The real risk of sticking too close to Trudeau

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/02/2025 (200 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Kim! Kim! You’re just like him!”

A long time ago, in a campaign far away, that was the chant which dogged and doomed Kim Campbell’s 1993 election campaign.

It’s a refrain Liberal Party frontrunner Mark Carney better hope he doesn’t hear. If he does, it means he’s lost the change argument and any chance of being prime minister for more than a few months.

Just as Kim Campbell did.

Her remarkable ascension to the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party saw the steepest rise and fall in political popularity ever in Canada. The prospect of a change in leader from the terminally unpopular Brian Mulroney lifted her party 30 points in just six weeks, according to one poll. Two months after being installed as prime minister, Campbell called an election and presided over the single-biggest electoral wipeout in Canadian history, winning just two seats.

She promised to be “new and different.” To voters, she turned out to be “more of the same.”

I know. I was there. I wrote a book about it, called Poisoned Chalice (a bestseller in my family, at least).

My thesis was that Brian Mulroney handed her a poisoned chalice of unpopularity and a desire for change. But she chose to drink from the cup. Having teased the electorate with the prospect of change, she presented a platform and persona that was the antithesis of that change.

Justin Trudeau’s decade in power has fashioned its own poisoned chalice for his successor. If Mark Carney does not choose to be sufficiently different from Justin Trudeau, he will meet a similar ending.

Without two regional parties vacuuming away votes (Reform in the West and the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec), a Liberal official Opposition remains possible. But if Carney loses the change argument to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, all bets are off, Donald Trump notwithstanding.

Right now, Carney is benefiting from the U.S. president’s political pronouncements about Canada’s future, not any of his own. How do I know? Take this test. Name one policy idea that Carney has announced. Now, name one Poilievre has. Carbon tax, right?

Take this second test. Carney wants to adjust the carbon tax, keeping parts of it, getting rid of others. Poilievre wants to axe it. Which of these seems like real change?

This is not to argue the merits of one policy over the other. It is to argue that in a political environment where voters had pronounced so vividly on the need for a change of prime minister that he was forced to resign, anything that smacks of “more of the same” runs real risks.

Instead, Carney is mostly offering what might be called “sensible change.” His platform so far is a general set of statements about new ways of budgeting and spending, making government more efficient and effective, building more infrastructure, and encouraging more home construction.

Unsurprisingly, given his international work and expertise in this area, Carney’s most detailed proposals deal with climate change and clean energy.

All of these are conventionally interesting but in only one area — eliminating the consumer carbon tax — is he demonstrating anything demonstrably different from what a Justin Trudeau government would keep doing if it had the chance? The rest could come from a Liberal throne speech.

Come to think of it, perhaps that is what he is writing. A throne speech for governing that can become a platform for campaigning. While this saves time, of which he has precious little, it will not save seats. At least not enough to form government.

The bet he is making so far is that voters wanted a change in prime minister, not necessarily a change in government. Two years of sustained Conservative popularity in the polls make that one very risky bet. It will be enough to win the Liberal leadership race. It is not enough to win the electoral race.

The Conservatives’ campaign advantage in fundraising, organization, candidates, and messaging is stark in comparison to the Liberals. None of this disappears just because polls tighten. In fact, that’s when its value in voting efficiency and seat results comes to the fore.

There are two moods in Canada today. A desire for a change of direction and trepidation about the future. The leader that speaks to this best will win, big. More of the same seems hardly sufficient when voters have been thinking “we can’t keep doing this.”

Carney is missing his time and chance to strike bold new directions and actions to meet those moods and match this moment.

Time and Chance, by the way, is the title of Kim Campbell’s memoirs.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.