led to a level of rage and defiance that I think very few Americans fully appreciate.
People hear that 51st state stuff, and say, ‘America is literally attempting to annex us. They’re trying to coerce us into becoming Americans. And we hate that.’
Yesterday, I was walking around my neighborhood, and there were three shops in a row on the main drag in my neighborhood, and every single one of them listed the Canadian-made goods that they were selling.
There’s a widespread boycott of American-related goods here in Ontario, which is not only Canada’s largest province, but where state-run liquor stores have a semi-monopoly on alcohol sales. And they have taken all American-made products out of those stores. That’s a government initiative, not a citizen boycott. There’s both: Consumers don’t want to buy American goods, and the government is limiting access to certain American goods.
….
Ontario is currently governed by a Conservative government, one that you would think would have more ideological affinities with the Trumpers. The fact that they’ve been so aggressive is demonstrative of where public opinion is in Canada.
Canadians are so insulted, so infuriated because they have their own real sense of nationhood. One of the pillars of Canadian national identity is being not American, is that Canada is different from the other country near them. To say ‘You should just become part of the US’ is to assail one of the foundations of what makes Canada Canada.
Being so infuriated has led to a backlash against the United States and against the Trump administration, unlike anything in recent memory, dwarfing even the anti-Americanism you saw in Canada during the Bush administration around the Iraq War.
Poor, poor Pierre
Just weeks ago Pierre Poilievre was 20+ points ahead of the Liberals in the opinion polls and his Conservative party was poised to crush the ageing Liberal government led by the unpopular Trudeau.
Carney’s advent has crushed Poilievre’s lead in the polls to just four points, according to Abacus Data and the race is now wide open.
I’m a big fan of the questions Abacus asks to deterime leader favourability. More of it!
(My personal recommendation is who you’d rather take to your street/family BBQ — a test I regularly apply to Australia’s many former prime ministers…)
Not so long ago, the Conservatives were boasting a lead of 20-plus percentage points over the Liberals, but the combination of Justin Trudeau’s resignation, Donald Trump’s threats to Canada and Carney’s arrival in the top job has changed all of that.
On the last point, this newest Abacus poll has some fascinating findings about how Canadians see Carney in comparison to Poilievre, and suggests that the Liberal leader’s honeymoon is coming largely at the expense of the Conservative leader.
Abacus laid out eight tasks for a future prime minister and asked whether Carney or Poilievre would be better at them. Carney was seen as more skilled at six of the eight. He was judged better than the Conservative leader on finding common ground, standing up to a bully and helping people manage household expenses, as well as being the man people would prefer to see captaining a ship through a storm, putting out a kitchen fire or sitting next to them on a long flight.
Poilievre only had the advantage in this comparison when it came to two skills: hosting a party and putting up a shelf.
Coletto confesses to some surprise at these results. A while back, Abacus asked these questions about the relative skills of Poilievre and Trudeau, and Poilievre was seen as superior in almost every way.
But now respondents are judging Carney, a relative unknown, to be more adept — well, except for party hosting and shelf installation.
And that’s my list for this edition.
Last Sunday, I joined Times Radio to discuss the week in British politics.
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What has happened? we seem to have regressed into a Bismarckian "might is right world" where authoritarian rulers think they can annexe countries or territory - Ukraine, Greenland, Canada, Panama and maybe even Gaza. I half heard a report that given the protests at Tesla Dealerships some in the US are looking to reclassify protest as terrorism.