OTTAWA — One year after rescuing Canada’s Liberal Party from electoral disaster, Mark Carney has strengthened his hold on power.
The rookie prime minister clinched a razor-thin majority in special elections on Monday night, bolstered by five defections during the past five months from progressive and conservative parties to the Liberals. Results are still being counted, but Liberal candidate Danielle Martin claimed victory in her Toronto district around 10 p.m. — putting Carney over the top.
No modern majority government in Ottawa has ever been built this way.
The unprecedented feat will keep Carney in office until 2029. It gives him runway to execute his ambitious “Canada Strong” agenda, including a slate of protectionist policies focused on reducing Canada’s economic reliance on the United States.
Liberal lawmakers on the Hill on Monday argued that a majority will bring stability and security to Canada amid global disruptions driven by certain world leaders, though they would not explicitly name U.S. President Donald Trump.
“When you’re dealing with global uncertainty, certainty helps,” Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed said.
“I knocked on the doors of people that historically have not voted for us, and they were saying two things. One is that they really like the prime minister. The second … they’re saying at a time when we’re all under threat, it’s better to be together,” Noormohamed said.
At the Liberal Party convention over the weekend, Carney used a campaign-like speech to share his vision for the country, while calling for a “united, ambitious and confident Canada.”
“This is not the time for politics as usual, for petty differences, for political point-scoring,” Carney told party members in Montreal. “United, we will build ‘Canada strong,’ a Canada for all. A ‘Canada strong’ that no one can ever take away.”
Having achieved majority status, Carney is now free from having to work with other parties in the House of Commons. The Liberal government can rush through bills and spending — a reality that will put pressure on the prime minister to ease Canadian’s cost-of-living concerns, since he can no longer blame other parties for obstructing the government.
“What a majority does is, it actually gives you time to effectively plan. That’s what this country needs right now, given what’s going on globally. And that’s what this country needs in terms of working through some of the challenges that we have domestically,” Liberal MP Jonathan Wilkinson told POLITICO. A Trudeau-era energy and climate minister, Wilkinson is considered a top contender to become Canada’s next ambassador to the European Union.
Despite opposition MPs hammering Carney over high grocery prices fueled by inflation and a nationwide housing shortage, “Carneymania” continues to sweep the nation. Recent polls show he has high approval ratings among Canadians and has even made unexpected gains in staunchly Conservative regions, such as the Prairies.
The first move of Carney’s majority government on Tuesday morning will be to announce relief for Canadian consumers facing skyrocketing gas and diesel prices as the U.S.-Israel war on Iran drives up costs at the pumps, two senior government officials told POLITICO. They were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the announcement in advance.
One official said Carney’s focus was “definitely going to be on affordability for Canadians, especially Canadians who need gas to fill up their cars.” Carney previously said he was looking at removing the federal tax on gas to “cushion the blow for Canadians.”
Since taking office a year ago, Carney has vowed to govern for all Canadians, though lately he’s emphasized that “unity does not require uniformity.” Some in the Liberal caucus point to recent floor-crossers as a sign of the country coming together.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is now shut out from becoming prime minister for at least another three years, though Carney could call an election sooner.
Questions around Poilievre’s survival have circulated in Ottawa for months, after four of his MPs defected to the Liberals. So far, no rival has emerged to challenge his leadership. Conservative MPs largely backed Poilievre ahead of Monday’s special elections, downplaying concerns about their political fortunes.
There is also speculation that more Conservative lawmakers will cross the floor.
Liberal MPs are continuing to reach out to their Conservative colleagues, trying to persuade them to join the government’s side. Conservative MP Billy Morin told reporters Liberals are “trying to poach me.”
Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski, a Liberal politician from Northern Ontario, told POLITICO he’s invited his “drinking buddy” and “friend” Conservative MP Clifford Small to cross the floor. “I don’t think he wants to cross, though,” he added.
Carney’s majority returns the party to a status not seen since Justin Trudeau swept into office in 2015, ending the Conservatives' near-decade in government. It’s a parliamentary distinction that means Carney does not have to call an election until 2029 — past the expiry date of Trump’s second term.
Carney convinced Canada he was the best person to take on Trump, telling Canadians, “We will have to do things that we haven't imagined before, at speeds we didn't think possible.”
Now that he has a majority, Canadians will be counting on it.
Here’s a high-level view of the to-dos on Carney’s list:
TRADE
Governing with the oomph of a majority will help Carney pass legislation to implement trade deals more expeditiously, but it’s unlikely to change his U.S. trade strategy — a topic where there’s already rare cross-party unity that continued reliance on America is a bad thing.
There’s broad support for Carney’s “Buy Canada” policy that pushes back against Trump’s tariffs, earning a spot in the U.S. Trade Representative’s growing list of Canadian irritants.
And while Canadians continue to view Trump’s America unfavorably, Carney’s team knows there’s high risk with poking the White House too much ahead of a high-stakes review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement this summer. This is where his government’s new majority status can prove useful in getting new energy and transport projects built to help sell more Canadian energy and food exports to the world.
Carney has set an ambitious trade diversification goal to double non-U.S. exports to C$300 billion by 2030. More trade with China, much to the Trump administration’s chagrin, is a key part of that strategy. As is closing new trade deals with India, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur, ASEAN and Saudi Arabia — which all could be implemented by year’s end, depending on how quickly Carney’s government is at moving bills efficiently with its new momentum.
DEFENSE
Carney needs to put meat on the bones of his commitment to meet NATO’s defense spending targets.
The prime minister faces a looming political deadline of July 7 when the NATO leaders’ summit takes place in Ankara, Türkiye, to demonstrate he’s serious about meeting the alliance’s new 5 percent of GDP target by 2035.
To expedite procurement in Canada, Carney has established the Defence Investment Agency.
Ottawa is contemplating two major military purchases — a new fleet of 12 diesel-powered submarines and CF-18 fighter jet replacements. The agency has given the two submarine bidders — Germany’s TKMS and South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean — until April 29 to finalize their bids.
The fighter-jet decision involves American-made Lockheed Martin F-35s. If Carney diversifies away from the U.S. — opting for Sweden’s Saab Gripen fighter, for example — he risks the wrath of the Trump administration.
ENERGY
Carney is expected to burnish his slightly bruised climate bonafides in the coming weeks when he announces plans to at least double the generation of clean electricity in Canada by 2050.
Just before the Easter weekend, Carney met with Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston to discuss the Wind West Atlantic Energy project. The project would call for moving electricity east to west, within Canada, instead of shipping it north-south to the U.S..
Ottawa has also signed a memorandum of understanding with energy-rich Alberta, which could lead to a new oil pipeline from the province to West Coast, though that is contingent on a private entity coming forward to bankroll the project.
TECHNOLOGY
The Liberal government considers AI “key to our economic destiny.”
It is poised to release an AI bill designed to keep foreign tech companies from exploiting the data and personal information of Canadians. The Trudeau government failed to pass a previous iteration of the bill because it could not get the backing of enough opposition MPs. Enter Carney’s majority.
Carney has said “digital sovereignty” is as important to Canada as pipelines and ports. He’s directed his Major Projects Office to develop a sovereign cloud to store government information. Canada currently relies on a few big global tech providers — Amazon, Microsoft and Google, for starters, which control most of its cloud infrastructure.
AI is also at the center of Canada’s new defense industrial strategy. Carney’s government is trying to incentivize tech companies to collaborate with the military to help scale up startups. The goal is to attract C$500 billion in investment while creating 125,000 new jobs.
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/OdtB3sN
via IFTTT
0 Commentaires