He has always been my pick, even before he entered the leadership race.
The more I read about his policies and views, the more I like him. He’s way better than any other option I’ve seen for the liberals.
The only thing I’m scared of, is the Michael Ignatieff effect. The liberals have tried this one before. Michael Ignatieff is on a plane that is well beyond any of our comprehension. Which works really well in academia, but not so well when it comes to trying to deal with the common world and to level with the common man.
This guy sure as shit ain’t a dummy, and I’ve actually had the pleasure of being at lectures with him, and buddy is pretty gosh darn smart. We’d be a better nation with him leading us for a little while. Problem is, half the population are wearing raccoon hats and railing ivermectin, and cheering over transport truck horns from parking lot encampments in the middle of nowhere. The other half gets their education solely from Facebook. We are still pretty fucked, me be thinking. He’s polling well as a liberal, but the polls at the macro level are still looking like a clear CON blood bath across the country.
Another thing he has going for him is that he did not go against electoral reform. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s endorsement is the cherry on top for me.
Yeah but so was Trudeau.
Honestly I feel like Trudeau was honestly a good guy with good values and good ideas but he somehow got pushed into the Liberal party mold and was forced to toe the party line even if he was the leader. Like there are outside forces that made him change his plans.
That might just be a hunch though.
I wanted electoral reform but I think going for it would have been a mess.
No two major parties agreed on what should replace FPTP.
If the liberals had used a majority to unilaterally rewrite our elections that sets a bad precedent (Not that precedent seems to matter much these days).
He had a majority, didn’t need any input from other parties. He didn’t want to do it because he knew it would stop him from getting a majority at the next election. It’s that simple.
fascists worldwide have already set that precedent.
Have you seen any actual policy proposals? Did you tease out anything about attitude towards labour?
No actual policy proposals, just going off his past record. I don’t think he has a published plan at all yet, he did recently write a book about his views.
He supported occupy wall street which says a lot to me. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bank-of-canada-head-calls-occupy-protests-entirely-constructive/article4182646/
And he’s hard core pro climate, where he thinks it makes financial sense too. https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/braid-mark-carney-is-a-climate-zealot-who-wont-back-off-trudeau-climate-agenda
The views section here is pretty good too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney
He’s an Economist who’s run the central bank of what, 3 countries? Makes sense to me if his entire focus was long term stability that he’d be anti inequality and climate change.
Really looking forward to everyone dropping platforms.
Edit: Carney has a book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, might be worth looking at, probably going to give good insight into his views.
Economist need not be lesse faire or free market capitalist
Most of the ones in the media just focus on market efficiency though
This more or less validates where I am on him. It seems you’ve parsed most of the same info as me and come to similar conclusions. I’m cautiously optimistic. There’s lots of important implementation details that could make him better or worse. For example he’s been concerned with wealth inequality before it was cool, however it matters how you address that. You could make things better for corpos and hoping they’ll increase wages, which some have done in the past. You could strengthen labour rights to increase union density and therefore wages. One of those does not work. :D On one hand concrete policy proposals could shed light. On the other, it doesn’t matter because Freeland is worse and she has lesser chance to prevent the worst case scenario. 😂
He’s releasing a new book in may where he talks about the future of Canada. Have we ever had any other politician with long term dreams, clearly stated?
That excites me.
Yeah. I mean, Canada does have bright future under non-neolib governance. We have a lot of territory that won’t be devastated by climate change (some will). More natural resources than we could possibly use. The culture to generally tolerate imported labour when the general material conditions are decent. If he’s really worried about climate change, and by all accounts it seems he is, he might be thinking about Canada’s future as his own in a long term climate sanctuary context. I would if I were running for a PM.
I know he’s an influential guy, but I don’t know if I want a banker as the leader of my country.
If we’re entering a terrifying economic time where our biggest trading partner is doing crazy shit, a banker with Carney’s record kind of appeals.
Given current economic arrangements… I dunno, I don’t think a radical transformer can win, I don’t want crazy populist bullshit (Left or Right) I just want someone who has basically progressive values (social/wealth inequality, climate change etc) who will keep my friends employed. I’ll be fine regardless but my friends are starting families and while the largest economy on Earth is run by an unrestrained lunatic, I’d like some safety for them, as those are some cute kids.
Same idea as portfolio diversification. When I have time and few crises, yeah, some sexy stocksare fun. But the closer we get to crunch time, the more we move to safe assets.
I’d genuinely like to know what you think would happen if the NDP were elected in the current political economic context.
Cards on the table: I am admittedly, from BC and while I basically like our NDP government, I am also unable to forget the fast ferries debacle that cost us almost half a billion in 90s dollars. That being said, pre-trump, I was still hoping for the Liberals to lose hard enough that the NDP won, maybe a minority with the Liberals as a bit of a sanity check.
