Mark Carney's early moves are making the Conservatives look like waterboys

Globe and Mail

20 hours ago

Ever since the election, the Conservative Party has been giving off strong 'loser energy' vibes.
It's not simply that the party failed to form government, or even that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat (though it certainly doesn't help that he's forced to press his nose up against the House's stained glass windows). It's more so the air of flailing insecurity: selecting one of the safest Conservative seats in the country for Mr. Poilievre to run in a by-election; appointing a shadow cabinet of a whopping 74 MPs to keep caucus content, and thus less likely to call for the Leader's head; calling for 'severe limits' on population growth but running away when asked to elaborate.
It seems like the Conservatives, humbled and humiliated, have no idea what to do with themselves now.
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What's worse for the party is that Mark Carney is making big moves on many of the files on which the Conservatives have long demanded action. Last week, the Carney government tabled its 'One Canadian Economy' bill that provides a framework for fast-tracking major infrastructure projects that promises to 'substantially reduce the burden of federal rules that apply to trade across provincial and territorial borders.' The bill alone does not eliminate interprovincial trade barriers by July 1, as Mr. Carney promised, but even Mr. Poilievre acknowledged it is a 'small step,' before insisting that the government must go even further.
Then the Carney government tabled a border bill that, among other things, significantly narrows the window during which refugees are eligible to claim asylum in Canada and allows the government to cancel the processing of immigration applications en masse in certain circumstances. It's precisely the type of bill that the Conservatives would have introduced had they won a plurality of seats in April, instead of the Liberals. On that one, Mr. Poilievre didn't muster much of a response at all.
This week, Mr. Carney announced that he was accelerating his government's plan to reach NATO's target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, promising that Canada will reach the target this fiscal year – five years earlier than planned. He said the government would move ahead with purchasing new equipment such as submarines and icebreakers, but added that much of the new spending will be in operational expenses, for a bigger, better-funded military. Mr. Poilievre, who promised during the campaign that his government would reach NATO's spending target by 2030, had no choice but to offer his support for the plan. What else could he say? That he didn't like the look of Mr. Carney's tie during the announcement?
There will certainly be more talk about dumping Mr. Poilievre as Leader, particularly if the party's numbers continue to tank post-election (the latest Nanos poll has the Liberals 10 points ahead of the Conservatives). And while Mr. Poilievre shoulders much of the blame for his party's loss, its current predicament is just as much, or perhaps even more, about actions by the Prime Minister as it is about the Conservative Leader.
Mr. Carney, unlike his predecessor, is actually making big moves on major files, and unfortunately for the Conservatives' narrow political interests, many of those moves happen to come from their own playbook. That necessarily makes the Conservatives look like waterboys, trying to sheepishly call out suggestions to the quarterback. Sometimes the party will have something important and substantial to oppose, such as the new powers of surveillance granted to authorities that the Liberals have embedded in their border-security bill. But it's hard to get anyone to pay attention to guys handing out cups of Gatorade on the bench while the actual players are on the field.
The Conservatives are in a tough spot right now, and that would likely be the case with anyone at the helm. But there are ways for the Conservatives to tamp down on their 'loser energy.' They can, for example, give the government genuine credit where it is due, as many Canadians who didn't vote for Mr. Carney already seem to be doing. That would make them look like grown-ups – actual players – instead of sore losers trained to reflexively oppose. They can resist the urge to fall back on lazy talking points about Liberal waste and instead focus on a few narrow but important issues specific to the Carney government. And they can continue to talk about big ideas, so long as they actually stick around to explain them.
But regardless of how the party navigates the next few months, it seems likely that the Conservatives will be a largely peripheral political force for the next little while. That's the problem with having a quarterback who actually marches downfield: no one pays attention to who is sitting on the bench.