Mark Carney can apparently do no wrong. Scroll through comments on news articles, and you’ll encounter an energetic online army defending the prime minister’s every action.
Cancelling a tax on the world’s most profitable tech giants? A genius chess move in his trade war against Trump.
Advocating for new pipelines while the country burns from climate change-fuelled wildfires? A tough decision to shore up Canadian sovereignty.
Boosting spending on the military to record and wasteful levels? A responsible counter to supposed perils like Russia or North Korea.
Expanding surveillance powers to crackdown on refugee rights? Well, at least he’s not Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
The U.S. President’s tariffs and threats have left Canadians anxious and disoriented, giving Carney an opportunity to move fast and with far too little scrutiny. He’s pushing through pro-corporate policies that go beyond anything he outlined on the campaign trail. The agenda is so right-wing, in fact, The Globe and Mail last week gleefully noted that “Brian Mulroney could have endorsed it.”
It’s no wonder that Carney is trying to push through his agenda as fast as possible, while Canadians remain disoriented. The prime minister’s newly-appointed top senior civil servant, Michael Sabia, is clear about this Canadian-style shock doctrine: “windows of opportunity open and close,” he wrote in a letter to civil servants on Monday. Sabia would be one to know: once upon a time he helped none other than Brian Mulroney privatize a rash of Crown corporations. Carney has even openly signalled he’s preparing to purge any civil servants who don’t get in line (with “high-level talk of recruiting other business achievers” to replace them).
We need to drop the Carney denialism in a hurry, and get angry instead. The prime minister, a consummate technocrat who knows how to cater to elite interests, is taking Canadians for a ride, while servicing his natural constituency: bankers, tech broligarchs, oil barons, and arms manufacturers. It’s time we open our eyes, clue in to what’s happening, follow the money—and put up a fight.
I hear a lot of bitching and moaning, and no ideas, no proposed solutions.
A lot of people expected some kind of magic apparently. It's been about 4 months and there's a lot of big things to deal with. Anyone that thinks he should just stand up to Trump is ignorant of the power that the president unfortunately has.
What "solutions" are there? We just had an election. And at the moment, there is no real opposition party. The Liberals and Conservatives are basically aligned on most of this, so between the two of them, they have a potential super majority to pass anything they want.
Anyone having buyers remorse at this point, is shit out of luck.
That's where protest and disruption come in. The LibCons are doing their best right now to piss off the entire public sector; I have no doubt that union leadership are already talking strikes, at least internally. The people always have power.
Cory Doctorow has been proposing some very innovative left wing positions.
Fair. But it is 'just' journalism. This isn't an opposition party press release
It is the one thing that unifies Canadians, whether right or left. haha