Okay, with that being said, my concerns are basically a trade war is goddamn expensive and going to hurt. We’re going to want to support a bunch of people and businesses while working internationally with similarly affected nations. That seems exactly like Carney’s wheelhouse. The NDP on the other hand, never met a union they didn’t love. Last election they wanted to expand Canada Post to unnecessary services in part to help out the union. I’d be worried they’d try to hold or worse, create zombie jobs that are expensive and inefficient (eg fighting mechanization of ports.) I also wouldn’t trust them to have the fiscal probity to discern which of their ideas are both morally good and economically good (like say $10 a day daycare which is almost certainly a net benefit to the economy vs a wishlist of “everything should be good!”) It’s hard to guess what exactly they’d do; their 2022 election campaign ran like a giant wishlist so you have to read tea leaves to guess what they’d have actually done.
At a time when Canadian businesses are going to have to make very difficult decisions to try and survive, I just don’t trust the NDP to act in a way that protects them and thus protects us.
But the bigger concern is like I said at the very beginning of my previous post, I don’t think they can win and I think Carney can and short term, I think Carney better at defending Canada than Polievre, and long term I think Carney a better bet to protect our climate change strategies, like the carbon tax.
Those are some very good points. I really appreciate you taking the time to write all this.
I don’t know if they would act the same way you mentioned with the zombie jobs in the coming economic context. I’m sure they’d be about to weigh what’s good vs what isn’t. And regarding unions, I don’t think we’ll need unions more than we will in the coming years. Busynesses are going to panic and try to suck every penny from everyone and everything and exploit their workers to the max and pay less to maximize profits. But that’s just my guess.
However, I do agree with you that having them as a minority government with the Liberals to keep them in check at first might be a good idea.
Bizarrely enough, he’s actually probably less in favour of slashing everything than Freeland and obviously Poilievre… if his rhetoric and past actions are indicative. Yes, heads of banks can often do evil, but some have still spoken up about inequality in recent years because they’re more aware of what’s happening in markets than a lot of economists are. (Here’s a kind of shocking video by an economist and public educator who went to the private sector for a while after doing his Master’s at Oxford discussing why, for those interested.)*
If Carney is at least somewhat on our side, we would at least stave off another fascist or fascist-supporting government in the world.
*TLDW: The vid happens to be about why highly ranked economists often get predictions wrong. One of the reasons he goes into is private sector money drawing promising students away from universities unless they’re wealthy enough not to need the money. Wealthy PhD students are typically too out of touch to realize the models they use leave out crucial data on inequality.
Yeah I saw an interview of him with Jon Stewart and he seems pretty sensible.
But it still sounds like austerity measures aren’t off the table. I’ve been living in austerity measures all of my adult life since 2008 it seems and I feel like I can’t take it anymore.
I’ve been watching increasingly austere policies come up (and voted against them) since before 2008. This guy has been pro-regulation, remember. Not something big business tends to favour. Austerity policies tend to come from politicians listening to dedicated neoliberal economists, touting the usual free market garbage. When it comes to a banker, you have to research/watch them and discern what outcome they’re going for. The best clue for that is probably their past actions. Thankfully there are old and new articles about both potential party leaders, along with the other party leaders. I’ve just read a couple about him so far (as well as seeing that interview you mentioned when it got posted online).
Yes.
Maybe I’m judging him a little too quickly. I sure hope you’re right. I don’t want any more austerity measures for economy’s sake. I want to start taxing the richest Canadians who have been using their near monopoly status to exploit working class Canadians to increase their fortune without any opposition.
I’m just tired of not having accessible public medical care anymore and underfunded schools where teachers are quitting because it’s become too difficult due to lack of resources and cuts. Y’know?
Plus there’s the whole real estate business that’s basically keeping the Canadian economy afloat and causing property prices and rent to surge beyond what the average person can afford even with a good paying job.
Those are my concerns and I don’t feel the Liberal party has addressed any of those and applied pressure or enabled provincial governments to address these things for the past decade.
Anyway. I really hope he’s how you say he is.
I’m with you on all these points and concerns. I’m just reading the tea leaves and hoping it won’t be another austerity shit show. There are positive signs but there are also negative signs (he said “we can’t redistribute what we don’t have”). We won’t know which ones are slogans and which ones are real policy beliefs until he says more or becomes a PM. In the end, it seems like Freeland and PP are worse and Jagmeet is unelectable judging by the polls.
In my riding the NDP candidate takes about 10% every election and they’re now polling at 5%. So for me the choice is even simpler. If the race in your riding is CPC/NDP then perhaps yours is simple too. ☺️
That’s a shame. I think the NDP is that we’ve needed for a long time. Since Harper left. But if even Jack Layton couldn’t get the NDP elected, I don’t know what will.
I think if Layton had ran in the subsequent elections instead of Mulcair and Jagmeet, he’d have made government instead of Trudeau.
Yeah. If he didn’t have that cancer…
It’s unfair.
He’s smart as hell, and knows and respects the boundaries between politics and the BoC.
Don’t forget he ran the Bank of England under Boris Johnson, and although he didn’t personally agree with Brexit he managed to drag the UK through it relatively unscathed (he left in 2020).
If a banker is what it takes to keep an under-educated career politician who has literally never had an actual job in his life…I’ll happily take it.
Yeah. Can’t argue with you there…
Also yes. 😂
