Mark Carney seems terrified of being found out
Trudeau's Liberal government released proposals in March 2017 designed to 'modernise' the rules of Canada's House of Commons. One recommendation announced by then-Government House Leader, Bardish Chagger, was to 'follow the British tradition of designating one day a week for the prime minister to answer questions in the House'.
In other words, a Canadian version of the UK's Prime Minister's Questions.
This new parliamentary tradition unexpectedly began on Wednesday, April 5 2017. There had been no prior announcement, no advance warning, and no formal change of parliamentary rules – and, until opposition MPs realised that the PM was answering every question, no idea what was going on. 'Because Trudeau is fond of the element of surprise, nobody knew this little display of derring-do was coming,' as columnist Paul Wells nicely put it in Maclean's the following day.
And for almost eight years, Trudeau followed through with the practice, answering questions from any representative in the Commons on Wednesdays. For all his faults as Canada's leader, it was a welcome gesture meant to improve accountability. He didn't answer the questions well most of the time, but he never stopped doing them.
Carney appears to have different ideas. It was first reported in The Canadian Press on May 26 that he would not take up Trudeau's Wednesday tradition. No proper explanation has ever been given. The whole situation seems clouded in confusion. Carney has turned up a few times in the Commons. But has an important democratic innovation died with barely a whimper?
It would hardly be surprising if it had. Carney is politically inexperienced. He isn't comfortable as a public speaker. He doesn't like to be challenged publicly, and it shows.
There were some mildly tense exchanges during his first address outside Ottawa's Rideau Hall. An intense back-and-forth between Carney, the Globe and Mail's Stephanie Levitz and CBC News Network's Rosemary Barton on March 17 raised plenty of eyebrows. They had asked legitimate questions about the lack of public details surrounding Carney's blind trust and possible conflicts of interest due to his years in the private sector. When Barton said she found it 'very difficult to believe' there couldn't be any conflicts of interests, Carney bizarrely told her to 'look into herself' and 'you start from a prior of conflict and…ill will'.
Since that time, Carney and his team have seemed keen to avoid difficult questions or situations. Perhaps they believe that the less he appears in public, the less likely he is to reveal the 'volcanic temper' that Larry Elliott, the former Guardian economics editor, identified from Carney's time at the Bank of England.
They're wrong. A strong leader would willingly take on the challenge of answering every question in the House on Wednesday, no matter the result. Carney appears to be running scared of public scrutiny in order to protect his political backside. That's not leadership in any sense of the word.
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