In the weeks following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement, the race to name his successor seems to have become a two-person contest between former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
As is the usual practice in leadership bids, each has sought to advance competing visions tied to their personal credentials and desirability as candidates.
Emphasizing her extensive cabinet experience, for example, Freeland’s pitch has so far focused on the claim that she is best equipped to handle the “existential threat” posed by the second Donald Trump administration in the United States.
In contrast, Carney has framed himself as a pragmatic outsider. To his supporters, his monetary management of both Brexit and the 2008 financial crisis shows he can effectively address Canada’s economic challenges while remaining above the apparent politicking, ideological excesses and questionable policy decisions of the Trudeau years.
The importance of the ground game
It’s difficult to say for certain who is most likely to prevail. Most polls suggest many Liberals are still undecided, although Carney and Freeland are at the same level of support among Canadian voters at large.
The incredibly short timeline for the race — voters need to be registered as Liberals by the end of today to vote for a leader — does not provide enough time for discernible trends to emerge. Despite the focus on the personality of the candidates, the Liberal leadership will be won or lost on the basis of “ground-game” organization — that is, who can identify, register and mobilize the greatest number of supporters.
At this point, however, it’s safe to say that Carney has an advantage. Compared to Freeland, he has secured the endorsements of most senior cabinet ministers, including Francois-Philippe Champagne, Melanie Joly, Steven Guilbeault, Harjit Sajjan and Jonathan Wilkinson. This provides not only legitimacy but, far more importantly, greater organizational prowess.
Also important is the fact that, in an environment of anti-Trudeau sentiment, he has much more — though not complete — distance from the incumbent government. It’s difficult to see how Freeland, regardless of her experience, can effectively avoid associations with the consequences of the past or existing policies that she herself was instrumental in bringing about.
Of course, Carney has his own challenges. He will likely have to clarify his relationship with the departing Trudeau government. Since 2020, the precise nature of his role as an informal policy adviser to the prime minister — including as the chair of a task force on economic growth — remains a mystery.
And for all of his emphasis on the importance of good policy, the substance of his actual, announced policy proposals are thin, including an ambiguous stance on the carbon tax.
Impressive resumé
Nonetheless, Carney simply has far more flexibility and potential than the more rigid limitations of Freeland’s candidacy. When compared to Freeland, Carney’s pitch to Canadians seems, at least on paper, to be a much smarter response to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.
His impressive resumé has the potential to be a strong, substantive contrast to the sloganeering that has so far been offered by the Conservatives. Carney could represent a reasonable alternative to voters who, while desiring change, aren’t sold on Poilievre.
But can Carney really reverse the fortunes of the Liberal Party? Although the next leader of the party is guaranteed to be Canada’s 24th prime minister, they face near Herculean odds in establishing a term that will last more than a couple of weeks due the near certainty of a non-confidence vote in Parliament after it resumes on March 24, 15 days after the Liberal convention.
Poilievre’s Conservatives are well over 20 points ahead in public opinion polls as they benefit from an anti-incumbent sentiment that, although commonly expressed in a personal dislike for Trudeau, is really about a deeper discontent with Canada’s structural and economic challenges.
And, unless the NDP reverses its refusal to support the government, a federal election is likely to be held by May.
While Carney’s outsider status may inspire the Liberal faithful, his electoral performance is more likely to highlight the drawbacks of political inexperience. Although he has potential in terms of political skills, he may not have the time to realize that potential.
Past Liberal leaders
Historically, and to a greater degree than the Conservatives, the Liberals have been successful at recruiting leaders with accomplishments outside of partisan electoral politics.
William Lyon Mackenzie King made his name in labour relations, while Lester B. Pearson had an incredibly successful career as a diplomat.
Pierre Trudeau, furthermore, was not a supporter of the Liberal Party until 1965, becoming leader only three years after entering politics. In this vein, Carney — until this stage in his career a largely non-political and accomplished central banker — is a return to form.
The difference, however, is that — with the exception of academic Michael Ignatieff in 2011 — each of these former leaders had some, albeit limited, experience. They may have been recruited for their potential as future prime ministerial candidates, but each accumulated the requisite political experience.
Mackenzie King had served as labour minister under Wilfrid Laurier, and Pearson had been external affairs minister for nearly a decade. Pierre Trudeau’s rise to national prominence owed a large part to his provocative legislative reforms as Pearson’s attorney general.
Carney, on the other hand, has never run for office nor made any public interjections into partisan conflicts.
Special skill set
Electoral politics requires a special skill set that, unless it comes naturally, can only be learned through experience. It requires a unique combination of policy aptitude, communication ability, emotional intelligence, coalition-building and raw instinct.
Those qualities are honed with frequent exposure to voters, whether through stump speeches, stakeholder meetings or community barbecues. Carney simply does not have these experiences.
And faced with an anti-incumbent mood, his administrative experience may be casting him not as an interesting outsider, but as a technocratic voice of the very economic, political and cultural elite who Canadians are upset with.
Sam Routley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
