If you are like me, you breathed a huge sigh of relief on Monday night.
The Conservatives will not form the next government. Pierre Poilievre will not be Prime Minister. Indeed, he won’t even be a member of Parliament.
That’s because voters turned out in record numbers to counter the Conservatives, who threatened to bring the Trump playbook to Canada. I’d like to thank everyone who went to the polls in this pivotal election.
I’d also like to thank the many chapter members and Council supporters who hosted kitchen table conversations, made phone calls, organized events, attended candidates’ debates, door-knocked or talked to friends and family about the stakes of this election.
There is a palpable desire among Canadians to gather and make sense of the harrowing political times we are living through. Canada’s place in the world, our military alliances and our relationship with the U.S., our corporate-friendly trade deals and our neoliberal economic path more generally – all of these questions, considered settled for nearly a generation, have been thrown wide open.
In his victory speech, Mark Carney declared that we are at “one of those hinge moments of history,” facing changes comparable to those that followed the Second World War and the end of the Cold War. “We will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.” But what kind of change will Prime Minister Carney bring?
As a candidate, Carney functioned like a Rorschach test – he allowed people to see what they wanted in him. To people angered by Trump’s provocations, he vowed to keep his “elbows up” in dealing with the U.S. president, to diversify our trading relationships and to protect our water and natural resources. To people worried about the privatization of our public health care under a Conservative government, he declared that health care is a right in Canada, not a business. To people concerned about the climate crisis and outraged by Poilievre’s kowtowing to Big Oil’s demands, he promised a green industrial policy, a Youth Climate Corps, and an east-west clean energy grid.
To the corporate elite, Carney promised stability, competence, and a recentering of economic policy around the needs of big business. He pledged billions for the military while refusing to commit to expanding social programs like pharmacare. To Big Oil, he promised to make Canada an “energy superpower” (Stephen Harper’s old phrase) with pipelines stretching across the country. In his short time as Prime Minister, he axed the carbon tax and the capital gains tax, which would have hit the richest 0.13% of Canadians and given the government $20 billion more over five years to spend on essential public services.
Pay attention to the details, and Carney’s mantra of “spending less, investing more” looks a lot like socialism for the rich, and austerity for the rest of us, as I argued in an analysis of the Liberal and Conservative platforms published on the eve of the election.
It is undeniable, journalist Martin Lukacs notes, that Mark Carney has “tacked strongly to the right, pillaging the Conservative leader’s policies—both to win back centre-right voters, and because that is simply his establishment-friendly outlook.” Already, Canada’s CEOs are urging Carney “to push through big changes for Canada’s economy” in concert with the Conservatives, in pursuit of a “centrist” (read: pro-business) economic policy.
It will be up to all of us to find new ways to federate our forces, resist the coming attacks on working people, Indigenous rights and the climate, and forcefully put forward an alternative path that puts people and the planet before corporate profits.
We know we are not alone in this task. An impressive array of organizations from across the progressive spectrum – from the climate movement to unions to health care advocates to the Palestine solidarity movement – were in high gear over the last few weeks. This broad-based mobilization should give us all hope.
The political earthquake that Trump has provoked woke up many Canadians. This is a time to collectively catch our breath, not go back to sleep.
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Nikolas Barry-Shaw
Nikolas is the Trade and Privatization Campaigner for the Council of Canadians and author of the book “Paved with Good Intentions.”
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